Courtney Love.

A few weeks before The Paris Review’s Spring Revel, the Transom asked Courtney Love if she would be in attendance to watch her grandmother, the novelist Paula Fox, accept the Hadada Award.

No, she would not.

“Paula’s absolute dislike of me is shocking and inexplicable,” Ms. Love told us.

The strained relationship is perhaps not that inexplicable. Ms. Love found out about her literary lineage late in life, when her mother, Linda Carroll, tracked down Ms. Fox, who had put her daughter up for adoption. Ms. Fox had herself been abandoned by her mother, a Hollywood gadabout who party-hopped with her husband’s cousin, Douglas Fairbanks, out-drank F. Scott Fitzgerald and once got thrown into a lake by Humphrey Bogart.

Ms. Love and Ms. Fox have met only once, during a brief sit-down at the Mercer Hotel. And Ms. Fox has no relationship with her great-granddaughter, Frances Bean Cobain.

Much of Ms. Love’s animosity toward Ms. Fox, she told us, stems from the fact that she doesn’t know the identity of her grandfather. She’s wondered, given some evidence from the past, if it could be Marlon Brando.

This speculative genealogy lingered when the day of the Spring Revel arrived last week. Paris Review editor Lorin Stein had corralled Gay Talese, Jeffrey Eugenides, Zadie Smith, Sam Lipsyte, Mona Simpson and many brilliant others into Cipriani on 42nd Street, and they all mingled beneath the marble buttresses, exuding literary genius and ordering drink after drink at the bar.

The novelist Lynne Tillman asked if we wanted to meet Ms. Fox and then steered us to a tiny table. There sat Ms. Fox, the writer whom Jonathan Franzen called superior to John Updike and Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, diminutive and raspy but still vigorously alive.

“These chandeliers,” Ms. Fox said, staring up. “They look like tangerines.”

Or blood oranges, we countered.

“Blood tangerines,” she decided.

The subject of Courtney Love came up.

“She’s awful, she’s awful. She’s terrible!” Ms. Fox told us. “I met with her for an hour, and the hour was like an hour in the devil’s pocket, for both of us. Things last such a short time in this country. People have their moments. Courtney had her moment, and was very strong, and she had enormous vitality, but that moment is gone.”

She launched into a coughing fit.

“I don’t want to be mean,” she said after composing herself. Her eyes almost watered, and maybe she was on the brink of forgiveness. “Poor everybody,” she sighed.

A few days later, the Transom rode out to New London, Conn., where the Lyman Allyn Art Museum was hosting a reception for Mentoring Courtney Love, an exhibition displaying watercolors by Ms. Love and photographs by David LaChapelle. It is her first museum show.

“Over here, over here,” Ms. Love beckoned from the middle of a mob as we entered the lobby, squeezing by a cluster of local teenage girls clutching Hole records and posters, pens at the ready. “It’s like a record signing,” she said.

Later that evening, Nancy Stula, the director of the museum, had arranged for an intimate dinner at her home in Old Lyme, and we found ourselves near the head of the table, where Ms. Love sat.

Art by Courtney Love.

“You know, Nate met my grandmother the other night,” Ms. Love told the muted Connecticut gentry seated around her. That topic hung like a ghost in the room, and after a few moments, the discussion turned to Paula Fox’s onetime companion, the unknown man who begat Courtney’s mother.

“It could be a sailor, for all I care,” said Ms. Love, though she admitted that she would at least like to know who granddad is—and pursuing that theory is a fun parlor game. “Paula was living with Ellen Adler when she became pregnant, and Marlon Brando was basically a member of the Adler household then,” she said.

We rattled off the evidence to skeptical guests: Ms. Love had become intrigued by comments Brando made to her while hanging out at Carrie Fisher’s house, and then she discovered the connection between Brando, Stella Adler—the actor’s influential mentor who housed him before he became a star—Ms. Adler’s daughter, Ellen Adler, and Ms. Fox. They were all very close—Ms. Fox would dedicate her 1990 novel, The God of Nightmares, to Ellen, and Brando spoke with Ellen daily until his death. What’s more, during the period that Ms. Fox was pregnant, Brando claims to have fathered dozens of kids he’d never know.

But there is no proof. Ms. Love explained that she had a chance to steal Brando’s toothbrush and test the DNA, but decided against it.

Then she rose, though we were still on our salad course. She had to fly to Las Vegas to film a commercial for an electronic cigarette. But before leaving, she had time to offer one more clue as to her bloodline.

“If you look at me before my first nose job,” Ms. Love said, smiling, “I kind of look like Marlon Brando.”

Courtney Love and Frances Bean in better times (Getty Images)

The tempestuous relationship between Frances Bean Cobain and her mother Courtney Love have been making headlines for as long as the now-19-year-old has been able to talk. (Her first word? 'Adoption.') Though the two have been able to occasionally set aside their differences and smile for the press, much more often we hear about the skirmishes: the hotel fights, the custody battles, and most recently, a Twitter skirmish in which Ms. Cobain asked the creators of micro-blogging platform to ban her mother once and for all.

But now the only daughter of Kurt Cobain finally has gained what might be the ultimate leverage on mommy dearest: the rights to her father's likeness.

This comes from an exclusive from TheFix.com, who obtained sealed documents that allegedly show that after losing custody of Frances Bean Cobain in 2010, Ms. Love sold away the rights to Kurt Cobain's likeness for a quick loan...to her estranged daughter:

The documents show that Love agreed to step down as Acting Manager of End of Music LLC—the business entity responsible for generating cash from Cobain’s publicity rights—once she’d received a $2.75 million loan from Frances’ trust fund in 2010. The massive loan was transferred from Frances’ fund to EOM in Los Angeles, and then into an account held by Courtney’s then-lawyers, Pryor Cashman, in New York. Until Courtney pays it back, she won’t receive a dime from Kurt’s name, likeness or appearance from the deals formed by Frances and her advisers since December 2010.

The interesting part of this whole (or Hole?) saga is as usual, how Courtney Love has worked against her own best interest. Didn't she learn how much Kurt Cobain's public image was worth after she sold it on the sly to Activision for a Rock Band avatar just a year before taking the loan from Frances Bean? And more importantly....how is she going to sustain her Adderall and Klonopin diet without those residuals?

In statement emailed by her representatives, Ms. Cobain—an artist who shows under the name Fiddle Tim—has denied her mother's accusation, explaining:

While I'm generally silent on the affairs of my biological mother, her recent tirade has taken a gross turn. I have never been approached by Dave Grohl in more than a platonic way. I'm in a monogamous relationship and very happy.

Twitter should ban my mother.

For the record, that is her paragraph break. We should note that this is not a formal request for Twitter to ban Ms. Love, but a casual one, and is likely not the first time this sentiment has been expressed by the daughter of a mother on Twitter. Then again, your mother is not Courtney Love, and she's also not accusing Dave Grohl of hitting on you.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Courtney Love, not tweeting.

In addition to her @Courtney Twitter account,  sometimes a source of entertainment, consternation and lawsuits, kaleidoscopic rock queen Courtney Love has a second, private and much more personal account on the microblogging site: @Cbabymichelle. "Personal" as in Cbabymichelle is actually written by Ms. Love and not an assistant. According to former Radar Magazine chief and current Fix-meister Maer Roshan's new eBook about Ms. Love, Courtney Comes Clean: The High Life and Dark Depths of Music's Most Controversial Icon, Ms. Love has used the lesser-known account to have barbarically yawping dialogues with her public persona, one online voice acting as a PR-friendly saint to Cbabymichelle's heckling sinner. Mr. Roshan writes:

Courtney hasn't shied away from using Twitter to blast her enemies. Last Spring, after she paid fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir $430,000 to settle the world's first Twitter defamation lawsuit, her handlers implored her to stay away from social media. Love announced that she was quitting Twitter for good. But total abstinence was apparently too much to bear for the singer, who went on to maintain two separate Twitter accounts, which her pals dubbed 'Good Sister' and 'Bad Sister', after the title of one of her songs. In September of 2011, Love reclaimed the handle @courtney that she'd abandoned years earlier. According to sources close to Love, @courtney was written by a staffer who was instructed to keep up a positive and press-friendly tone. But the real Courtney continued to tweet from a password-protected handle, @cbabymichelle, where she lashed out at a wide range of enemies, from Chelsea Handler to musician Dave Grohl. "So Edward Norton gets to be ambassador to Malawi?" cbabymichelle railed about her former boyfriend last August. "That's funny, he doesn't even like Madonna."

At the same time, @courtney was issuing a daily series of saccharine tweets, begging @kellyosbourne for forgiveness for Love's attacks on her, heaping praise on casino mogul @ElaineWynn and slathering @perezhilton with "xxoxoxxos" despite his trashing of her over the years. Many of Courtney's fans were confused by her chipper tune. Courtney was also displeased. Things took a surreal turn last October when Bad Courtney lashed out at Good Courtney for her embarrassing performance. Annoyed by a series of particularly cloying tweets @cbabymichelle chastised her counterpart for "not following the plot" of her life and over-tweeting in a style "that sounds nothing like me!!"

“Look, good Courtney, I know we have to be behaving cause were up for movie roles and people are watching,” raged Love, threatening to replace her alter-ego. “I’ll have you removed at once from doing the celeb-friendly/corporate act if you don’t get your shit together and stop making me look like a fool!” A day later, Bad Courtney’s inflammatory tweets disappeared.

Cbabymichelle was still at it as recently as January 29, addressing the differences between "good Courtney" and Cbabymichelle in the following exchange:

@Cbabymichelle explains (courtesy The Fix)

To add to all this fun, crazy Thai video news outfit NMA.TV has taken an interest Mr. Roshan's book, creating a high--(low?)--light reel of events in Ms. Love's life using details from Courtney Comes Clean and court records related to custody battles over Ms. Love's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.

Frances Bean Cobain: Courtney Love was a bad mom - YouTube.

Frances Bean Cobain.

"I don't know how the entire fucking news media has my phone number," said a peppy Courtney Love earlier today. "It's like when Amy Winehouse died -- everyone called."

We can't speak for our peers, but The Observer does indeed have her digits, and we had rang her to chat about the recent frenzy over her daughter, Frances Bean Cobain. A few weeks ago, the sole heir of Kurt Cobain and Ms. Love emerged in a series of black-and-white shots by photographer Hedi Slimane. They are pretty stunning. Fashion blogs spent had their way with the images, and The New York Times called the whole thing "one of the most anticipated comings of age in recent pop cultural history."

"Ugh," said Ms. Love, of the article. "I didn't like how they called her an 'It Girl.' It's tacky. It's not like she's gonna do Nylon."

Perhaps that teen magazine isn't for Frances, but she is still posing for pictures. Today another recent series, this time done for Rocky Schenck, emerged online. There's color this time!

"I really don't have anything to say..." Mr. Schenck said when reached at his Los Angeles home.

Ms. Love, on the other hand, had plenty to offer.

"I didn't know she had that many tattoos!" she said. "We don't talk but we email, so I didn't know about the new ones she'd gotten. When she first got that Jeff Buckley thing I was, like, she knows I went on a date with him, right? And I saw the Quentin Crisp, I was incredibly impressed. I was like 'Awww, that's my daughter!'

"And I didn't know about the smoking -- wonder where she gets that from!"

But despite the mother-to-daughter worries over cigarettes and ink, Ms. Love was, in the end, approving.

"Well yeah she's beautiful," she said. "What else did you expect! She's my kid!"

Ms. Love has taken to Twitter to offer her congratulations. The Hole singer lost custody of Ms. Cobain in 2009 to Mr. Cobain's mother and younger sister and is now living in New York, across the country from her daughter. Referring to Ms. Cobain by the pseudonym she adopted for the show, "Fiddle Tim," she commends her for choosing "a skater gallery" and then offers some motherly college advice, made slightly heart-rending by the impersonal medium. "I know youre superior to your parents in intellect and in discipline of said intellect, so let me rephrase, how to discuss your education?" Ms. Love tweeted.

After noting that she'd picked up "some really great college porn" (in the form of brochures, we're sure), Ms. Love offers her own opinions of the northeast college circuit: "Bards fine, Browns great, I was thinking about Cornell after someone told me that there's a program for people who are seriously TOO SMART."

Love has piqued our curiosity: what is this TOO SMART Cornell program of which she speaks?

Crush Management declined to comment, but sources close to the company, which oversees the careers of about 20 rock artists, said that Ms. Love—whose next record, Nobody’s Daughter, is due out early next year—has indeed been working with them.

Signing with Crush could be not only a wise strategic move for the artist, now 45, but a convenient arrangement given recent gossip that Ms. Love is moving back to the city. She was photographed late last month shopping for an apartment in the West Village, which, back in January, is where she told Heeb magazine she was planning on relocating with her daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, although she also said: “I’m dreading moving to New York, really to be honest, it’s like I fucking hate L.A., but I’m just dreading it.”

Ms. Love’s MySpace page lists her location as “London & Los Angeles.” But judging by her Twitter updates as of press time, she’s still in town. She posted a series of tweets following Green Day’s concert Monday night at Madison Square Garden, concluding that “EVERYTHING was perfection” even though “ididnt see any other Homos or freaks like me at MSG tonite it was depressing i saw chix tho LOADS of chicks.”

Then on Tuesday morning: “w village here we come.”

So might Ms. Love be in New York for the long haul?

“No comment,” said her publicist, Alan Nierob.

Back in July 2004, Ms. Love was hauled out of her 30 Crosby Street apartment by EMTs, screaming and handcuffed to a gurney in an apparent medical emergency. She maintains that she has been drug-free ever since.

Meanwhile, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love's 15-year-old daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, is reportedly interning at Rolling Stone. [P6]

Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson reportedly took their almost confirmed relationship to the Hamptons this weekend. [NY Daily News]

Samantha Stein Wells, whose mother, celebrity real estate broker Linda Stein, was murdered in October, wrote a children's book to console her 3-year-old-daughter and is now shopping it around. [Intelligencer]

Shannen Doherty will join former co-stars Jenny Garth and Tori Spelling in appearing in the new version of Beverly Hills, 90210 as her original character, Brenda Walsh, now a famous theater director who returns to the high school to stage a musical. [NY Daily News]

Angelina Jolie and her guarded twins left the Lenval Hospital over the weekend. Hopefully the swarm of photographers can return home and those magical screens can be removed. [Us Weekly]