The Ottawa Citizen article about Book of Longing

[jarkko]

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/new ... 1c&k=71046

Leaning out for love
Leonard Cohen returns from the mount with a book of longing about love, life, sex -- and more sex
* * * * Paul Gessell, The Ottawa Citizen; with files from The Associated Press
Published: Sunday, April 30, 2006

The dark messiah has returned. He's older, perhaps wiser, definitely
cheerier and tumescent as ever.

Leonard Cohen has surfaced with his first book of new poetry in 22 years. Book of Longing will, no doubt, grab aging boomers in all the old, familiar places.

For the one or two who need an introduction, Cohen is the 71-year-old Canadian icon who, beginning in the 1960s, taught several generations of his countrymen about drugs, sex and, well, not exactly rock and roll, but ageless, anguished music, music to slit your wrists by if your hands weren't too busy passing joints and fumbling in the dark with the buttons of a new-found friend.

In Book of Longing, the trademark agony and the ecstasy are still there, especially the ecstasy, or at least the longing for the ecstasy of breasts, buttocks and other secret, dark places.

Cohen may have been a part-time Zen Buddhist monk for the past three decades, chanting, meditating and self-denying on top of Mt. Baldy in the San Gabriel Mountains of California. But while serving his Zen master, Kyozan Joshu Roshi, Cohen's mind was on conquests past, present and future. He was even swooning over the swaying hips of Mt. Baldy's shaven-headed nuns.

In one poem, Other Writers, Cohen discusses the spirituality of close friends, including Roshi, and compares their sacred pursuits to that of him placing his hand down the front of a woman's jeans.

I've got to tell you, friends

I prefer my stuff to theirs.

Another poem is titled The Lovesick Monk: "It's dismal here," he whines. There was a definite lack of sex on Mt. Baldy.

"Eros is something human and certainly persistent in the work of Leonard Cohen," Ellen Seligman, his editor at publisher McClelland & Stewart, says in an artspeak understatement that causes even her to burst into laughter.

Nevertheless, Seligman insists, Cohen is a serious Buddhist, even if his thoughts on Mt. Baldy often strayed from the secrets of the cosmos to the secrets of the bedroom.

Serious he may be but Cohen frequently questions his own devotion to Zen Buddhism, a religion he allowed to co-exist with his inherited Judaism. A poem titled Roshi, about his Japanese-born spiritual adviser Kyozan Joshu Roshi, begins:

I never really understood

What he said

Another, Leaving Mt. Baldy, contains these lines:

I had no gift

For Spiritual Matters.

Academics, fellow poets and journalists will now weigh in with scholarly analyses of Book of Longing. Indeed, entire books may yet be written about Book of Longing. Some writers will likely proclaim the geezer pop star has become a geezer poet for the This message has been classified as spam and will be deleted by the moderators generation, that Book of Longing is merely poetry-lite, a combination of lechery, surprising dollops of self-deprecation and rhymes suitable only for disposable Top 40 hits.

From the beginning of his career, Cohen's poems rarely withstood detailed scrutiny yet they always called out, irresistibly, like the Pied Piper, to many. Today, the poems can no longer be separated from his songs, his celebrity, his charisma. They are all part of one package.

Cohen's legions of fans would think no more of critiquing his poetry than they would of critiquing the Bible or Socrates or Shakespeare. The Cohenites merely accept his words with gratitude, just as did his Toronto publisher.

Seligman had been begging Cohen for more than a decade to deliver some fresh poems. And that he did, two years ago, riding in a car with her to a memorial service for the legendary publisher Jack McClelland.

Like a magician's rabbit pulled from a hat, Cohen pulled a "booklet" from a briefcase and presented it to Seligman. The poems, the design and Cohen's own illustrations for the book were all mapped out.

"So, really what we eventually saw was a pretty well finished, designed manuscript which was quite terrific," Seligman recalls.

M&S, especially the late Jack McClelland, tended to allow Cohen to do whatever he wanted over the years. Despite serious qualms, McClelland accepted Cohen's infamous self-described "pop art novel" Beautiful Losers for publication in 1966.

"It astounds and baffles me and I don't really know what to say about it," McClelland said at the time. "It's wild and incredible and marvellously well written and, at the same time, appalling, shocking, revolting, disgusting, sick and just maybe it's a great novel. I'm damned if I know."

The book's sales were disappointing. Nevertheless, Beautiful Losers influenced, even liberated, many times the number of people who actually bought this unique, spicy stew of sex, religion, pain and pleasure. Canada and its literature were never the same. Canada had, at last, found its groove, a year before the country's Centennial.

Cohen's last book of poetry, Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs, came in 1993. But that book contained only previously published poetry and song lyrics. The last book of new poetry was Book of Mercy in 1984 and, before that, Death of a Lady's Man in 1978.

The 1960s were Cohen's most prolific period. In that decade, he published four books of poetry, two novels and launched a music career with hit songs that still have much of the world humming paeans to Suzanne, Marianne and all of Cohen's other loves.

Publishers in a dozen countries are gearing up to distribute, like manna from heaven, Book of Longing. More countries will undoubtedly sign on. There shall likely be hundreds of thousands of copies sold around the globe within the year, no doubt helping Cohen escape the poorhouse after a retirement fund he believed to exceed $5 million U.S. disappeared because of alleged misdeeds by a financial adviser. Suits and countersuits are flying.

M&S will only say its initial print run for Canada, alone, was more than 10,000 copies and, even before the book's official release this weekend, more copies had to be printed to meet demand from consumers willing to buy the book, sight unseen. American sales start in May. Europe soon follows.

Youngsters, who only know Cohen from his sometimes successful pop music career, probably thought he was just some droning, moaning old man with perky back-up girls and an intermittently catchy beat. Well, he is so much more: A poet and an enduring sex symbol.

Just ask the much, much younger women who still pursue him. His current, youthful paramour and former back-up singer, Anjani Thomas, is launching a solo album, Blue Alert, at the same time as Book of Longing. Cohen produced the album. He may release one of his own later this year.

Leonard Cohen is, probably, the most famous and influential Canadian in the world. The Finns and Romanians and Italians, not to mention the Americans and the British, know him. They can recite his poems and sing his songs. There are annual gatherings of cult-like disciples around the world.

Pierre Trudeau, it is often said, was the man Canadians wanted to be. Well, Leonard Cohen is the man Trudeau wanted to be and might have been if the Jesuits and law professors and politicians had not got to him first. They are like two sides of a coin: Trudeau believed in reason over passion while Cohen believes in passion over reason.

During Trudeau's last years, Cohen would come to Montreal, the hometown he and Trudeau shared, to commune on the rooftop deck of their mutual friend, Nancy Southam.

"He asked me to read him a poem," Cohen writes of one encounter in Book of Longing. "And then he asked me for another. This was on the roof of Nancy's house, which she called The Firestation. Nancy gave us lunch and then I read some more ..."

In Book of Longing, those words are superimposed on a drawing Cohen did of himself reading to Trudeau. Not long afterward, Cohen served as an honorary pallbearer at Trudeau's funeral. In January of this year, Cohen buried his most enduring mentor and fellow Montrealer, master poet Irving Layton.

Book of Longing contains many recognizable themes from previously published poems. But there are some differences, according to Seligman.

"I think certainly, there is an added wisdom and an increased depth and an admitting of the possibility of levity within all the serious concerns."

It is difficult to identify why Cohen has endured so long, Seligman confesses.

"It's art. It's hard to put words into it. It's visceral and intellectual."

Cohen is more modest, but mischievously so. Perhaps the modesty is real. Or maybe he is putting us on, as he has so often, so endearingly, so enchantingly, over the decades.

In his poem Thousands, he discusses the legions of people who want to be poets and the few who actually are.

Needless to say

I am one of the fakes,

And this is my story.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2006

[Dem]

Do these papers really
pay those idiots for their "reviews"?

Dem

[Bob Parkins]

Well then there. I've known Paul Gessell for more than 25 years -- since his wire service days, before he joined The Citizen -- and always found him to be an astute observer of the passing scene. Not seeing anything here to make me change my mind; he's a stellar journalist who turned out a lengthy book review under a tight deadline. And sure, he gets paid -- to be a critic, not a fan.

[Dem]

ok Bob I understand you are a Mr.Gessell fan
but reading this piece by him
I don't see anywhere a critical "review" of Cohen's
new book.

It is a piece about Cohen (and his fans and the young women
who still chase him and the manna from heaven and other bullshits)
but a review of the work it isn't.
Much less a "critical" one.

Dem

[evelyn]

Hi Dem,

I just recieved my copy of Book of Longing yesterday (not signed).

I thought this was a good review - is a book review supposed to be a

critical analysis?

evelyn

[tomsakic]

This is not the review at all, but typical press writing about pop celebrities, in series of similar artciles written last year, following Maclean's cover story, and just now, following Blue Alert album release.
The Globe and Mail reviews is *the review*.

[tomsakic]

Well, maybe it's all our fault. They never said its a review. Source site says: News > Arts > Story. "Story" not "Literary Review".

That's why there are many quotes by Leonard's editor. It's usual in "stories" but very unusual in reviews.

[Dem]

Hi Evelyn.

I think Tom is right.
Probably that was not a "review".
Just a story.

But for me a review of a book must be a critical review.
Perhaps not an "analysis" due to the limited time/space
but nonetheless a review i.e. the reviewer must
tell if he regards the book good or neutral or
bad book for such and such reasons.

That piece was just bullshits about manna from
heaven for the publishers and the fans etc


Dem

[Tchocolatl]

Why all the fuss about this article? It is good. Interesting. Besides the bizarre fanstams about Pierre Elliot Trudeau (but this is the rule, everybody has one, when not many at the same time, this man is as multiple as imagination of people can be, it seems, I marvel at that) there is one and only flaw in this article: buddhism is not a religion.

For the rest.... Ey! Please. He certainly took buddhism as seriously as his wordsmith art which does not slow him down when it is time to self deprecate about both.