{"id":160443,"date":"2022-07-05T11:00:09","date_gmt":"2022-07-05T15:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=160443"},"modified":"2022-07-08T11:25:07","modified_gmt":"2022-07-08T15:25:07","slug":"beautiful-losers-on-leonard-cohen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/05\/beautiful-losers-on-leonard-cohen\/","title":{"rendered":"Beautiful Losers: On Leonard Cohen"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

From \u201cThe Lost Radio Interview.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

To mark the appearance of Leonard Cohen\u2019s \u201c<\/i>Begin Again<\/a>\u201d<\/i>\u00a0in our\u00a0<\/i>Summer issue<\/a><\/i>, we\u2019re<\/em> p<\/em>ublishing a series of short reflections on his life and work.<\/i><\/p>\n

In December 1981, I visited my older brother at the University of Michigan. There three men taught me to play three songs on guitar: \u201cBabe I\u2019m Gonna Leave You,\u201d \u201cGenesis,\u201d and \u201cSuzanne.\u201d The first left me cold. The second, its melodic charms notwithstanding, featured the line \u201cThey say I\u2019m harder than \u2026 a marble shaft,\u201d leading me to believe, until just now when I finally looked him up, that Jorma Kaukonen was born in Finland and never really learned English. The third rocketed me, on my return to William & Mary, straight to the town record store, where the cashier sold me\u00a0<\/span>Songs of Leonard Cohen<\/em>\u00a0<\/i><\/span>with a money-back guarantee on the condition that I listen to it ten times before complaining.<\/span><\/p>\n

There existed milieus where Cohen\u2019s music was inescapable, such as kibbutzim and the GDR. Tidewater, Virginia, was not that milieu. A basic tenet of its all-pervasive racism was that white people couldn\u2019t do music. Black people were denied decent jobs and homes, but there was no question that high school dances would be themed \u201cAlways and Forever\u201d and culminate in \u201cBrick House\u201d and \u201cFlashlight.\u201d At college, surrounded by northern suburbanites\u2019 awkward skanking to babyish punk rock, I realized that I had been inadvertently blessed. But it did take me at least ten listens to acclimate to Cohen\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>chansonnier<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>velocity and compound meters while his lyrics were sinking their claws into my soul.<\/span><\/p>\n

I taught myself all the songs on the record and borrowed his novels from the library. An image of sainthood from Beautiful Losers<\/em> haunted me for decades: to live like a runaway ski. I blame The Favorite Game<\/em> for the image of a sentient vibrator that drives a couple from their home, as well as a description of getting trapped in a writhing mass of young people at a political rally but failing to orgasm. I suspect they\u2019re also from Beautiful Losers.<\/em> The Favorite Game <\/em>is about getting laid a lot in swinging Montreal (autobiographical).<\/span><\/p>\n

I preferred the songs, which restored the human dignity the novels attacked. I remember singing \u201cWhy are you so quiet now \/ Standing there in the doorway\u201d while a housemate I had a crush on stood quietly in the doorway. For once we were in each other\u2019s presence yet not acting like idiots, our dopiness suspended by the schematic innocence of a simple song\u2014transfixed by poetry, lost in the timeless intimacy of two people listening to one of them perform the beauty of someone else.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then time resumed, and soon afterward he plunked down on my bed unannounced, not to sing \u201cYou Know Who I Am,\u201d but to plead his stunningly counterproductive case for sex with me, citing what he saw as my indiscriminate promiscuity. I think the last time I saw him he was either cooking shirtless or staring at me across a dance floor, dressed as a pumpkin. Life could be so lyrical, if it weren\u2019t a novel.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nell Zink\u00a0has published six novels, including the recent<\/span><\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Avalon.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cLife could be so lyrical, if it weren\u2019t a novel.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2260,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68479],"tags":[67827,5250,46,15487,40468],"class_list":["post-160443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-leonard-cohen","tag-featured","tag-leonard-cohen","tag-music","tag-nell-zink","tag-songs-of-leonard-cohen"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBeautiful Losers: On Leonard Cohen by Nell Zink<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"July 5, 2022 \u2013 \u201cLife could be so lyrical, if it weren\u2019t a novel.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/05\/beautiful-losers-on-leonard-cohen\/\" \/>\n<meta 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