Peter Costello
Poet and singer Lionel Cohen Mystical Crooner: The Lives of Leonard Cohen,
by Aubrey Malone
(Wisdom Twins Books / Lulu.com, £15.99)
This book by our film critic provides an engaging overview of the complicated career of the Canadian poet, novelist and singer, “a charismatic Jew from Montreal’s French Quarter”. These contending identities provide much of the tension of Cohen’s life and creativity.
Cohen, despite his involvement with Zen as a system of meditation, never abandoned his childhood faith, even though as an adult he had to come to terms with the situation of Israel and its relations with its reluctant neighbours in the Middle East. Cohen made clear all his life his hatred of war and intolerance.
This aspect of Cohen’ life give this book a very topical if unintended relevance to the present controversies over what is happening in Gaza. Cohen was a declared admirer of Jesus, but found the tangled nature of what the world and its leaders have made of faith and love and empathy difficult to revolve. Cohen difficulties here may enlighten those who think there are easy solutions to found for the world’s problems.
But of course, it is his output as a novelist, poet and songwriter that is important, and it is these that are the real heart of what Aubrey Malone wants to make clear to his own readers.
Readers interested in Cohen might like to know that a podcast of an interview which author Malone had with Cohen can be accessed on the website ‘SoundCloud’, under the headline ‘When Aubrey Met Leonard’. This encounter took place in 1988. Cohen had just released the I’m Your Man album, but as yet had not realised how well it would succeed, and that it would revive his career.
As Malone observes in 1990, burned out from touring, he entered the Zen retreat at Mount Baldy in San Francisco, where he passed some four years before returning to the demanding world of recording and live performances.
He went on performing as a result of a massive fraud on the part of his manager, and supposed friend who brazenly stole Cohen’s savings. These financial difficulties, however, “proved to be a blessing in disguise” as he gathered new admirers and renewed his connection with old ones.