Anyway, im off to see some firends in london tonight so have a good weekend and enjoy!
Leonard Cohen – Beautiful Losers.
Reading Beautiful Losers is like being slapped around the face by porn king Ron Jeremy whilst he recites Joyce to you in a French-Canadian accent; shocking and annoying… Me and Leonard go way back, we’ve had a somewhat difficult relationship. When I was younger my older sister was an avid fan of his music and even though I found him as easy to listen to as a three am cat fight I pretended to like him to be ‘cool.’ Fortunately enough I later on in life I realised that I could probably achieve this without the help of Mr Cohen. When I found out Cohen had published fiction I jumped at the chance to see if he was any better as a writer than he was a crooner.
I must say at first I was impressed; beautiful losers is the story of a love triangle between the nameless narrator, his wife Edith and their domineering and sexually obsessed friend (who may or may not exist) F. Beautiful losers is split into three into three sections, book one; the history of them all, the nameless one finds himself alone and hanging on to sanity after the suicide of his wife and the disappearance of his friend/lover F. The second book entitled a long letter from F is written from a facility for the criminally insane which somewhat answers for the absurdity of the first section and finally the third book, or epilogue; beautiful losers is written in the third person and describes a man running away from the police.
Leonard Cohen’s literary career precedes his singing career and beautiful losers is his second and final novel which was impressively described at its time of publication, in 1966, as one of the most radical and extraordinary works of Canadian literature ever, although on the other hand it was also described by one critic as ‘the most revolting book ever written.’ As with me and my sister it is possible to neatly split people into those who do and those who don’t like Leonard Cohen, however I would be surprised to find anyone over the age of 20 who hadn’t at least herd of him. Cohen’s distinctive music marries punk, cabaret and folk I’m sure you can find any of his 17 albums in the rock section of any good record store. Like his music Beautiful Losers also explores numerous themes; history, mythology, sexuality and fantasy.
Beautiful Losers is not a novel to read quickly as its neurotic and obsessive use of sexual imagery and obscene language can become slightly monotonous after a while (there are several pages of repeated words). The story seems to have no coherent narrative and Cohen manages to be both shocking and dull at the same time, its strangeness perhaps a reflection of the 1960s from when it was written. Cohen must be certainly be applauded for his inventive and powerful post-modern narrative techniques and there is a great irony and dark humour behind all of the sordid filth that permeates Beautiful Losers (you’ll feel like having a scrub in the shower after reading the novel.) The book creates a sense of claustrophobic intensity and is defiantly not for the faint hearted.
The female characters; Katherine Tekawitha (a native Indian Catholic nun) and Edith are not given enough attention, they are the most interesting yet the least developed characters as Cohen seems to be preoccupied with the homosexual relationship between the two male protagonists. Katherine Tekawitha’s narrative of how she became a Catholic nun after French colonisers arrive amongst her tribe is interesting enough to be made into its own story but Cohen reduces her narrative to a mere number of pages.
Beautiful Losers adamantly refuses to make any sense, as a reader I continued on in the vein hope that the next page would reveal some sort of hidden meaning but as I came to the anticlimactic last page I decided that I had either completely missed something or that the book is merely a random collection of pseudo-intellectual (potentially drug induced?) thoughts. Beautiful Losers is unfortunately both pretentious and self-satisfying and Cohen neglects to concentrate on engaging with the reader, Beautiful Losers has the potential to be an enigmatic and groundbreaking text but it misses the mark on both accounts until it resembles the ramblings of a drunken and horny teenage boy. It is at best marginally better than his music.
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