Canadian journalist and author Michael Posner’s most recent books delved into the lives of some of Canada’s most high profile personalities. His first project of that nature was as a ghostwriter for singer/songwriter Anne Murray’s autobiography All of Me. Then it was an oral biography of revered and controversial writer Mordecai Richer called The Last Honest Man. For his next subject, Posner decided to continue with the oral biography approach, as he examines the life and works of legendary singer, songwriter, novelist and poet Leonard Cohen.
However, the life, works and complexities that were part of Leonard Cohen’s 82 years of existence couldn’t be packed into a single volume. Instead, the impressions of Cohen that were garnered from interviewing a total of 550 people who knew, respected and adored him became a three-volume work of oral biography. It started last year with the first volume that was entitled The Early Years, and continues with the recent release of volume two, called From This Broken Hill (the third and final volume will be published next fall).
“Leonard Cohen was a fascinating, complicated character who had a multidimensional life,” said Posner during a recent phone interview. “He was a poet, novelist, singer/songwriter, a Zen student, a studier of Judaism, and a romancer of women, as opposed to Richler, who was not only known as a great writer, but also an anti-social animal and a curmudgeon.”
Posner admitted that Leonard Cohen grew on him because of the different kind of life he lead, but realized there was more to him than others from outside his circle knew about. So in 2016, he decided to write a biography of Cohen, but somehow stumbled upon the oral approach.
“I started talking with one person who knew him, who recommended that I talk to another person because they had interesting stories about him, and so on and so forth,” said Posner. “The other biographies that were published about Cohen (Various Positions and I’m Your Man) relied on the conventional narrative format, but I didn’t want to take that position. An oral biography leads to a structure where people tell things how it was, whether it be wrong or different, and lets the reader decide.”
“I like the oral format. It gives the reader more voices and tells the same story, but from a different point of view; it’s like the narrative that Akira Kurosawa followed in his classic 1951 movie Rashomon,” added Posner.
In volume two of his epic Leonard Cohen oral biography trilogy, it covers his dark period between 1971 and the late 80s. Following his sudden fame that enveloped him from the mid-60s to 1971 (thanks to the success of his first albums and novels The Favorite Game and Beautiful Losers), Cohen experienced a period in his life when his albums and books met with very little success in North America (but were successful in Europe), which resulted in him falling into a deep depression.
“During that period, Cohen’s personal life was a complete mess, he wasn’t getting the same acclaim like he did during the 60s, and he suffered from depression. He was the person who was seen walking around in his famous blue raincoat, and that was as good as it gets, and his personal and professional life doesn’t turn around until 1986,” he said.
27.10 mtltimes (Page 01) 110621 – Leonard Cohen 
27.10 mtltimes (Page 07) 110621 – Leonard Cohen
Another impression the reader gets from volume two is that Cohen was quite the ladies’ man, and had a large succession of girlfriends and female lovers. “He was the embodiment of his book and album Death of A Ladies’ Man. He had a strong libido. He was a rock star with a fortunate position, which was that women literally threw themselves at him, and he didn’t have to work very hard at it,” he said.
Volume 2 of Posner’s oral biography trilogy of Leonard Cohen works so well in so many ways, because of the large myriad of people he interviewed for the book, plus the myriad of stories they tell of their encounters and friendships with him. Thanks to these multitude of voices from so many points of view and walks of life, the reader gets a multi-layered, mosaic portrait of one of the most legendary – and most complex – writers and musicians that Canada has ever produced during the latter half of the 20th century. Leonard Cohen was a multi-talented individual, but a complicated, divided soul, and thanks to Michael Posner and the more than 550 people he interviewed for this project, we get a much better, humanistic understanding at what drove the talented enigma that was Leonard Cohen.
However, Posner has this impression of Leonard Cohen’s artistic legacy. “As a lyricist and poet, he possessed great strength. Cohen was able to articulate different aspects of the human condition in a meaningful way. He was able to absorb and marry his rich skills with the melodies he wrote and composed. Bob Dylan may be the voice of our generation – and that’s true in many ways – but Leonard Cohen took that to another level, and became the voice of many.”
“Leonard Cohen was a towering great artist, and can be regarded as one of the few great Canadian cultural products. And as a singer/songwriter, he’s right up there with Dylan, Paul Simon and Jacques Brel. His work will last for a long time, mainly because it connects with people in an emotional, powerful, way,” he added.
Other articles from mtltimes.ca – totimes.ca – otttimes.ca
West Island personal trainer Joy Levy and the joys of fitness training – EnJoy Fitness
A trip to Cuba? Here are some important tips
