(precaution: Although I have reduced this, a lot,
it still winds its way to its point in a very round-about way.
(But it does have a point.))
February, 1968, was the coldest, cruelest month of my life.
At the start of the month I was on leave from ITR, for 2 weeks.
After which I went UA (aka AWOL) for the rest of the month.
And I stayed at about two dozen different people's places.
Smoked their pot, dropped their acid, listened to their records,
read their books. Fed my head on everything going down.
And I had 2 or 3 more leaves that year,
which continued on in the same style of experiences.
The whole year was "Feliniesque" for me.
The albums that were the constant background music of
that year were, of course, remarkable. I started listing
them here, but that's hopeless. Perhaps - just perhaps
- the 3 that left the strongest impression on me
were Astral Weeks, John Wesley Harding,
and Songs Of Leonard Cohen.
Songs Of Leonard Cohen made a strong impression on
everybody I knew. And many of them immediately went
out and bought LC's books. And I read those books, or
read in them, way back then. And it is my eternal shame
to have to confess that I remember almost nothing of them
from that time, other than the covers, and some weird-assed
associations of some of the topics in them with things
that were happening in my own life.
In my defense, there were an awful lot of other things I was
trying desperately to absorb and comprehend at the same time.
I read The Alexandria Quartet, and had to associate all the
characters in it with people I knew. And The Velvet Underground's
"Venus In Furs", which led me to read Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's
"Venus In Furs", also had personal associations for me.
The dedication "To S.A." in T.E. Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom",
I interpreted as "SAndy", a friend of mine. (Which, for a reason
I never quite got, quite pissed off Frank.)
And so on.
I also remember the liner-notes in Dylan's "John Wesley Harding"
There were three kings and a jolly three too.
The first one had a broken nose, the second, a broken arm
and the third was broke.
"Faith is the key!" said the first king.
"No, froth is the key!" said the second.
"You're both wrong," said the third, "the key is Frank!"
"The key".
Notice that all of Dylan's suggestions there as to who "the key" is
begin with the letter "F".
And I can not have been the only one who,
even if only for an instant , - and even if it took
being under the influence of, ... -well, - of something,
(which i'd admit, if I could rember) - thought that, maybe,
- just maybe, - Dylan also read Beautiful Losers.
And tried to guess who "F." was.
Because "F." in BLs is obviously "the key".
On the other hand, "Frank", who was one of the 3 or 4
people I spent about half my time with on those leaves,
seemed to me to be the most likely candidate for "F." in BLs,
as well as "the key" to Dylan's album.
You see, I had to figure all this out.
And the idea of actually researching Cohen's and Dylan's lives,
like A. J. Weberman, and thousands of others since then,
in order to figure out who in Dylan's and Cohen's personal lives
corresponded to this and that character in the works,
would have struck me, back then, not only as utterly insane,
but absolutely disgusting. These works were for us
to project the characters of our own lives onto.
In order to help us better navigate our own lives.
And it is not for us to feel we
own the authors,
-- with bits of crass
gossip!
~
For different reasons most of my male friends in those
years after high school had absent fathers. And the notion
of a father figure or father substitute was an explicit topic
for us. We chose them mostly from books and movies,
characters like Donleavy's "The Ginger Man".
And T.E. Lawrence, for example, was a hero for one of us,
- who, I believe, wound up enlisting, on account of "The Mint".
And so on.
My father was in Vietnam, in a non-military connection
(he was director of the bi-national center, USIS,)
and the few times he came home on his leaves
he made a strong impression on my friends, - who had been
spending a lot of time in his house (- and sort of, actually,
living there sometimes). So I wasn't the only one
who had been trying to understand him, or feel him, through
his "effects", -his books and records and other things
that he'd left behind in the house. (The vast number of 78s
were mostly opera, but I listened more to the Brahms
and Satie. And his vast number of books were on everything,
or so it seemed to me at the time, but I'll mention just
his large set of Carlyle, because that's what made me
think that he also thought of history in terms of "the hero".)
~
I know my father's name.
But I almost never think of it.
I always think of him, in my mind,
and refer to him for others, - as "my father".
Now, Leonard Cohen's father died when Leonard was 9.
And Ira Nadel mentions that:
At McGill, one of Cohen's surviving essays is on death;
ironically, Cohen emphasizes the lack of its effect on him,
although he concludes by reversing that attitude:
"Death is a tragedy and whether it strikes at an
eight-year-old youngster ... or a senile old man,
a scar is always left on one ... of the survivors
- a scar that does not heal quickly." (qtd. in Dorman 48-49).
Later, he would write that
"A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh"
(Favorite Game 3)."
~
Now, I consider it a certainty that the abbreviation "F." in Beautiful Losers
originated as "Flamplatz", = "Irving Layton".
And, --since LC & IL were a couple of wild and crazy guys,
-- it is possible that LC may simply have been memorializing
their friendship by means of that abbreviation.
But, ---LC must also have given some thought,
--and probably some considerable thought,
as to the probable effect his using that abbreviation
would actually have on his readers.
And the one thing that I can not believe is that LC was actually
hoping that his readers would think of "F." as a kind of "scavenger hunt"
to be worked out from hints in his biographies,
and then, ultimately, solved, once and for all.
(- it reminds me of the "definitive screwball comedy"
- the social satire: My Man Godfrey, from 1936:
Godfrey: That's fine. Do you mind telling me just what a scavenger hunt is?
Irene: (in a breathless tempo, she makes an innocently-cruel statement)
Well, a scavenger hunt is exactly like a treasure hunt, except in a treasure hunt
you try to find something you want and in a scavenger hunt, you try to find
something that nobody wants.
Godfrey: Hmmm, like a forgotten man?
Irene: That's right, and the one that wins gets a prize. Only there really isn't
a prize. It's just the honor of winning, because all the money goes to charity,
that is, if there's any money left over, but then there never is.
)
I think Cohen used the abbreviation "F." for a number of reasons.
-- It is a literary device, that creates an aura of autobiography about a book,
the implication being that it's somebody real who's identity is being protected.
-- It creates a constant state of tension in us as to what "F." actually stands for,
which helps, subtly, to keep our attention.
-- It remains wide open to the reader to cast his own personal projections
onto, in a way no more specific, necessarily arbitrary name, can do.
However, and in in conclusion, I want to point out
that Irving Layton was also a father figure to LC.
And even back then, in 1968, I thought that "F."
was probably an abbreviation for "Father",
or "Father figure".
And now that I know more, now that I've re-read TFG,
I think that maybe,
--just maybe,
Leonard Cohen himself felt something uncanny about the symbol "F."
As if it were incomplete in some way.
Like the remnant of something,
Like a scar.
Like a scar left in the place of an absent word.
Which maybe, just maybe, was the word: "Father".
!
