Poor little Willy is crying so sore,
A sad little boy is he,
For he's broken his little sister's neck
And he'll have no jam for tea.

--Harry Graham, Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes

Kurt Cobain's diaries have been published. Amazon.com publishes several reviews from buyers:

" If you are a true fan--no, a true human being, you will allow Kurt Cobain to rest. If you feel a need to peek into his thoughts, buy his albums."

"If you love Kurt
Dont buy this book

If you respect Kurt
dont buy this book

Nirvana = Music"

"..the whole spirit of grunge - the iconoclastic stiff upper lip, the music for a lost generation ...all bites the dust with this final nail in Curt's coffin...plainly put Grunge is being SOLD OUT."

"this book was really sad... includes all of his social problems including depression and drug abuse... I really liked it..."

"I felt Cobain came off as a much more gentle soul than my original perceptions of him had ever allowed me to consider. I felt almost like he forsaw his life spin out of control and was just overwhelmed by the thought of stopping it. I was thoroughly fascinated."

None of this, of course, tells us what was in those journals. Nancy DeWolfe Smith, writing in The Wall Street Journal, claims that the professional reviews don't, either:

"Grotesque fantasies of homosexual rape and homicidal rage fairly leap off the pages, suggesting that the anti-establishment icon from a remote Washington State logging community was tortured by a lot more than the hot spotlight of commercial success. Yet we haven't heard a peep from reverential reviewers about such things. Why do you think that is?"

Smith explains, highlighting such vignettes as this from the work:

"Neil Strauss, writing in the New York Times... cryptically refers to his revealed anguish at 'being teased to the brink of suicide at school.' Well, it's all there in the diary, if not in the Times. For our purposes, the story begins when Kurt decides to have his first sexual affair with a classmate widely believed at school, though not by him, to be mentally disabled. 'One day after school I went to her house . . . and she offered me some twinkies and I sat on her lap and said let's ----.' The experience repulsed him physically, but things quickly got worse when everyone from her father to the police wanted to question Cobain about taking advantage of a 'cronic retard.'"

Let's take a look at another charming scene:

"Suddenly one of my father's office clerks appeared in the drawing-room doorway and announced that the comet could be seen from the terrace.... While crossing the hall I caught sight of my little three-year-old sister crawling unobtrusively through a doorway. I stopped, hesitated a second, then gave her a terrible kick in the head as though it had been a ball, and continued running, carried away with a 'delirious joy' induced by this savage act. But my father, who was behind me, caught me and led me down in to his office, where I remained as a punishment till dinner-time."