Short Book Review/ Multiple Choice Quiz: Sylvie Simmons I’M YOUR MAN: The Life of LEONARD COHEN. Jonathan Cape, London, 2012 (546 pages).

This biography provides a chronological account of Leonard Cohen’s personal and professional lives. It establishes the context and reception of each one of his books, albums and tours. Simmons, a renowned music journalist, also provides a critical analysis of his texts and details how Cohen carefully assembled bands to promote his albums.

The book also incorporates many extended conversations with Cohen which have been placed in italics. These were mostly conducted by Simmons in 2011 and therefore allows Cohen to comment in depth on many important moments in his life from the distance of time.

In this very thick book I was most fascinated in Cohen’s development as a poet & singer/ songwriter and in the discussion of many of his poems and songs. It is amazing how Cohen struggled with and detested the writing process as well as heaving up the spirit to sing material he wrote years ago. As he elaborates in the chapter ‘The Veins Stand Out Like Highways’, “I wrote the songs to myself and to women several years ago and it is a curious thing to be trapped in that original effort, because here I wanted to tell one person one thing and now I am in a situation where I must repeat them like some parrot chained to his stand, night after night.” Cohen also often saw his work as inadequate, as just not good enough for his fans, “Often one’s best work is at the time considered inadequate or incompetent. I certainly struggled with those notions, and not just as a writer- but, as any man or woman locates a large component of their self-respect in their work, it’s always an issue.”

Less intriguing to me were aspects of his personal life, such as his bouts with anxiety & depression, his conversion to Zen Buddhism, how he was swindled out of several millions, and of course, his numerous relationships with beautiful, young women- even as an old man.

If you like Cohen’s work you will certainly be impressed by this biography.

Instead of writing an extended review I want to do something different. I want to test your general knowledge of Leonard Cohen- that is, if you are interested.

Some questions and answers will be obvious, others you will find tricky or obscure. You will also find sometimes that more than one answer will apply to the question. But stuff it- it’s only a quiz! For each question you will have to choose the BEST answer. In one question all the answers are correct. In this instance on your answer sheet write “all of the above.”

Note that all answers are final & are based on the contents of Sylvie Simmons book I’m Your Man: The life of Leonard Cohen. No discussion will be entered into any of the results. Undertake additional research if you are so inclined. The main thing is to have fun and to not take the quiz too seriously.

A LEONARD COHEN QUIZ

Part A: MULTIPLE CHOICE

   1.    What did Leonard Cohen’s mother tell him to do when things got bad?

         (a) to take a cold shower

         (b) to take a series of long deep breaths
   (c) to shave
   (d) to think positive      
    (e) to get a new girlfriend

2. Cohen first began writing poetry in earnest after he read:

(a      (a) Neruda

(        (b)  Steve McCaffery

(        (c) Bukowski
   (d) Lorca

(        (e) Wallace Stevens

3. What drew Cohen to poetry?

(a) the power and beauty of the condensed form

(b) it helped him to find enlightenment
(c) to get women

(d) it allowed him to skip regular school classes

(e) to make music out of words

4. Who does Cohen consider to be Canada’s greatest champion of poetry?

(a) Louis Dudek

(b) Margaret Atwood
(c) Irving Layton

(d) Leonard Cohen

(e) Al Purdy

5. Which of the following Canadian awards did Cohen decline:

(a) Peterson Memorial Award
(b) Governor General's Award for Literature

(c)  Officer of the Order of Canada

(d) Juno Hall of Fame

(e) Canadian Music Hall of  Fame

6. While studying law at McGill University in Montreal, after what event did LC realise that an academic life was not for him?

(a)  after he received his grades in his final year
(b) after looking in a mirror he couldn't see his own reflection

(c)   after working part-time in the uni-bar he found it easier to pick up women

(d)  after a particularly boring lecture on commercial law

(e)  after seeing how badly cut the suits were on many of his professors during an end of year piss-up

7. What is the name of Cohen’s first collection of poetry in 1956:

((a) Lets Us Compare Mythologies

(b)  Beautiful Losers

(c)   Flowers for Hitler

(d)  Songs From A Room

(e)   Songs of Love and Hate

8. In which of the following events did Cohen NOT appear:

(a) when Kerouac read his stuff accompanied by jazz mussos at the Village Vanguard in New York in December 1957

(b) in Havana on the day of the Bay of Pigs invasion 17 April 1961

(c)  before their Isle of Wight 1970 concert his band played before patients at Napa State mental hospital & the actor Dennis Hooper freaked out & fled as he saw the patients approaching

(d) Cohen was a pall-bearer at the funeral of Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s funeral in 2000.

(e) At the start of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973 Cohen flew to Tel Aviv to enlist in the Israeli Army
(f) all of the above

9. In the early 1960s Cohen first met the Australian novelist George Johnston (My Brother Jack) in:

(a) L.A.

(b) Melbourne

(c)  Wonthaggi

(d) Montreal
(e) Hydra

10. Which woman was Cohen’s ‘people’s choice’ for best muse?

(a) Suzanne Verdal

(b) Joni Mitchell
(c) Marianne Ihlen

(d) Suzanne Vaillancourt

(e) Suzanne Elrod

11.Early in his writing career (early 1960s) what was Cohen’s favourite drug of assistance & companionship?

(a) Maxiton

(b) weed

(c)  LSD

(d) Mandrax

(e) Hashish

12.Which of the following novel titles was NOT considered for use by Cohen?

(a)  Fields of Hair

(b)  No Flesh So Perfect

(c)    A Ballet of Lepers
(d) Come As You Are

(e)   Beauty At Close Quarters

13. According to the 1965 National Film Board of Canada documentary film Ladies and Gentlemen… Mr Leonard Cohen, Cohen’s first concern when he wakes up in the morning is?

( a) to discover who he has been sleeping with

(b) to work out what’s for breakfast

(c)  to work on his itinerary

(d) to call his mother Masha
(e) to discover if he is in a state of grace

14.Why did LC decide to become a singer-songwriter in the summer of 1965?

                ( a) he liked country music

                 (b) he could get it off with more women

                 (c)  he saw it as an extension of his poetic voice
                 (d) his books weren't selling and he needed the brass

                 (e) he wanted to become the Canadian Dylan

15. Which celebrity did Cohen NOT meet when he was living at the Chelsea Hotel in New York?

           (a) Andy Warhol
           (b) Pierre Elliott Trudeau

           (c) Jimmi Hendrix

           (d) Lou Reed

           (e) Jackson Browne

16. Cohen immortalised a Janis Joplin blow-job in this song:
(a) Chelsea Hotel #2

           (b) Early Morning Rise

           (c) Lady Midnight

           (d) Bird On the Wire

           (e) A Thousand Kisses Deep

17. By 1970 how many trips of acid has Leonard Cohen reckoned he has taken?

(a) 0

(b) 3

(c) 30
(d) 300

(e) 3000

18. Which Bukowski book was seen by the author on Leonard Cohen’s bookshelf?

             (a) Women

 (b) The Pleasures of the Damned

             (c) Notes of a Dirty Old Man

 (d) Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit

 (e) You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense

19. Which of the following quotes is NOT attributed to Leonard Cohen:

(a) “War is wonderful. They’ll never stamp it out. It’s one of the few times people can act their best.”

(b) “I think marrying is for very, very high-minded people. It is a discipline of extreme severity. To really turn your back on all other possibilities and all other experiences of love, of passion, of ecstasy, and to determine to find it within one embrace is a high and righteous notion.”

(c) “I think people recognise that the spirit is a component of love. It’s not all desire, there’s something else.”

(d) “ Reworking a song before an audience is like being locked in a room with an old love you once considered beautiful.”

(e) “I had a special communion with daisies. They would turn their little yellow faces to me whenever I started singing. They would all turn towards me and smile.”

20. What is not a published criticism of Cohen’s art?

(a) “He has the inspired and fragile air of a nasty cough.”

(b) “It is like two strangers frantically making love in a shadowy hotel bedroom.”

(c) “He works hard to achieve that bloodless vocal, that dull, humourless quality of a voice speaking after death.”

(d) “It’s music to slit your wrists by.”

(e)“He sounded like a sad man cashing in on self-pity and adolescent loneliness.”

21. What is NOT the name of a Leonard Cohen song?

(a)  Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On

(b)  Paper-Thin Motel

(c)   I Guess It’s Time

(d)  Beauty Salon
(e) New Skin

22. Paul Body, the doorman for the famous West Hollywood folk club had this to say about Cohen in 1975:

(a) “You’d better check the bathroom for razor blades, because this stuff is real depressing.”

(b) “I think he’s getting old. His throat is going.”

(c) “The only guy I’ve seen who drew better-looking women than him was probably Charles Bukowski.”

(d) “He reminded me of the American actor Dustin Hoffman.”

(e) “The band was incredibly tight but earned only a lukewarm reception at best.”

23. On reflection, which one of his albums does Cohen like the best?

(a) Various Positions

(b) Field Commander Cohen
(c) Recent Songs

(d) I’m Your Man

(e) Death of a Lady’s Man

24. Which of the following statement is NOT true?

(a) The song Hallelujah took 5 years to write.

(b) Cohen wrote 15 different versions of the last verse of the song.

(c) The album in which the song first appeared Various Positions remains Cohen’s best selling album in the United States.

(d) The song has been covered more than 300 times, including Bob Dylan, Bono, Neil Diamond and Matt Morris from the Mickey Mouse Club.
(e) The song is about the reasons for the mechanics of songwriting and about wanting sex and about the war of the sexes (It is an opinion).

25. Which trusted friend swindled Cohen of funds estimated between 10-13 million dollars?

(a) Joni Mitchell

(b) Joshua Sasaki Roshi
(c) Kelley Lynch

(d) Dominique Issermann

(e) Steve Sanfield

ANSWERS TO THE QUIZ

1. c
2. d
3. c
4. c
5. b
6. b
7. a
8. f
9. e
10. c
11. a
12. d
13. e
14. d
15. b
16. a
17. d
18. b
19. d
20. a
21. e
22. c
23. c
24. e
25. c

New Release: Stories by Charles Bukowski The Bell Tolls for No One. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 2015 (308 pages). Edited with an Introduction by David Stephen Calonne.

This is the fourth book of collected writings published by City Lights and edited by Professor Calonne. It follows Portions From a Wine-Stained Notebook (2008), Absence of the Hero (2010) and More Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncollected Columns (2011). The latest pocket-sized volume consists of 44 stories, most of which first appeared in L.A. Free Press as part of Bukowski’s iconic Notes of a Dirty Old Man newspaper column.

The full breakdown is as follows according to the bibliography at the end of the book:

#	Originally published	Year
25	L.A. Free Press	1972-1976
4	Fling	1971-1972
4	Oui	1984-1985
3	Hustler	1978-1985
2	Open City	1967-1968
2	Nola Express	1971-1972
2	unpublished	1948, 1979
1	Kauri	1966
1	Congress	1967

The Bell Tolls for No One takes its name from the last short story in the book, first published in Oui magazine. In the story nothing goes right for Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s alter-ego. He is mistakenly abducted by thugs, hand-cuffed, savagely bashed and his left ear blown off. Left in the woods and still hand-cuffed, a wild dog sets on him. The story ironically ends, “I ran forward, kicked out and missed, fell to my side, rolled over just in time as the flash of fangs ripped the quiet air, I got to my feet and faced the thing again, thinking, this must happen all the time to everybody…one way or the other…” The title is an obvious allusion to Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, one of Bukowski’s literary heroes.  In the case of the people who inhabit Bukowski’s world, nothing falls into place for them.

This collection is better than I imagined but because Bukowski spent most of life writing and rewriting about key moments in his life, you get the impression that you have read many of these stories before. As Calonne points out in his fine Introduction (see the link to it below), “Several of the stories included in this volume demonstrate how he worked and reworked his material. He creates the  same narrative anew; he doesn’t copy, but starts over. He is always telling his autobiography but selecting different details, reinventing instead of rewriting.” He uses the example of the excellent short story ‘An Affair of Very Little Importance’ about Mercedes which appears in a different version in his novel Women. The story ‘I Just Write Poetry So I Can Go to Bed With Girls’ appears in a Dirty Old Man column in this volume as well.

Many of the stories are finely crafted portraits or focussed on dysfunctional relationships, including ‘Dancing Nina’, ‘Save the World’, ‘The Lady with the Legs’ and several other untitled pieces from the ‘Notes of a Dirt Old Man’ archives. In his Introduction Calonne emphases that a central element of Bukowski’s content and style is to poke fun at the absurdity of romantic love and the sexual politics of the time, “Message parlours, a pornographer engaging in late-night discussions with his wife, adult bookshops, older women picking up younger men: the entire panoply of the fading sexual revolution is held up to satire and ridicule.”

Also of great interest is the inclusion of The Way the Dead Love (pages 29-58) the beginnings of a novel John Martin urged Bukowski to write in 1966. Several chapters were published in magazines, including this five- part excerpt which first appeared in Congress in 1967.

Arguably the best stories in the collection are those in which Bukowski temporarily abandons his over-written life story and focuses more on dredging up the gold of his febrile imagination. The satirical ‘A Day in the Life of an Adult Bookstore Clerk’, the investigations into criminal behaviour in ‘Break-In’ and ‘Fly the Friendly Skies’ immediately come to mind. The best & craziest short story in the collection is the Cold War masterpiece ‘A Dirty Trick on God.’ It begins with Harry Greb, an assembly line packer sitting in a bathtub drinking a beer. He farts and then the bubbles rise to form a “sponge thing with seaweed arms, blue eyes, blond hair.” This is an extremely funny story with a message. You may be able to read it on Google Books.

Where to buy the book. Also find the Introduction by David Stephen Calonne and pages 1-38 here:

http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100311630

Featuring Henry Denander

Call The Police

When we moved in to this flat our upstairs

neighbor still had his three teenage kids living

with him, since then the children have moved out

and it’s very quiet.

They had a lot of parties and were sometimes

really loud. The father was on tour in the summer

and every weekend there was a party upstairs.

But we never complained, they were dancing and

singing and for us there was no real problem.

They were always really kind and well behaved –

just young and happy. The father asked me once

if there was a problem when he was away and I

never grumbled, only told him that please if he

could hide that trumpet when he leaves next time.

One evening I went up there to protest but it was

not a party it was the son Calle playing his

electric guitar with the amplifier extremely loud

and his room was right above our bedroom.

One morning I met Calle and his sister in the lift

and we talked about everything but never

mentioned the party they had last weekend.

Suddenly Calle said:

– I can hear you snoring from below, you must be

snoring really loud.

- Yes, perhaps I do, I said.

I realized I have been too kind to them, I should

have been more militant. They have no respect

for me. Next time I will call the police.

Before they do.

Via Formia

At the train station in Naples we

notice that the next train to

Rome travels via Formia and

that’s where we want to get off.

This was better than we thought,

two hours and we

will be there.

On the way on the train we

are paying for our tickets and

we discover that the train will go

directly to Rome.

But, we say, it said “Via Formia” on the

big sign.

Yes, the train will pass Formia but

it will not stop there.

We had to go all the way to Rome and

then back again.

This is charming when you are on holiday but

this would never happen here in Sweden,

of course.

But here in Sweden there is no

place called Formia,

only places like Eskilstuna and Nässjö,

where trains seldom stop anyway.

Man of many talents

He is one of my best friends and he used to be my boss at the record

company where I worked for many years. He is a remarkable man

with an enormous experience from the music industry, a well-known

authority and a very respected man in the music business all over the

world.

Among his many talents is being able to fall asleep almost

everywhere, especially after dinner but even at meetings that drag on

too long. He is an expert also in this field; the way he wears his

glasses and his upright posture conceal that he is sleeping. At many

late night dinners he has managed to take a nap without anyone

noticing.

His main accomplishment was at a concert with the band Motörhead,

an early metal band playing with an intensely loud volume. When the

lead singer Lemmy looked down at the front row he noticed my friend

the director of the record company taking a nap in the middle of the

song.

That time it was obvious that he was sleeping. But I think even

Lemmy must have been impressed.

Chet Baker at Fasching

Chet Baker came to Stockholm to play the Fasching Jazz Club.

He called and I went to see him at his hotel. We had spent some

time together in London the year before and he was one of my

jazz heroes.

At the Salvation Army hotel I was shown to his room but Chet

hardly wanted to open the door, he just took the recordings I

brought him and we chatted briefly. He had a friend in there, a

Swedish jazz musician and the hotel room was filled with sweet

and heavy smoke. I left and we said we would talk more at the

jazz club that night.

In between sets at Fasching I tried to get in contact with Chet

but his friend was really nervous and the same sweet smoke

came out of Chet’s dressing room. I said hi to Chet & his band

but soon the Swedish friend closed the door.

I was the financial director of Chet’s record company in

Sweden; I was a bean counter but not a police officer. Chet

knew this, we had been drunk together in London, but his friend

from Sweden maybe thought I was with the drug enforcement

agency.

I left them and went back to my friends at the bar and got drunk

on beer and Jaegermeister.

Chet’s playing that night at Fasching was absolutely beautiful,

the tone of his trumpet and voice was so very soft and he

sounded better than ever.

Or maybe it was just because we were

high, Chet and I?

Revenge (in the morning)

I wake up and notice that our son has (as every

night) moved to our bed in the early hours of the

morning. My wife is still sleeping and snoring

softly and William is sleeping with his head five

centimeters from my wife’s face and he is also

snoring slowly.

How come my snoring is always such a problem?

Marie says that they can’t sleep because of my

snoring and William says the same.

If I had been really cruel and looking for revenge

I would have wakened them up now accusing

them both of snoring.

But I am not like that.

Not this time.

Bio: HENRY DENANDER was born in 1952 and shares his time between Stockholm, Sweden and Hydra, Greece. He is an artist and a poet and his latest book “The Accidental Navigator” was published by Lummox Press. He has two forthcoming publications from Pig Ear Press. He has a website with poetry and art at www.henrydenander.com.