LC at U of T

[Bob Parkins]

From today's Globe and Mail:

Byline: Val Ross
Headline: LENNY SENDS HIS BEST

The last time Leonard Cohen papers came to the University of Toronto's treasure trove of words and paper, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, it was 1968. The Fisher purchased 14 boxes worth of drawings, newspaper clippings and drafts, ranging from Cohen's first, unpublished novel, The Ballet of Lepers, to the manuscript for his 1967 novel Beautiful Losers . ``We didn't pay much, maybe four digits, but enough to give Leonard a year on the island of Hydra,'' says Richard Landon, director of the Fisher.

Flash forward almost four decades. Now Cohen's financial difficulties (his former manager siphoned off more than $5-million [U.S.] of his savings) have lured him out of Zen retreat back into the world of commerce. This time, the 71-year-old songwriter-poet-novelist has donated 140 banker's boxes full of stuff, in return for a rumoured seven-digit tax receipt from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. (The Fisher has a U.S. corporation to facilitate such donations.) ``We got it because we've maintained an ongoing relationship,'' says Landon, ``even when Cohen was up Mount Baldy being a Buddhist.'' The Fisher is still negotiating with Cohen over what will be restricted, as libraries usually do for donations from living writers.

Plans to bring the new material to Toronto began in April, 2005, when Landon and his wife, Massey College librarian Marie Korey, met Cohen and his new muse Anjani Thomas in Los Angeles. The four pitched in to sort and pack the material, which was stored at Cohen's daughter's antique store. Because it was Passover, they went to Cohen's, where he sang part of the seder service and served them sticky kosher wine. Then he said, ``Now you can have the good stuff.''

Once the Cohen material is catalogued, it will take its place amid the Fisher's treasures. Available to scholars and to the general public, they go back as far as a 1789 BC Babylonian cuneiform tablet, and include one of the world's largest collections of Italian opera libretti.

There's more Coheniana to come. Landon and Korey returned to arrange for the next shipment last February. There, the three dropped in to the L.A. Antiquarian Book Fair, where they ran into a Montreal bookseller, Helen Kahn. She remembered Cohen from Baron Byng High School. ``You used to be Lenny,'' said Kahn. ``I'm still Lenny,'' the poet assured her.