In this week's issue of The New Yorker, the staff writer Hua Hsu recounts the formative role played during his teen years by an unlikely pair of men: his father and Kurt Cobain. After the elder Hsu moved to Taiwan for work, in the early nineties, he and his son stayed in touch by fax, corresponding about topics that included Nirvana and its gifted, tormented lead singer. When Cobain died by suicide, in 1994, Hsu's father helped the teen-ager make sense of the loss, writing in English, his adopted language, "Kurt is talent. No doubt about it. And he is important." Indeed, as Alex Ross captured at the time, in a Postscript for the magazine, Cobain's significance was undeniable, even to those who didn't necessarily understand his music or place in pop culture. Cobain himself often didn't; the singer chafed against his status as an icon of what Ross terms "blank categories"—Generation X and "alternative" music, among others. Occasionally, the troublesome labels came from the singer: "When he declared himself 'gay in spirit,' as he did in an interview with the gay magazine The Advocate, he made a political toy out of fragile identity," Ross writes. Still, the power of his music was profound, and so was his connection with fans. "Cobain was a close, direct presence," Ross observes, "everyone's friendless friend." |
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