Leonard Cohen and the French Canadians

[Tchocolatl]

Hydra, yes. I think I am much too shy, firstly, and a looner, secondly, to have appreciated any group travel and it sounded bizarre to me to go in gang on the tracks of the solitary cow-boy. But having read the reports by many, this was obviously a Cohen's magical moment, like one you can find in his songs and poems. Great.

It seems that there always be an international language. Once it was French in Europe. Now it is English in the virtual village, the little blue planet. This is how life goes. I have nothing to write about your English, considering how I can - unwellingly - torture this poor tongue, it is no surprise that I am beated with a stick on the legs on the public place, whipped on the back, half nude on the same public place, covered with the opprobrum of the mob, and maybe, even, someday, like Joan of Arc, burned to ashes. As I pay for my crimes as soon as they are commited, I do not carry the burden of culpability. Aahhh! Just have the faith, FYS, someday, maybe for the 32th billion trillion of million sentence all will be perfect.

As far as I know Mr. Cohen is still a Canadian and a Quebecer and we are still in democracy, so he can vote here like anybody else, don't you think so? His vote has the same weight that Tom's vote or anyone else. Those are personal matters, also.

Yes. Beautiful Losers. In fact, I don't care what people find or don't find in this novel. I don't care to discuss the subject either.

I see the historical aspect on the novel. But not the jugdment of any event. And I think that you saw it also, 'cause you are mentioning it, but where "lost" becaude Mr. Cohen does not put a label "good" or "bad" on all the bloody story. He is just a witness. This is how it was. No judgment. Of course, we are used to take side, to identify good guys, bad guys. Not him. He is a reporter.

For me Edith is a metaphor of what happened to the First Nations. As for the bombing and the parliament... well... I don't want to enter into a long and boring lecture about the Québec's History, but it makes a lot of sense when you know about it well. As well as the song Suzanne is based on facts, I could say that the poetic images of social and political environment are based on facts, but this is just a layer of the novel.

There are many. Like you also saw and stressed it.

Mr. Cohen is very intelligent, very creative, some say a genius, and I feel that he could be bored very fast with things he knew too well or had finished, completed, and I feel that he prefers to explore new material all the time, and be in "creation mode", so to speak as often as possible.

I don't think that Leonard Cohen will bother to explain his works. While Michel Garneau was translating Stranger Music he asked for Leonard's advice and he got the answer "You are a big boy". Cohen gave a Power of Attorney to his manager (according to the gossips) not to have to bother with these sorts of trivial futilities that is his millions, so I guess, he would be care evenly about the rest. I really don't think He would bother to explain to a Chinese about Canadian History and what was psychedelic years in the Western world in the 60 and why he used porno sketches and and so on and so on. I would be too boring to him. So he wrote this comforting letter in answer of what is a disturbing book. Books of Leonard Cohen are powerful and I don't think they are meant only to be intellectualized, but to be feeled as weel, I would say "lived" as well. How could you explain to someone how he should feel? Or lived?

So I think that the effort of understanding rests all on the shoulders of the reader, and knowing Cohen, the most the reader knows, the better the reader can appreciate.

[linda_lakeside]

Well done, Tchoco. It's been many years since I read BL and I never got what others seem to have gleaned from its pages. I feel almost inspired to take another stab at it, so to speak. Not today, but it's on my bookshelf should the desire to read it again becomes strong once more.

I do like the 'sunstroke' analogy, amphetamines notwithstanding.

Linda.

[tomsakic]

Excellent, excellent, Tchoco I wish I could speak about the BL so... I am with Linda, I read it 5 years ago - it's time for new reading... partcularly in light of my announced BL essay for CanLit session

[Young dr. Freud]

Cohen gave a Power of Attorney to his manager (according to the gossips) not to have to bother with these sorts of trivial futilities that is his millions,

Trivial futilites? Then I guess it really shouldn't matter to him that the trivial futilities were all stolen.

You're still not with the program.


YdF

[linda_lakeside]

I dunno, YdF. Maybe people are starting to change this particular channel once in a while. At this point, I don't think that's such a bad idea. I don't think I'll be as diligent in my belief of a truly, 100%, all the time - on the job, altruistic Leonard and Co., but, the man is just a man and he's got something on his mind. We support his music and much more, I think a break in the journalistic investigation should take a break. But, that's just my opinion, of course.

Linda.

[Young dr. Freud]

I think a break in the journalistic investigation should take a break.

That's too bad Linda. My source has come up with some pretty interesting new stuff.



YdF

[lizzytysh]

Hi YdF ~

Do you have a dog in this fight?

~ Lizzy

[Young dr. Freud]

Yes. And he's winning.



YdF

[linda_lakeside]

Hmm. My first observation would have to be that I obviously didn't do a very good editing job on the sentence quoted. Other than that, I have nothing to add. I have no more facts or opinions that haven't already been stated. Yet, I still read the posts when this thread shows up on in my inbox.

Linda.

[lizzytysh]

Hi YdF ~

Five things I've noticed:

(1) Your immediate comment re: sources.

(2) Your follow-up comment re: supposed 'status.'

(3) Your obvious concern with keeping this going; if not on one thread, then on another.

(4) Your 'more typical' manner of the past of 'detachment' having become more 'attached' with an attitude of vehemence/anger/hostility/personal insult/etc. as to others' reactions and with your own commentaries.

(5) Your lack of objectivity ~ on which I previously commented, many months back, when you also lapsed:

(a) "Too, too bad. Not just the missing money but the destroyed trust and friendships. I suspect if this suit goes forward, we're going to learn a lot more about Leonard and Co. And it ain't all going to be good. Disheartening."

(b) "Sooner or later, everybody's chickens come home to roost. Including Leonard's."

(c) "Choco, you so 'have the cult' you don't even know you're brain-washed."

(d) "Third, that's not "all there is to it". Not by a long shot."

(e) "But I bet tax dodging, --- a time honored tradition--- is at the bottom of all this garbage."

(f) "Since when do you put an employee as the majority stockholder in your own darn corporation. The answer to that question would probably solve everything. Taxes anyone?"

(g) "Why, the first thing the insurance company would do would be to start an investigation. They would discover that Lynch embezzled the money and that Agile and Cohen/Kory then colluded together in order to recoup the loss. Lynch wouldn't be the only one going to jail. And we'd all be asking the question, 'What are the visiting hours?'"

(h) "No. I haven't heard Leonard's side of the story. And we will probably never hear Leonard's side of it. It's my predication that Leonard will try and get this case quietly dropped...If that is possible at this stage of the game. Leonard Cohen is not the type of man who would relish having the seamy details of his private and financial life exposed in a court case. But he and Kory should have thought about that before upping the ante with Agile."

(i) "I know these revelations have been painful to the true believers and that I am not as emotionaly invested in Leonard as some of you are. But, it's not as if I want Leonard to be broke. I don't want to find out that he may have things to hide (financially or otherwise). I don't want to find out he had any role in sicing a SWAT team onto Lynch. But I don't want to make excuses for him either.

He's been up to something."

(j) "Quote:
I prefer let the experts do their job



Then get off this thread and let me do it."

(k) "The insurance is not there to reimburse a client's money lost from embezzlement if the client is the one doing the embezzlement. A little convoluted...but that's what you have here...a legal embezzlement."

(l) "People don't appear to be clear at all...because there are thinking with their emotions and not their brains."

(m) "Yes, the courts will decide. And I hope Leonard gets off the hook and isn't fined within an inch of his life. But every participant in this dharma drama (and that includes St. Leonard) comes off looking small. I can't put on the rose-colored glasses and pretend otherwise."

(n) "You are wrong. I don't think I have removed any blinders. As far as I can tell it appears that there is only the most unswerving support on the forum for Leonard's actions in the Agile mess."

(o) "If there are additional facts or if these facts are wrong, please tell me...I would be happy to revise my judgment. Until then I think I am giving these facts the right interpretation. I sincerely do not believe the outcome of all this mess is going to be a good one."

(p) "I would be delighted to be proven wrong about everything. But I'm not naive. There is a lot going on under the surface that is bound to come out. It is not going to be pretty. You may have to look away."

(q) "I'm going to make a prediction that should make you happy Tom. This case is going to come to a very quiet resolution. All the garbage is going to be swept under the transcendental rug. So rest easy and get back to tending The Flame."


This is some very indictment-based verbiage. I didn't bother with the personal insults, etc. I recall cautioning you long ago about how these kinds of things undermine and/or obliterate your 'professional' 'credibility.'

It appears that you would not see putting forth a diagnosis, and then testing and interviewing the patient, to look for supporting evidence, as being a violation of professional ethics.

This is what you call "winning," eh?

[ForYourSmile]

Excuseme if I come back to the topic just after Tchocolatl. We were speaking about Beautiful Losers not Nxxxx Winners .

Still I am of these ingenuous that believe that the better thing is not bought by money. I like to say this, it seems to me to be revolutionary and provocative. For example, we do not write here for money. Cohen does not seem to be very interested in earning money with this edition in Chinese, prefers the sincerity. (I had liked to see the face of the editor after reading this preface and knowing if he published it .)

There is not new the LC dissatisfaction on his work. BL is a wonderful book, though his author does not agree. It is a Universal History - not a Canadian History.

If you want to return to read Beautiful Losers we have to think which is the best way of recreating the circumstances in which it was written. Without hat, in summer, under the Mediterranean Sun, on a table and taking. ... loaded coffee?

(Tchoco, my masochistic friend that you continue reading my English, I am sorry but I feel that every day I make worse. If at some time you need to write something in a forum in Catalan or Spanish, please, not hesitate to ask for my help. If you find something especially unbearable in my writings, send me a pm. I will correct it. As well I will save my money in English teachers.)

[lizzytysh]

Bartering may not be as practical, but it sure does have a nice feeling.

[Young dr. Freud]

Ha! Now there's the Lizzytysh I know and love. You still have your claws! I was afraid your trip to Hydra had completely discombobulated you. But your sense of outrage is still there. Hallelujah.

Thank you for going to all that trouble to list my more salient points from the other thread. Of course, context is everything. To get the full horror of my posts I suggest everyone go and read (or re-read) the Agile thread in it's entirety.


Ydf

[tomsakic]

There is not new the LC dissatisfaction on his work. BL is a wonderful book, though his author does not agree. It is a Universal History - not a Canadian History.

I agree with that, as I wrote yesterday in another thread about Beautiful Losers (in Leonard's Poetry and Novels Section). There's that quote by one Croatian critic from 1996, I quoted that there, I like very much: that old, Zen Leonard probably doesn't recognize the young Leonard of BL in the mirror anymore. I think that this intro to Chinese readers shows how LC is little embarassed and detached by the novel now, and he seeks for apologise - bu, on the other side, it's good oportunity for excusing the chapters which still offens "small-bourgeois" and middle-class minds (rape, Hitler, sex, homosexuality). Remember the Mrs Chow incident in Cana Raeds few months ago? That speaks much about the impression the book has on some readers. Well, I'd say ingorant readers, because the time when litearture shocked middle-class minds passed very long ago, even before 1966; I guess that last shoch was provided by William Burroughs. But it seems that a novel still can shock some people, particularly politicians and city counselors
So, Leonard says: dear reader, simply skip over the parts you don't like, and remember that I wrote this book in hippy and young and naive 60s, under the sunstroke (not mentioning amphetamines and breakdown, of course ) - But this excusing doesn't matters when we think about the book. It hardly matters what the author thinks, I believe. I think that Leonard's introduction is clever - he says something, but it's laconic: he hides his actual opinion about the book (I believe he still think it was good piece of work, I believe). There's much more in it that sunstroke under the Hydra sun without the hat, and even amphetamines. It's narration comes from wider context. I had read many postmodern (or "postmodern"?) and postmodernistic novels, and BL - it's way of storytelling, its ideas, it's craziness and adorable Catherine Tekakwitha and narrator's fanaticism - there's something very genuine in that. Well, I lost my way. To put it shortly: Tchoco wrote excelent remarks about some moments in the novel and its connection to Canadian and Quebecois and postcolonial context, and ForYourSmile - in his English as good as mine (Croatia) or Tchoco's (Quebec); or shall I say equally bad - has also the point with claiming that it's not only Canadian, but universal. In any case, would the novel be good had it stayed only of local or national interest and reach? Good literature speaks internationally, in all languages, and Beautiful Losers do just that, as every good literature does.

[linda_lakeside]

Tom,

Good insight on BL. In one part you said

connection to Canadian and Quebecois and postcolonial context,

and I misread the postcolonial as postcoital - which is probably not too far off the mark as a metaphor.

Yes, Leonard seems to be backing off a bit on BL. There was a time when he didn't count Favourite Game as a novel - likening it to an 'efficient little machine'. When he spoke of his novel(s) he only referred to BL. As in 'I have my albums and I have my novel' (singular). Interesting how time changes people and how we can see it with Leonard. We've seen the transitions - and loved all of them. And, we're still waiting for more. That's the kind of longevity that will go down in the history books.

Linda.