Leonard Cohen and State College

Culture wars are culture wars, folks. Why cultural terrain must become, and remain, embattled: the human race, as usual, can't make up its mind, and is of two (specifically two) minds. I've written about my time in State College extensively, including a literary apprenticeship I did there. I lean, in these passages, on the French Symbolists, the Beats, and the Existentialists. Yet, as of late 1994, my adventures in the West Pattee stacks took me to a specific place, a massive one for me at the time, that I I have neglected to mention. As of the 1980s and forward, Leonard Cohen's primary reputation, has been as a composer of popular music. Pop tunes. Fair enough. It's just that, as of '94, I fell under the sway of Cohen's books from the 50s and 60s, including Beautiful Losers. The spell cast on me by the early Cohen books was fairly profound, and others around me were also compelled. Yet, I've now spent thirty years in a position cramped by Cohen's status as a pop star, so that I can't bring up his name next to Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and the rest. Leonard Cohen is a name robbed of an essential dignity. The media, also as usual, are culprits, and are only too happy to bury a part of Mr. Cohen's arsenal which could lend dignity to his enterprise. But, in a way there is no looking back from, I've placed a crucial early Cohen piece on P.F.S. Post in an attempt to dignify work done which deserves a dignified assignation.

When Mary Evelyn Harju and I visited Montreal in the early-to-mid Aughts, I couldn't not think of who Leonard Cohen had been there in the 50s and 60s. The summer afternoon we spent on the McGill campus was a kind of vigil, not exactly a seance but close, towards a recognition that here was a place where some serious work had been done. The Montreal that cries out in Beautiful Losers is about depth, memory, regret, and a visionary appreciation of language expressing, teasing out, all these things. It is eerie, to me, in 2024, how well the early Cohen material works on P.F.S. Post. It fits like a glove. And, while I do not dare to condescend to the entirety of the Leonard Cohen enterprise, I can't help think that I am returning an assignation to someone real: who Cohen was, as a young writer in Montreal in the 50s and 60s.It will be interesting to see, over a long period of time, if squabbles ensue, as to who the real Leonard was and who he was not. All I can say, from where I stand now, is that this Leonard, the literary Leonard who animated State College for me and others in the 90s, is more deserving of long-term accolades and recognitions than who he might've become later, as a pop star. I have written a good amount of pop music myself: I am not without sympathy for the motivations which compel that side of things. But books are larger entities in the world than pop tunes. I am prepared to build for Leonard, on that front, if I may.