Beautiful Losers and the Beats

Debate on Leonard Cohen's poetry (and novels), both published and unpublished. Song lyrics may also be discussed here.
einzelle
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Beautiful Losers and the Beats

Post by einzelle »

Hello!

I just read the novel for my English class and I was wondering if it has a connection with the Beat Generation's work, like Kerouac or William Burroughs.

Is there some kind of message about society, or it is simply written in a unconventional way. And what is the novel all about? How does Catherine Tekakwitha ties in?

Any help will be appreciated.
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tomsakic
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Post by tomsakic »

I think Cohen's work is tied in with beatniks. He met Kerouac in 1950s when he was at Columbia in NYC, and when he came back to Montreal, his first public appearance as poet (anouncing his later musical career) were poetry performances with jazz bands in night clubs like Dunn's Birdland Progressive Jazz Parlour at St. Catherine Street (that was around 1958). Later, Cohen knew Ginsberg and he sung back vocals on one track on Leonard's 1976 album Death of a Ladies' Man, and appeared regularly on Cohen's shows (he was among crowd in NYC in 1993 tour). So, not only that he later has personal ties with Ginsberg and Dylan, but also was influenced by them, or - I'd even say - he in some extent was the Canadian leg of the beatniks, at least in new ways of public performances, merging poetry and public appearance (If nevertheless Cohen's poetry wasn't similar to beatniks', but more, how to say, poetical than declamatory, as their was). Cohen also mentioned Ginsberg and Gregory Corso as poets he honores. So, I'd say that Cohen at least was the product of same generation, same context, so his work has man connectiosn with the beatnik movement.
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lizzytysh
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Post by lizzytysh »

I enjoyed your explanation, Tom 8) .

~ Lizzy
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lightning
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Post by lightning »

Beat poetry being the leading and only literary movement of this century , it behooves many a writer to follow along. But despite efforts like Beautiful Losers, Cohen was basically too conservative and was never among those noble beat minds destroyed and glorified by madness.
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Post by Simon »

I am rereading BL right now, and I keep telling myself that it is indeed a beat novel. As Tom pointed out, it's a novel influenced by its time, whether or not there was regular direct contact between LC and the Beats. But it is definitly beat in its openess, in its high-soaring lyrical flights. This, of course is debatable, but to me this novel feels very beat.

I thought of starting a thread that could be titled «Lenny and Bennie» to touch on the subject of drugs and the Beats. Could Lenny have been on bennie when he wrote BL? Could it be that specific drugs produce specific litterary productions, thus this familiar beat feel in the works of that period? Just a thought...

In the thread «Gary Snyder and Leonard Cohen», Rob wrote:
This is from David Boucher's book "Dylan and Cohen, poets of rock and roll"

Cohen had great admiration for the Beat poets. Cohen was at Columbia University in New York when Ginsberg's Howl came out, and his own let us compare mythologies was published in the same year, 1956. In 1985 he described Ginsberg as the greatest contemporary poet in the United States, who, with Jack Kerouac and Gregory Corso, reinvigorated modern poetry. The whole thrust of Beat poetry was anticonventional, railing against the accepted mores of sex, art, and religion. It was a movement that was also anti-intellectual, a traint with which Cohen empathized.

Cohen had experienced the beatnik scene of Greenwich village four years befor Dylan. He associated with minor Beat poets and experienced their readings in the coffeehouses around the village, and was excited by their bohemian lifestyles and irreverent commentaries on the dominant culture. Seeing Kerouac perform with indomitable panache and animated style the year before the publication of his novel On the road (1957) inspired Cohen to couple his poetic tastes with a predilection for prose expression. Evidence for Cohens fascination with the decadence of Beat and it's obsession with fame is his poem on Alexander Trocchi in Flowers for Hitler.

Boucher notes Gary Snyder's influence on Dylan, but does not record any specific connection with Leonard.

Rob
Hope this is helpfull.

We'll be glad to read the conclusions of your essay
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Tchocolatl
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Re: Beautiful Losers and the Beats

Post by Tchocolatl »

einzelle wrote:Hello! (...)How does Catherine Tekakwitha ties in?

Any help will be appreciated.
I won't do redundancies by repeating the info within the posts of my honorable fellow co-writers on this forum 8) And as any help is appreciated, I add mine. I'll try do it short and quickly.

The culture of the beat generation included a spiritual quest for the light even in the middle of worst turpitudes.

Probably despite the worst turpitudes, because this generation was the witness of the madness (opposed to wisdom) of humanity empowered by scien&tech, witness of nightmares never seen before.

As youth, they turned revolted against the robot-like-society to come, which gives more importance to forms, dogma than to the heart of the social problems. They standed for the individualism and the creativity against the conformism and the destruction. They did stand against the puritanism of united states of america. Among other things.

We see all this in BL.

But Cohen is already from another generation than Kerouac and cie, and Beautiful Losers also. Cohen was not an American. He was this guy from this particular place on the planet with its Jew background. And so is BL.
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lightning
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Post by lightning »

Agreed with Tchoch that Cohen was from a different time and place and was not American, as were the beats. He was never on the beat roster and I have never seen his writings in any beat anthology. He is best known for his singer/songwriter work and the prose/poetry is mostly of interest to people concerned specifically with him. Ginsberg did asssociate with him in 1993 but he was an professorial teddy bear by then, not a howling beatnik. Ginsberg, late in life, also collaborated with Paul McCartney but that did not make Paul a beat poet. Cohen might have brushed elbows with Gregory Corso at the Chelsea but personality differences and lifestyle choices would have precluded any serious friendship.
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Post by Simon »

Yes, agreed with you both. By risking that BL is or feels beat, I didn't mean to imply that LC could claim for himself a place on the beat roster. As he often says himself, he's an old fashion guy, who may have kept that kind of balance in his life that was not that of the beats. The Favorite Game doesn't feel beat. Its just that the style shown in BL kind of evokes the sort of creativity (strikingly brilliant) that one attains on certain drugs, the kind of drugs popular among the Beats of that era. But I'm no specialist. Its just the feeling I get reading it.
Last edited by Simon on Wed Apr 19, 2006 9:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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lizzytysh
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Post by lizzytysh »

From reading all this, it seems to me that "Beat" often seems to be perceived as being synonymous with "revolutionary" [not in terms of wars or uprisings, but as counteractive and in intense contrast to the status quo of established traditions and mores]. In that sense, Leonard's writing was revolutionary when considered in the context of literature regarding the societal norms of writing and behaviours. So, for lack of a more exacting term, some refer to him as being from the "Beat generation," as he came from that general time period. All these distinctions with regard to him and the others are, indeed, interesting. I like what Simon has said about the "brilliance" of Leonard's writing. Likewise, Leonard is the first to claim his old-fashioned nature and it has arisen in more than one context.

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Kerouac was French Canadian

Post by humanponysss2000 »

Although his parents or grandparents had moved to the eastern US ni search of work as did thousands of French Canadians

His sensibility is, in many ways, a product of his Quebecois background, Catholic upbringing, and also probably exposure to French surrealist poets. Spirituality and sensuality are mixed together in a special way in Kerouac and that's part of the fascination.

Something similar seems to be going on in Cohen's early writing: a strong surrealist streak. I think Cohen is a product of Montreal's unique combination of English, French and Jewish cultures.

And of course LSD. And we can't entirely rule out exposure to secret CIA experiments at McGill ")
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lizzytysh
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Post by lizzytysh »

And of course LSD. And we can't entirely rule out exposure to secret CIA experiments at McGill ")
Now, how did I miss that your implication earlier was that Leonard was not just aware of the experiments [the implication that I did get], but that he was perhaps a subject himself [the one I didn't get].

Leonard is definitely a unique blend. With three, short stories I've read of his, there seemed to be an element of surrealism going on in them. He's had many influences in his life, hasn't he?

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Post by tomsakic »

I think surrealism is spread ove rall his work - maybe from French poets, but I think even more under Lorca's model. Songs like One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong are pretty surrealistic (contrast of poetical images, from Eskimo to the doctor). That way of writing was the main device for Bob Dylan, for instance (most of his songs are simple rap of various surrealistic, confronted lines and poetical images). I think he followed Rimbaud's influence in that.
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more on experiments

Post by humanponysss2000 »

The impression I get was that everyone in the arts scene at the time was offered a chance to become part of an exciting new program, the Next Big Thing... and the film Angel pretty much documents Leonard on LSD during that period. He has never denied his LSD use. What I find much more interesting than the fact that "he took drugs" is where those drugs came from, who distributed them far and wide, and what the long-term effects on our culture have been.

In my jaundiced view, the Beats were exemplary victims. They paved a path for a whole generation to embrace a destructive lifestyle. I have no quarrel with that, except if it's all part of some much larger medical-military project ... in which case my sympathy is NOT with the Devill

lizzytysh wrote:
And of course LSD. And we can't entirely rule out exposure to secret CIA experiments at McGill ")
Now, how did I miss that your implication earlier was that Leonard was not just aware of the experiments [the implication that I did get], but that he was perhaps a subject himself [the one I didn't get].

Leonard is definitely a unique blend. With three, short stories I've read of his, there seemed to be an element of surrealism going on in them. He's had many influences in his life, hasn't he?

~ Lizzy
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Post by Simon »

For those interested, here is something on the subject of the beats/LSD conspiracy>>>

But LSD was a thing of the sixties. All through the fifties, the Beats used mostly Bennie. BL was published in 66. When was it written again? I don't recall just now. But what was the stuff in widespread use at the time it was written? Wasn't LC on Hydra when he wrote it, away from the american scene.

I haven't seen the film Angel you reffer to, so I'm probably missing key elements here.
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Post by Tchocolatl »

To reduce the beats to a pilot project on mind control with LSD is simplistic, and by this I don't say that you are humanponysss2000. No. Like you I think that we are spectators and somethings actors in a big show. For example this "religion" (understand: fight for markets and money) war right now (phew, I have to pinch myself to make sure I am not in the middle of a nighmare about that), in which Bush is starring (well Reagan ran out the spotlights for a while, so he is another "face" for "Mr. President"). Canada did not want to follow Uncle Sam? BaaAaad, baaad Canada... Look what it happened to it now : change of government (music... walk in round, turn to the right, and swing your companion). And now, next : the young Canadian soldiers killed in the war. With the journalist still alive (by miracle) to witness and write all over the place about that. They will end to succeed in making Canada follows, make CA army a "real army" not those usual boy scouts. No Humanponysss2000, I think that you are quiete right about the strategy of the shadow. It exists since the night of times, it still exists now. But. Not at this point regarding the beats generation. There is other forces in action than this one in the world. So.
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