Cobain’s journal

THANK you for Geoff Boucher’s insightful piece on Kurt Cobain’s journals (“Notes From a Reluctant Rock Star,” Nov. 5). I would suggest that even if he recorded such entries as “Look through my things and figure me out,” or “If You Read You’ll Judge,” he was writing more for himself than for others, and he was writing to try to save his life.

Addressing some of his words to others was allowing himself to open his life onto paper, so he could take a better look -- his way of facing himself, of coming to terms. In writing workshops I conduct, at some point I ask: Am I creating the journal, or is the journal creating me?

Leah Schweitzer

Valencia

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YOUR writer punctiliously adds “sic” after each Kurt Cobain misspelling to show how the scrawled handwriting and misspellings reveal the diarist’s tortured mind.

You need to add “sic” to the credentials of your staff for the “stationary” Cobain wrote on. Or was he immobile at the time?

Joel Athey

West Hollywood