One college roommate, the son of an opera singer though that was a secret, told me I looked like Leonard Cohen in my peacoat. I thought I looked cold. The summer before last I finally played a record by my face-sake and realized I should have taken the tip from the roommate sooner. Leonard Cohen is also an author of several novels and collections of poetry. In Beautiful Losers, plot is consumed by a man's tortuous visions of his life with his wife and friend and the life of an Iroquois saint. Kerouac's writing can whip up the frenzy of words; Cohen's writing falls into place, each word as a brick, constructing a temple for the horror of living. It's comforting, in a way.
I wanted to smile at dogma, yet ruin my ego against it. I wanted to confront the machines of Broadway. I wanted Fifth Avenue to remember its Indian trails... I wanted to attend cocktail parties wearing a machine gun. I wanted to tell an old girl friend who is appalled at my methods that revolutions do not happen on buffet tables, you can’t pick and choose... I wanted to fight against the Secret Police takeover, but from withinthe Party. I wanted to deal in secret real estate, agent of ageless, anonymous billionaire... I wanted to write a tract against birth control in very simple English, a pamphlet to be sld in the foyer, illustrated with two-color drawings of shooting stars and eternity... I wanted to be a junkie priest who makes a record for Folkways.
Any erstwhile Shangri-Las should note the following.
The Leader of the Pack lies mangled under his Honda in a wreck of job prospects... Oh, my poor top ten, longing to perish in popularity, I have forgotten my radio, so you languish with other zombies in my memory, you whose only honor is hara-kiri with the blunt edge of returned identification bracelets, my weary Top Ten hoping to be forgotten like escaped balloons and kites... I sentence you to National Anthem hard labor, I deny you martyrdom in tomorrow’s Hit Parade...
