 | |
List Price: $13.00 | | Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Salesrank: 786846
|
| Our Price: $5.99 |
| Used Price: $0.96 |
|
| Media: Paperback |
|
Editorial Review:
Courtney Love. The girl with the most cake. The girl with the loudest mouth and the fiercest guitar. The girl of many talents -- not least among them the power to shock. Not since Madonna declared that she was like a virgin has someone in the public spotlight so consistently challenged the notion of what it means to be female -- and what it means to be well behaved. In Courtney Love: The Real Story, Poppy Z. Brite tells the whole truth about the lead singer of the band Hole and uncovers more about this pop culture heroine than any music magazine could ever hope to.
Replete with revealing details and photographs, information from Love's inner circle, and excerpts from Love's diaries and letters, this book has the intimacy of secrets told to a friend and delivers revelation after revelation. With equal parts compassion and black humor, Brite chronicles the turbulent lives of Love and introduces us to Love Michelle Harrison, the troubled girl who would be queen of postpunk rock, and her childhood spent shuttled from reform school to former stepfathers to family friends. As a precocious, flamboyant teenager, she hung around backstage after concerts, soaking up the star power she knew she had to possess one day, and then traveled to Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to work as a stripper. Brite also takes us to new-wave Liverpool and to that citadel of grunge, Seattle, to see Courtney come of age in the circus that became alternative music, dishing much along the way about some of the biggest stars of that show from past and present.
Brite also sets the story straight about Love's life with Kurt Cobain; the allegations of her drug use that surrounded the birth of their daughter, Frances Bean; and the wreckage of Cobain's suicide. But what emerges out of all the drama is a woman determined not only to survive, but to succeed more than anyone ever expected. As seen from her stunning performance as the wife of the publisher of Hustler magazine in The People vs. Larry Flynt, and her transformation into a runway acolyte, she just may catapult herself out of the mosh pit and into the mainstream.
Only Poppy Z. Brite, the acclaimed author of literary horror fiction, whom Publishers Weekly called "a singularly talented chronicler of her generation," could have written this outrageous, comic, and ultimately moving tale of ferocious femininity and fishnet stockings. Courtney Love: The Real Story is a no-holds-barred biography that is as raw as a three-chord punk song -- a work that is as uncompromising and as unforgettable as its subject.
Description of Courtney Love: The Real Story:
Poppy Z. Brite, better known for her punk-gothic horror and dreadful taste in clothing (the jacket photo shows her looking like a reject from a 1985 audition for a Cure video) here gets her hands on something much scarier than club-hopping vampires: the life of Courtney Love. Born Love Michelle Harrison, Courtney's childhood combines the worst of doped-up hippie parenting with her innate autism to produce a life that could only lead to rock-and-roll stardom. Starting with her first acid trip at age 4, administered by her father, a paragon of parental responsibility, Courtney went on to four name changes, two years in juvenile detention, a trip to Japan courtesy of a white slave ring, living with gloom rockers in Liverpool, and a melange of drugs and sexual experiments all prior to leaving her teens. This makes for quite the page-turner--in a guilty sort of way and in spite of Poppy Z.'s occasionally cutesy-teen prose: "Courtney Love has always been surrounded by chaos, triumph, pain, and glamour." Still, in spite of the taboo of reading celebrity bios, this one stands out because of the truly odd and, perhaps, innovative life of its subject. Not simply a rock-and-roll musical bedrooms romp, Love's life is far enough out of the mainstream, or even the alternate streams, to offer challenges to many of the values we take for granted in living our lives. Things such as safety, stability, and even hygiene are thrown out the window in a life that reads like the outsider fiction of Hesse or Kerouac, only with more electric guitars.
Courtney Love: The Real Story Reviews:
Definitely not Unauthorized 
2007-11-25 - For a woman who claimed she would never have an authorized bio in her house, Courtney certainly seems intent on never allowing anything short of a very edited version of her own life to surface (not that I blame her). For the record, I loved Courtney back in the 90's before she became the fashion freak and Hollywood gadfly. Her music was powerful as was her message that young women should make their own music rather than become groupie trash. For that alone she should be put in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. However, as quickly as she could, she traded in her empowered feminist personna, began to starve, had massive plastic surgery, and abandonned her fans. Sad but true. Now on to the book. If you believe this author, Courtney was basically a modern day female Tom Sawyer. She has rotten parents (reading her mum's autobio might make you think differently), people try to use and abuse her, but Gosh darn it, that Courtney always rises again! One implausible story is how when Courtney was a teen stripping in Japan the owners of the club try to force her into prostitution. Not only does Courtney manage to stay a virgin (if you believe that one, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you), but she also tricks a guy into buying her a fur coat by only using her wit! Sorry, not buying. I liked Rossi's bio better, though it has problems as well. Since Rossi only can get second hand info on Courtney, obviously many to whom she had spoken had an ax to grind. Also, Rossi's own attitude often seems that of a high school journalist who wants so badly to be part of the "cool crowd" and when they reject her, she writes scathing articles about them. Rossi offers a better overview of Love's younger life while Brite (who had the benefit of Courtney's insight into her own life) writes more indepth about Love's years as a member of Hole and as Cobain's wife and widow. Really, you have to read them both to remotely get an idea of who Courtney is.
Doesn't even get Courtney's real name correct 
2006-11-02 - Poppy Z. Brite asserts that Courtney was born Love Michelle Harrison. However, if you read another book, Her Mother's Daughter, written by Courtney's mother Linda Carroll, you see that Courtney's birth name was Courtney Michelle Harrison. If Poppy Z. Brite can't even get the name of her subject correct, I question the overall accuracy of other facts in this book.
Brite 'vs' Rossi
2006-01-01 - I read this biography after reading "Courtney Love: Queen of Noise" by Melissa Rossi. Both definitely have their flaws and strong points. Each contributes different facts and stories, so if you read both you get a pretty complete picture of Courtney Love's life.
BRITE:
Very easy to follow, but kind of feels like an overview. I wish she would have gone into more depth on some issues. Also Poppy Brite desperately needs an EDITOR! The mistakes don't really affect the story, but they certainly don't give the reader much faith in her abilities. Lots of color pictures and an extensive bibliography.
ROSSI:
This biography gives much more detail and depth into Courtney's life. The writing style is a bit haphazard and choppy, but is still understandable and more interesting than Brite's. The one main fault against Melissa Rossi is that she doesn't cite any of her sources which leads you to wonder where she got her information. She does admit that she never interviewed Courtney and this was "unauthorized."
Neither book is really above the other and both books are entertaining reads for a cheap price.
Poppy should never write again..
2005-09-12 - I'm an avid fan of Courtney Love. I think she's wonderful and regardless of what this book did to her, I'll always be a fan.
However, Poppy Z. Brite is seriously the worst writer I've ever encountered in my life. She destroyed my interest in Love's story by sounding more like a gushing teen than someone who knew what the hell she was doing.
I used to love her ...
2005-08-19 - I used to love Courtney Love. I thought she was a wonderful empowerment for girls when she first came into the spotlight 15 years ago, trying to tell girls don't aspire to sleep with a guy in a band but to be in a band. Make your own music, make your own way because you don't have to ride someone's coattails to fame and fortune.
But she's not about that. Courtney slept her way to the top and could care less about dignity, class and making her own way. Poppy kissed her ass like so many did at first, but hopefully she's wiser now. I think we all are.
