Various Positions

by Ira B. Nadel

  Cohen’s response to McClelland’s letter of acceptance was a six-page statement beginning with a parodic dialogue between offended Canadian critics and a defensive Cohen. It opens with Cohen telling these critics that he was the author only “for a brief period. Soon it will be the book that you have written, and you will treasure it.” The letter continues in the tradition of the trial scene of Leopold Bloom in the “Circe” episode of Ulysses:

  — Fiend of the Kaballa! Explain yourself! We happen to know that even Milton Wilson hates your book.

  — The authorship of the book is already among you. I have already lost it. I am the one man who has not written it.

  — The associates of Jack McClelland are easily certain that you are a sick phony and they have conveyed this opinion to their associate, Jack McClelland, who resists it with that true and baffled courage with which a man who longs to be a pagan resists the voice of his conscience.

  — Sirs, do not apply for pity.

  — Eeeek! Jew Cohen, you’ve condescended too far this time. You have written a disgusting book and we intend to punish you with the G[overnor] G[eneral’s] award, so that you will be hidden forever from the Americans.

  The dialogue continues with charges of the novel’s filth, fetishism, and fantasy. Cohen responded by declaring “the book I hold is absolutely empty, it contains not a trace of anyone, especially me.” He also outlined his terms for publication to McClelland, including control over the cover and jacket copy. He was still smarting at the poor job with Flowers for Hitler: the “exhibitionism I argued off the front cover turned up on the back. We’ve got to avoid all hints of this sort of thing with Beautiful Losers.” He also didn’t want quotes from critics on the back cover. Of “Canadian critical opinion, I say this in all truthfulness, there is not a single mind in the whole dreary heap that I can take seriously, whether they turn their attentions to me in attitudes of censure or praise.” As always there was the matter of money: “if you can get that $500 [the advance] to me quickly you would be contributing to my mental health. So let’s say, to put it in writing, that I accept your publishing offer in general, and that we will work out details in our usual unofficial gentlemanly way.”

  McClelland agreed to Cohen’s supplying biographical copy and approving jacket copy for the novel. Part of Cohen’s own description of the book was adopted for the jacket, which reads:

  Driven by loneliness and despair, a contemporary Montrealer tries to heal himself by invoking the name and life of Catherine Tekakwitha, an Iroquois girl whom the Jesuits converted in the 17th Century, and the first Indian maiden to take an Oath of Virginity. Obsessed by the memory of his wife Edith, who committed suicide in an elevator shaft, his mind tyrannized by the presence of F., a powerful and mysterious personage who boasted of occult skills and who was Edith’s lover, he embarks on a wild and alarming journey through the landscape of the soul. It is a journey which is impossible to describe and impossible to forget … Beautiful Losers is a love story, a psalm, a Black Mass, a monument, a satire, a prayer, a shriek, a road map through the wilderness, a joke, a tasteless affront, an hallucination, a bore, an irrelevant display of diseased virtuosity, a Jesuitical tract, an Orange sneer, a scatological Lutheran extravagance, in short a disagreeable religious epic of incomparable beauty.

  The categories are there, Cohen is saying; take your pick.

  But even the manuscript, it seemed, would not cooperate: after the book had been accepted, Cohen wrote, “I lost my only carbon of the original when a sudden wind sent pages scattering to the sea during an outdoor reading in Hydra. Only because my NY agent could get another copy could I proceed with revisions.” But advance sales were promising; pre-publication orders reached a surprising 3100 copies. It was also being read by a number of movie producers: Otto Preminger, the MCA group, Ulu Grosbard, and Alexander Cohen, for a possible movie option.

  Release of the novel in Canada created a problem for Jack McClelland: censorship. He expected the book would be banned, hence, the small advance. The marketing strategy proceeded with advance copies and notices to the trade that the book was a strong, rewarding work. Promotion, McClelland explained, would avoid the sensationalist approach.

  Replies from advance readers were too cautious or negative to use. But McClelland went forward with a gala launch party at the Inn on the Park in Toronto, held on March 29, 1966, nearly a month before the official publication date. The launch was attended by journalists, academics, politicians, broadcasters, and publishers, as well as writers, filmmakers, and general readers. The original invitation list included over four hundred names and read like the Who’s Who of Canada: Robertson Davies, F.R. Scott, Earle Birney, Hugh MacLennan, Northrop Frye, Douglas LePan, Milton Wilson, Phyllis Gotlieb, Nathan Cohen, Morton Shulman, Irving Layton, Peter Desbarats, Peter Gzowski, Robert Fulford, William French, Pierre Berton, Mavor Moore, Patrick Watson, Harold Town, Timothy Findley, Adrienne Clarkson, Morley Callaghan, Marshall McLuhan, Ramsay Cook, and George Grant.

  Posters showed a photograph of Cohen dressed in a turtleneck and jacket, staring intensely at a manuscript with pen in hand. It was a meditative posture designed to offset the potentially scandalous novel. Also on display was the cover art by Harold Town. Nearly three hundred people turned up at the lavish party, where the following telegram was received and read out: “Live Forever Leonard Cohen / Assorted Shy Bacchantes.”

  The University of Toronto, which had begun acquiring Cohen’s papers in 1964, bought the manuscript of Beautiful Losers a month before the book was to be published, paying Cohen almost six thousand dollars, a substantial sum for him. The purchase underscored his stature in Canada at only thirty-one and showed confidence in his new work, since it had yet to be released.

  Reviews of the novel began to appear in April and reaction was intense. Journalist and critic Robert Fulford both praised and damned the book, dismissing it as “a fantasy wrapped in a fable,” adding:

  this is, among other things, the most revolting book ever written in Canada. Far from encouraging sexual drives, it will if anything mute them. The book is an important failure. At the same time it is probably the most interesting Canadian book of the year.

  A few days later, Fulford reported that a Toronto bookstore had failed to sell any of its twenty-five copies of the novel in the first eight days of publication. Cohen’s appearance on the current affairs show This Hour Has Seven Days on CBC television helped sales despite unfavorable reviews across the country. Austin Clarke in the Toronto Telegram objected to the paper-thin characters, stilted dialogue, and exhibitionist pedantry. Miriam Waddington could say no more than “the story concerns three sexually versatile people.” The Deer Park Public Library in Toronto circulated its three copies of the novel with Fulford’s review attached as a warning. Poet bill bissett responded more positively; in the magazine Alphabet he wrote, “i give the book of Cohens a good review, a great review, easily million stars.” Few critics shared his enthusiasm, although Cohen maintained, “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s a technical masterpiece.”

  Cohen was unhappy with distribution of the book, however. Jack McClelland pointed out that such stores as Simpson’s and W.H. Smith had decided that they didn’t want to take the risk of handling such a controversial work. McClelland had strenuously defended the book as a work of great energy to George Renison of W.H. Smith, explaining that “most of the people interested in pornography would not begin to understand either Cohen’s purpose or his accomplishment,” but to no avail.

  On the matter of the $6.50 price, which Cohen thought too high, McClelland cited his production costs; he had imported printed sheets from the United States and bound them in Canada; the duty on the sheets was ten percent and there was an eight percent exchange on the U.S. dollar. An expensive jacket and a good binding had been used. More than three hundred copies of the four-thousand-copy run had been distributed as review copies. Then there was the cost of the posters, promotional materials, press releases, and the exp
ensive launch party (which McClelland thought had been of little value “because you [Cohen] didn’t think it suited your image or were unwilling to put yourself out”). McClelland implored Cohen to do more radio and tv interviews but to avoid “calling it a pornographic book yourself … People have been hanged for less.”

  By the summer of 1966, Cohen’s popularity had reached a new height when it was reported that he had accepted a position as a tv commentator for the CBC in Montreal. Robert Fulford began a column by saying, “It is pleasant to think that Canada may soon have a poet who is also a TV star, or a TV star who is also a poet.” Interviewed about this unusual development, Cohen replied, “I thought it was time to get into mass communications.” With a female co-star, he was to do short interviews and films. “I’d like to make something beautiful. I’d like to get close to the viewers, get them to participate in the show, even send in home movies. And I’d like to help re-establish English Montreal as a community,” he explained. But the television show never came off; nor did the proposal in November that he become part of a new CBC network show produced by Daryl Duke and titled Sunday. Though his heart lay in novels and poetry, Cohen had begun to realize the power of the electronic media.

  Poetry expressed his longing and it nurtured him artistically, but it didn’t pay the bills, and poetry, Cohen wrote, “is no substitute for survival.” Parasites of Heaven, a collection of poems, was published in 1966, containing poems that dated back to 1957. An enigmatic four-line poem begins the slight book: “So you’re the kind of vegetarian / that only eats roses / Is that what you mean / with your Beautiful Losers.” The chief value of the collection is that it registers a shift in Cohen’s outlook from satisfaction to discontent with the isolation of Hydra. He felt the need to join, in some fashion, the experiences of his audience and redefine his past. “How can I use the gull’s perfect orbit / round and round the hidden fish, / is there something to do as the sun / seizes and hardens the ridge of rocks?” he asks. The collection received mixed reviews and modest sales and Cohen contemplated another career.

  7

  BLACK PHOTOGRAPH

  COHEN BEGAN a serious singing career in 1966, when he realized that he couldn’t earn a decent, or even an indecent, living as a writer. In January of that year he had become interested in the work of Bob Dylan. At an all-day poetry party organized by F.R. Scott, and attended by Layton, Dudek, Purdy, A.J.M. Smith, and Ralph Gustafson, Cohen played his guitar, sang, and raved about Dylan. No one had heard of him, but Scott rushed out to buy Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. He returned and to the chagrin of everyone, put them on. After a few minutes, Purdy “bounded out of the room as though booted from behind,” shouting, “‘It’s an awful bore. I can’t listen to any more of this.’” Only Cohen listened intently, solemnly announcing that he would become the Canadian Dylan, a statement all dismissed. The remainder of the afternoon was spent watching two new NFB films: A.M. Klein: The Poet as Landscape and Ladies and Gentlemen … Mr. Leonard Cohen, which Cohen did not view. At 10:00 p.m. Scott replayed one of the Dylan records, and this time the result was dancing, not criticism.

  At Dylan’s concert at the Place des Arts in Montreal the following month, Layton announced Cohen’s decision to start a singing career to a group of students. At the intermission he said, “Do you know that Leonard is going to start singing?” The students replied, “He can’t sing!”

  Cohen had little choice but to try another career: Beautiful Losers had had good reviews but marginal sales, selling only one thousand copies in Canada and three thousand in the U.S. The Favorite Game had sold approximately two hundred copies in Canada and one thousand in the United States. Cohen realized that unless he chose the unattractive path of a university post, he could not survive as a writer, despite the critical praise. So he thought of music as his financial salvation. “In hindsight, it seems like a very foolish strategy, but I [said] to myself, I am a country musician, and I will go down to Nashville…. I have songs, and this is the way I’m going to address the economic crisis. It seems mad.” On his way to Nashville, Cohen stopped in New York and ended up staying, off and on, for two years. The mood of the city echoed Cohen’s own and he reveled in its energy and bleakness.

  His friend Robert Hershorn provided Cohen with some funds and an introduction to Mary Martin, a Canadian living in New York and an assistant to Albert Grossman, who managed Dylan, as well as Peter, Paul, and Mary. Martin had previously arranged for The Hawks, with Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm, to be hired as Dylan’s backup group. They were renamed The Band in 1968 and toured with Dylan before going on to become seminal rock figures themselves. For a short while, Martin also managed Van Morrison.

  Cohen arrived in New York in the fall of 1966 with no sense of the folk renaissance that had occurred during his years in Greece. He had no idea of the sudden fame of Judy Collins, Joan Baez, or Phil Ochs. But he found a sensibility with which he was compatible: “I felt very much at home,” he remarked years later. In New York Cohen first stayed at the Penn Terminal Hotel on 34th, then at the Henry Hudson Hotel near Eighth Avenue, and finally, at the Chelsea on West 23rd. At the Henry Hudson Hotel, where he stayed just before taking up residence at the Chelsea, he was surrounded by drugs, down-and-outers, and dope addicts. Life in a hotel was losing its glamour. But it was there that he met an intriguing Swedish woman who was part hooker and part teacher. In an elevator a few days later, she told him that he was dead but that she could restore him to life. She undertook a therapy that involved yoga and an odd psychology. He became fascinated by her teaching and gave her nearly six hundred dollars. He decided to record her, with the idea of perhaps writing a book about her. But when the machine was on, she stopped talking. Their relationship continued for some time, Cohen frequently singing songs to her before he recorded them for his first album.

  “Once I hit the Chelsea Hotel, there was no turning back,” he said. The place was “rich in character and opportunities,” and it was possible for him to establish “the rudiments of a social life.” In between forays to New York, Cohen would return to Montreal, living either at his mother’s or in downtown hotels such as the Hotel de France on Ste-Catherine Street.

  In 1966 the Chelsea was notorious as the residence for the emerging underground music and writing scene, with its thick walls, high ceilings, and a management that had an “iron regard for privacy.” Its marble halls and elegant wrought-iron central staircase contrasted with the slow, rickety elevators. It had a faded elegance, a romantic decay. In the sixties, the Chelsea also had a flourishing drug culture; Cohen has commented that one went “on a lot of involuntary trips [there] just accepting the hospitality of others.”

  The Chelsea had a diverse bohemian history that included Mark Twain, Eugene O’Neill, Dylan Thomas, William S. Burroughs, Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur Miller, Virgil Thomson, and Thomas Wolfe. While Cohen was at the Chelsea, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Allen Ginsberg, Kris Kristofferson, and Janis Joplin all stayed for varying periods. Harry Smith was one of the figures in residence at that time, a filmmaker, anthropologist, ornithologist, and mentor to Allen Ginsberg, an intriguing man, Cohen recalled. Stanley Bard, the appropriately named manager/owner, encouraged the experimental and the offbeat. Cohen once witnessed the arrival of a virtual zoo on the upper floors, as a dress rehearsal of Katherine Dunham’s production of Aïda, with lions, tigers, and other animals took place; acrobats limbered up in the hallways and singers practiced in the elevators. Cohen’s small, cupboard-sized room on the fifth floor held two single beds and his guitar. From the lobby the guests walked directly into a Spanish restaurant that was open all night; a few doors to the east was a synagogue. His affection for the hotel remained, and even during his time in Nashville, he would frequently return to the Chelsea.

  Cohen recounts his most famous meeting in the hotel in “Chelsea Hotel #2” from New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974). In his well-known concert introduction to the song, he outlines his first encounter with Ja
nis Joplin:

  Once upon a time, there was a hotel in New York City. There was an elevator in that hotel. One evening, about three in the morning, I met a young woman in that hotel. I didn’t know who she was. Turned out she was a very great singer. It was a very dismal evening in New York City. I’d been to the Bronco Burger; I had a cheeseburger; it didn’t help at all. Went to the White Horse Tavern, looking for Dylan Thomas, but Dylan Thomas was dead. Dylan Thomas was dead. I got back in the elevator, and there she was. She wasn’t looking for me either. She was looking for Kris Kristofferson [laughter]. “Lay your head upon the pillow.” I wasn’t looking for her, I was looking for Lily Marlene. Forgive me for these circumlocutions. I later found out she was Janis Joplin and we fell into each other’s arms through some divine process of elimination which makes a compassion out of indifference, and after she died, I wrote this song for her. It’s called the Chelsea Hotel.

  During a more recent performance in Norway, Cohen revised the story of the original meeting between Joplin and himself: in the elevator Cohen asks, “Are you looking for someone?” “Yes,” she replies, “I’m looking for Kris Kristofferson.” “Little Lady—you’re in luck. I’m Kris Kristofferson.” He was significantly shorter than Kristofferson, but as he says, those were generous times. Yafa Lerner recalls that at the Chelsea it was common for women to offer themselves to Cohen as he rode the elevator. Cohen began writing “Chelsea Hotel #2” in a Polynesian bar in Miami in 1971 and finished it at the Imperial Hotel in Asmara, Ethiopia, in 1973.