Leonard Cohen tells a joke
From a CBC Interview, 1966
Leonard Cohen: I thought I would change my name and get a tattoo.
Interviewer: Where?
Leonard Cohen: There’s this place on St. Lawrence Boulevard.
Famous Blue Raincoat
Wait, I thought Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat was a letter of concession that Cohen wrote to a mutual friend who successfully courted his wife, encouraging him to treat her well. Damn, that was romantic. Too bad I’ll never think of that song the same way again.
Literary Doppelgangers
I’ve always thought J.D. Salinger looked like the young Al Pacino in The Godfather, so much so that when reading the former, I would hear ‘HOO-AH!’ sporadically inserted throughout the text. The Glass and Corleone families are very similar; both represent brilliant families slowly falling towards their demise.
And then there’s Leonard Cohen, circa his breathtaking Songs From A Room period. He is said to have written those songs in Hydra, a (then) primarily uninhabited Greek island without electricity.
This got me thinking about doppelgangers, which despite sounding like a kind of gang-bang, is strange since our visual notion of these men are through a stagnant set of photos. We share a collective ‘memory’ of famous people, and I thought it might be fun to talk more about folks who are doppelgangers.
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Apples and Cheese: Both in Your Mouth
Rauan Klassink’s Ringing, a new e-book from Kitchen Press. Sam Pink just interviewed Rauan a few hours ago, which means it’s almost outdated. Mercy!
PAIRS DELICIOUSLY WITH:
Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers. A novel that should be as indie-revered as any you can name by Yipzeeny, Kurdledonk, or Qqqqqqqq. But people never mention it? Is it because Thomas Pynchon liked it? Is it because it’s about a bisexual love triangle and a dead Native American Catholic saint? Is it because Montreal? It is because God of? You’re like, “Is that the Hallelujah guy? Didn’t he write that cute Suzanne song?” Is it because of Charles Atlas or a mystical dildo? Are you afraid? Cohen called Beautiful Losers more of a sunstroke than a novel. People turn into movie projectors. People cancel a statue of Queen Victoria. Hey, when you get a chance, you should buy your new favorite novel:
