People other than his devoted fans know Leonard Cohen primarily thru a few of his songs that became major hits, prominent among them "Suzanne", "Bird On The Wire", "Marianne" and "Hallelujah". Many others, including some recorded by other artists, such as Judy Collins and James Taylor, were also quite popular.
Most people are unaware that Cohen began his career as a poet. He published two books of poems while quite young, and also two novels, The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966). I read the latter, and was much impressed (it's still on my shelves). Here, I thought then, is a very fine new writer who's going to become rich, famous, and win lots of prizes. I looked forward with great anticipation to his next novel. I would have had a long wait. Apparently he never wrote another.
I was partially right, though. Leonard Cohen did become rich and famous. But he did it by turning away from writing. Both Beautiful Losers and Parasites Of Heaven, another poetry collection published in the same year, received mixed reviews and sold poorly. The novel gained nowhere near the recognition and sales it deserved.
In the early 1960s Cohen left his native Canada and moved to the Greek island of Hydra, where he lived a rather reclusive life while writing poetry and novels. The path his career took later seems to indicate that, sometime after the reviews and sales figures were in on Beautiful Losers, Cohen made a conscious decision to turn away from writing fiction.
Cohen had from his youth been interested in music -- having his own 'boy band' while still in his teens -- and become an accomplished guitar player. He moved to New York in the later 1960s and began singing some of his own songs in various folk venues. He came to the attention of an executive at Columbia Records, who signed him. His first album, "Songs of Leonard Cohen", appeared in 1967. And, apparently, he never looked back.
Shedding the 'reclusive' persona he had adopted as a poet/writer, Cohen began performing at concerts and on various other stages. In 1970 he went on his first tour, and while he couldn't fill football stadiums, as did The Rolling Stones, or Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street band, he did fill concert halls and auditoriums. He continued to tour intermittently, sometimes with other singers, until 2013.
If Leonard Cohen doesn't write another song, or sing it, he's had a very successful career as a singer/songwriter. Which is interesting it itself, since he has a voice that sounds like a foghorn coming from the bottom of a well, with a range about equal to that of a pond frog on a lily pad. Yet he has millions of devoted fans (me definitely included; I have almost all of his commercially produced albums, or access to them thru Google Play). It's the beauty of his compositions, the marvelous prose poems set to music, that entice and compel. They may sound better when sung by artists with great voices, like Judy Collins, but nevertheless Cohen has his own charm as a singer.
Leonard Cohen, as a very young man, demonstrated major talent as a poet, fiction writer and songwriter. Apparently he made the choice to abandon fiction writing for poetry and a career as a performing singer/songwriter.
If you, dear reader, are young, your final career choice not yet made, and you have more than one talent -- don't choose fiction writing. It's a work-filled life, pays poorly, and for the vast majority of us, brings neither fame nor fortune. The appeal of fiction (not including the A/V format) is slowly but steadily fading, losing ground to numerous other entertainment options. My advice, as someone whose writing career now exceeds fifty years since first commercial publication: Don't fade with fiction.
Photo Credit: Leonard Cohen @ Coachella 2009 by Redfishingboat (Mick O) is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
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