One of the best-known experimental novels of the 1960s, Beautiful Losers is Leonard Cohen’ s most defiant and uninhibited work. As imagined by Cohen, hell is an apartment in Montreal, where a bereaved and lust-tormented narrator reconstructs his relations with the dead. In that hell two men and a woman twine impossibly and betray one another again and again. Memory blurs into blasphemous sexual fantasy--and redemption takes the form of an Iroquois saint and virgin who has been dead for 300 years but still has the power to save even the most degraded of her suitors.
First published in 1966, Beautiful Losers demonstrates that its author is not only a superb songwriter but also a novelist of visionary power. Funny, harrowing, and fiercely moving, it is a classic erotic tragedy, incandescent in its prose and exhilarating for its risky union of sexuality and faith.
"Gorgeously written. . . . One comes out of it having seen terrible and beautiful visions." --The New York Times
"Leaves one gasping for breath as well as suitable words. . . . Cohen is a powerful, poetic writer." --Dallas Times-Herald
"Brilliant, explosive, a fountain of talent. . . . James Joyce is not dead. . . . He lives in Montreal under the name of Cohen. . . writing from the point of view of Henry Miller." --Boston Sunday Herald
One of the best-known experimental novels of the 1960s, Beautiful Losers is Leonard Cohen’ s most defiant and uninhibited work. As imagined by Cohen, hell is an apartment in Montreal, where a bereaved and lust-tormented narrator reconstructs his relations with the dead. In that hell two men and a woman twine impossibly and betray one another again and again. Memory blurs into blasphemous sexual fantasy--and redemption takes the form of an Iroquois saint and virgin who has been dead for 300 years but still has the power to save even the most degraded of her suitors.
First published in 1966, Beautiful Losers demonstrates that its author is not only a superb songwriter but also a novelist of visionary power. Funny, harrowing, and fiercely moving, it is a classic erotic tragedy, incandescent in its prose and exhilarating for its risky union of sexuality and faith.
Praise
"Gorgeously written. . . . One comes out of it having seen terrible and beautiful visions." --The New York Times
"Leaves one gasping for breath as well as suitable words. . . . Cohen is a powerful, poetic writer." --Dallas Times-Herald
"Brilliant, explosive, a fountain of talent. . . . James Joyce is not dead. . . . He lives in Montreal under the name of Cohen. . . writing from the point of view of Henry Miller." --Boston Sunday Herald
