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MYSTICAL CROONER: The Lives of Leonard Cohen by Aubrey Malone
Posted: Sat May 10, 2025 8:28 pm
by jarkko
My name is Chris Wade. I am a writer and musician. I also run WISDOM TWINS BOOKS.
I have just released a new Leonard Cohen book by the writer Aubrey Malone, who met and interviewed Leonard in 1988.
The book is available from Wisdom Twins Books' site and coming soon to Amazon and other stores.
http://wisdomtwinsbooks.weebly.com/book-releases.html
BOOK BLURB
Leonard Cohen continues to exert a fascination for his fans even eight years after his death. The charismatic Jew from Montreal’s French Quarter entered the music industry in the late sixties from a literary background, creating a sensation with his song “Suzanne,” which had first been recorded by an early booster of his, Judy Collins.
Bob Dylan and others had already paved the way for the phenomenon of the singer-songwriter to prosper. Cohen’s first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, produced a new kind of sound for a generation shaking off the shibboleths of the past and ready to embrace the sentiments of the Thinking Man.
The ”darling of the bedsit” spent the next few decades alternating albums with concerts as his hypnotic airs penetrated the hearts and minds of audiences all around the world. In his private life the so-called Ladies Man juggled asceticism with indulgence.
Aubrey Malone met him in 1988. At that time he was emerging from a period of relative obscurity to launch a renaissance with his album I’m Your Man. In 1990, burned out from touring, he entered the Zen retreat of Mount Baldy in San Francisco, spending four years there before reverting to “the day job.”
A few years later he discovered he’d been defrauded of the lions share of his fortune by his trusted friend and manager, Kelley Lynch. Bankruptcy forced him to go back touring in what proved to be a blessing in disguise. Audiences old and new flocked to his concerts.
“Mystical Crooner” analyses the cerebral troubadour as he struggles with romance, perfectionism and a career that went from adulation to indifference before his celebrated Indian summer.
Re: MYSTICAL CROONER: The Lives of Leonard Cohen by Aubrey Malone
Posted: Mon May 12, 2025 5:19 am
by lizzytysh
I missed the indifference period. Is there a timeline for that?
Re: MYSTICAL CROONER: The Lives of Leonard Cohen by Aubrey Malone
Posted: Mon May 12, 2025 6:00 pm
by LisaLCFan
lizzytysh wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 5:19 am
I missed the indifference period. Is there a timeline for that?
There are various other rather odd choices of words in that "blurb" -- it almost sounds like it was written by an A.I. (but of course, some people might just write like that!). It also includes factual errors -- two that immediately stood out: Leonard was not "
from" the "French Quarter" in Montreal -- he was from Westmount (born and raised), which was predominantly Anglophone; and, he did not go to Mount Baldy in 1990 -- "The Future" album came out in 1992, followed by a tour in 1993, and I had always read that he lived there for five years, not four (1994-1999). Those are relatively easy details to fact-check, I should think.
Oh, and, the Mount Baldy Zen Centre is NOT in San Francisco -- it's just north of Los Angeles. I have to stop reading that blurb!
Re: MYSTICAL CROONER: The Lives of Leonard Cohen by Aubrey Malone
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 12:21 pm
by lizzytysh
Thank you for the more thorough assessment. Glaring, indeed. So, who wants to be the first buyer of the first AI book on Leonard Cohen. Ce n'est moi. (Is that anywhere close to what I'm trying to say? It's what came to me.)
Re: MYSTICAL CROONER: The Lives of Leonard Cohen by Aubrey Malone
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 11:59 pm
by LisaLCFan
lizzytysh wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 12:21 pm
...So, who wants to be the first buyer of the first AI book on Leonard Cohen...
To be clear, I did not say that the book was written by an AI, I merely said that the blurb
"almost sounds like it was written by an AI", due to its rather unusual writing style (full of strange comments and overly-flowery language), plus the factual errors. A Google search revealed that there is an actual person named Aubrey Malone who has written many books and articles on a wide range of subjects. There is also a Soundcloud recording of an interview that Malone did with Leonard Cohen back in 1988, and the recording includes recent comments by Malone similar to what is written in the book blurb, which pretty much convinces me that he is not an AI (of course, whether or not he used an AI programme to assist in the writing of the book -- or the blurb -- I do not know).
There has already been at least one AI book written about Leonard, which very amusingly had photos of someone who was not Leonard Cohen on the front and back covers, as discussed in the link below. At least this new book got that much right!
https://www.leonardcohenforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=39897
Re: MYSTICAL CROONER: The Lives of Leonard Cohen by Aubrey Malone
Posted: Thu May 15, 2025 4:09 am
by lizzytysh
Hi Lisa ~
I realize you didn't say that. I took it a step further in semi-jest because with what you already noted and what you've just added, and its being said that there was an indifference period to Leonard's career makes it appear that the research was lazy at best and AI-collaborated at worst.
Re: MYSTICAL CROONER: The Lives of Leonard Cohen by Aubrey Malone
Posted: Thu May 15, 2025 6:21 pm
by LisaLCFan
lizzytysh wrote: ↑Thu May 15, 2025 4:09 am
I took it a step further in semi-jest because ... it appear[s] that the research was lazy at best and AI-collaborated at worst.
I was trying to be polite, but yes, those were my thoughts, also. The blurb certainly does not inspire confidence in whatever may lie inside the book.
Re: MYSTICAL CROONER: The Lives of Leonard Cohen by Aubrey Malone
Posted: Fri May 16, 2025 4:26 am
by lizzytysh
Exactly