June 29, 2016
Anthony Reynolds' Leonard Cohen: A Remarkable Life. Omnibus, 2010.
Leonard
Cohen has been my passion since before I was an adult. I've attended
two concerts, the first at university in Winnipeg in 1966 or '67. I
have the novels, much poetry, the collected songs, CDs, DVDs,
clippings, e-notifications. Yet it is never enough. And there are
still bios I have not read. More reason to live.
This
one, Leonard Cohen: A Remarkable Life by Anthony Reynolds, is aimed
at musicians. The emphasis is on the recordings and recordings
sessions. Less about the origins of the songs. Although we are told
of the two Suzannes, that "Democracy" was in response to
the Berlin Wall, and that Field Commander Cohen was more about
himself, volunteering to entertain troops, than about his father who
was a World War I veteran. It's these tidbits which interest me more
than the names of behind-the-scenes artistic collaborators.
Unfortunately,
there are too many things about this book that irk me. I even checked
to see whether it is self-published as there seems to be a total lack
of both line editing and copyediting. There is an abundance of
quotations but absolutely no citations, especially for the words put
into Cohen's mouth. I cannot believe that the writer actually
interviewed his subject. Aside from the technical issues of punctuation and
grammar, what annoys an old and loyal fan is the seeming lack of
understanding of so many things which inform the artist and his
music. With the exception of a bit about the record-making business,
there is nothing here about context. Jewishness or Jewish humour.
Nothing about Montreal, or Quebec, or French-speaking Canada, or
Canada itself.
Reynolds
is identified on the book jacket as "born in the early 1970s"
and "living in Wales." I can forgive the condescension of
youth, and the fact of a European ignorance of "the other side"
of the world. I can forgive that he doesn't get the sense of humour
until it is much too late. I choose not to forgive the ageism. Search
the text for the term "geezer" and you'll understand what I
mean.
