Book of Longing

Book Description

Internationally celebrated for his writing and his music, Leonard Cohen is one of the legendary writers, performers, and most consistently daring artists of our time. Book of Longing is his dazzling new collection of poetry -- twenty years in the making -- written on southern California's Mount Baldy and in Los Angeles, Montreal, and Mumbai. Following his highly acclaimed 1984 publication, Book of Mercy, and containing Cohen's own playful and provocative line drawings, Book of Longing brings together all the elements that have elevated Leonard Cohen's artistry to worldwide recognition.

Customer Reviews:

Words Cannot Describe.......2007-09-12

The Magnificent Talent of Leonard Cohen!
This Book is Beautiful & Magnificent in every Aspect!
One is in Awe with every page.

Falling Apart.......2007-08-31

The book and Cohen's writing and pictures are classic Leonard Cohen--wry, thought-provoking and sometimes whimsical. I love that. However, the book binding fell apart the first week I had it. The pages came out in clumps from the cover, making it very difficult to read. I keep it together with a big binder clip and have to manage several clumps of pages to read it...a hassle at best. Bad construction. Amazon gave me a 50% discount, but I couldn't even find a contact person for ECCO Books to let them know about it.

Interesting.......2007-08-23

This is a very interesting book of poems. If you like Leonard Cohen, you will certainly find this collection well worth the money.

Many thousand kisses deep.......2007-05-12

Transcending the sum of his arts, The Book of Longing is a miraculous surprise, commingling poems and songs, sketches and musings, the erotic and the divine in the poignant and profound way that is Cohen's saintly and sensual signature.

Book of Longing, by Leonard Cohen.......2007-03-09

For anyone who loves Leonard Cohen's music, this book is a wonderful collection of poems, drawings, images, rants, recollections and celebrations. Some of the material is in the film called Leonard Cohen/I'm Your Man, and like the songs, the book speaks of love and loss, pain and sorrow in his inimitable, elliptical style. Fun to read and easy to pick up and put down at any point.

Average customer rating:

Language and thought out of the ordinary
Poet of Pain
The Psalms, Updated
Cohen Connects With His Spiritual Heritage
stunning!

Book of Mercy
Leonard Cohen
Manufacturer: McClelland & Stewart
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Book of Longing
Beautiful Losers
Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs
The Favorite Game
Dance Me to the End of Love (Art & Poetry)

ASIN: 0771021828
Release Date: 1986-03-15

Customer Reviews:

Language and thought out of the ordinary.......2007-09-29

Because I had bought and read his latest book I decided to buy an old one. Since his songs are poems set to music this book is prose brought to the level of poetry. Short thoughts on his relationship to a higher being or muse or idea. Thought provoking. A pleasure just to read. The man has spent his life finding the right words and metaphoric language for his deep thoughts on love and meaning and life. Thank you, Leonard

Poet of Pain.......2007-01-30

Although Book of Mercy is written in prose, its soul is poetic.
To try to describe it I must point at the Moon -- there are no words
in me, experience it for yourself. My best friend's roots are Jewish,
mine are Catholic, we have evolved into an inclusive state of being,
yet Book of Mercy shows us the origins of our religions respectively --
althouth it is beyond either.

Here are some publisher's quotes: "An eloquent victory of the human spirit in combat with itself." (Globe and Mail)
"One of the most honest and courageous attempts in Canadianwriting to grapple with ultimate truth." (Books in Canada)
"Resplendent evidence of an arduous spiritual journey." (Maclean's)

Nobody else in our times reaches the tundra of the soul's journey as does Cohen. A wonderful love-version of the Star of David graces the cover.

The Psalms, Updated.......2002-05-28

Perhaps Leonard Cohen has never been a King, as was David, but the passion of his reflections truly invites comparison.

Cohen struggles with G-d, in the finest tradition of Judaism-- indeed, of all spiritual combat. So he both speaks to G-d, and he listens. His listening compels me to listen with my own feeble ears.

This is a book for all spiritual combatants, whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. Or any faith that is "of the book."

Cohen Connects With His Spiritual Heritage.......1999-08-24

Leonard Cohen, always the great poet, has done a masterful job of expressing the spirit of the Psalms in modern prosaic, poetic form. And like the son of the chief psalmist, Cohen has traveled a road that has taken him through many life experiences, only to come through them to arrive at the knowledge of that which truly matters. Book of Mercy is not only a literary gem, but a book of enlightening and thought provoking inspiration for Jew and Christian alike, not to mention that person we often refer to as a seeker.

stunning!.......1999-07-09

I love this book!!! Leonard Cohen is the arguably the most touching writer alive today. I always feel a real connection with his writing, and it always leaves me in total awe.

Average customer rating:

A Searing & Ecstatic Vision
Cohen the Novelist
this is hard to write... but not as hard to read as this book
Music
Entertaining but I am not yet convinced of its greatness.

Beautiful Losers
Leonard Cohen
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Favorite Game
Book of Longing
Book of Mercy
Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs
Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man

ASIN: 0679748253
Release Date: 1993-11-02

Book Description

One of the best-known experimental novels of the 1960s, Beautiful Losers is Cohen’s most defiant and uninhibited work. The novel centres upon the hapless members of a love triangle united by their sexual obsessions and by their fascination with Catherine Tekakwitha, the 17th-century Mohawk saint.

By turns vulgar, rhapsodic, and viciously witty, Beautiful Losers explores each character’s attainment of a state of self-abandonment, in which the sensualist cannot be distinguished from the saint.

From the Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews:

A Searing & Ecstatic Vision.......2006-09-15

"Beautiful Losers" merges the profane with the sacred to create an unforgettable, disturbing and wildly elated vision. Using masterful stream-of-consciousness, Leonard Cohen breaks the barriers: nothing is off-limits, nothing is too precious, nothing is too spiritual. Everything, including all forms of erotic acts, will be desecrated on these pages: but none of the writing is gratuitous. With every blasphemous thought and image, we are drawn into an ecstatic spiritual quest, such that in the midst of an insanely orgasmic scene, replete with blood, violence, debilitating pleasure, we find this treasure:

("O Father, Nameless and Free of Description, lead me from the Desert of the Possible. Too long I have dealt with Events. Too long I labored to become an Angel. I chased Miracles with a bag of Power to salt their wild Tails. I tried to dominate Insanity so I could steal its Information. I tried to program the Computers with Insanity. I tried to create Grace to prove that Grace e isted. ... We could not see Evidence stretched our Memories. Dear Father, accept this confession: we did not train ourselves to Receive because we believed there wasn't Anything to Receive and we could not endure with this Belief.")

At the center of the novel is the unforgettable "F", the great iconoclast, the sexualist searching for the divine experience, the man who betrays with joy, who gives and receives pain with bliss, who howls out his darkness in a search for light.

Readers who relate to "Beautiful Losers" may also be open to "Miss MacIntosh My Darling", "Art and Lies", and (of course) Satre's "No Exit." Still, to see such roaring poetry and prose bundled into a novel is rare, and "Beautiful Losers" is one-of-a-kind.

Cohen the Novelist .......2006-05-26

Having avoided Leonard Cohen for so long, lumping him with the "classic rock" I found annoying, I'm now in the midst of a serious Leonard Cohen Obsession by way of a Jeff Buckley cover and then this massively brilliant, inspired and dense, genuis, pornographic, and simply awesome novel. The language in this book is so alive, you would think it would grow flesh on the page. Any passage rivals Henry Miller, James Joyce, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. If you're looking for a plot-driven page turner, go elsewhere. This is the stuff of serious linguistic revelry, for people who like to read books that make you jealous that he wrote it, and you didn't.

Like: Days without work. Why did that list depress me? I should never have made the list. I've done something bad to your belly, Edith. I tried to use it. I tried to use your belly against the Plague. I tried to be a man in a padded locker room telling a beautiful smutty story to eternity. I tried to be an emcee in a tuxedo arousing a lodge of honeymooners, my bed full of golf windows. I forgot that I was desperate. I forgot that I began this research in desperation. My briefcase fooled me. My tidy notes led me astray. I thought I was doing a job.

Or: Oh God, Your Morning Is Perfect. People Are Alive In Your World. I Can Hear The Little Children In The Elevator. The Airplane Is Flying Through The Original Blue. Mouths Are Eating Breakfast. The Radio Is Filled With Electricity. The Trees Are Excellent.

[It goes on for two pages like this, beautiful, perfect.]

So, I would have to say that I give this an effusive six out of five stars.

And, I should add, Leonard Cohen is NOT dead! He is a Zen monk. Where are the novels that he was supposed to write for us? He was cheated out of his retirement fund by an ex-wife/manager. You should buy this book so he can retire comfortably, as he should, one of the great genuises of the English language that has been overshadowed by the filthy stupidity of the rock industry of America.

The end !

this is hard to write... but not as hard to read as this book.......2006-02-11

I ordered this and The Favorite Game, taking advantage of Amazons buy two and get a deal policy.
I didn't like this book at all. It doesn't feel as natural as Favorite Game, it doesn't flow like FG and doesn't delieve like FG.
I don't know what Mister Cohen was trying to accomplish... James Joyce or Henry Miller lost generation of Montreal?
The only reason I gave this two stars instead of one is solely on my adoration of the author.

Music.......2005-09-03

This book is a really long song. It's beautiful and flowing and drowning. It is the song of a siren luring you into the depths of rocks and flowers. Beautiful Losers is a great read whether in one day or a year. I recommend it and forcefully push it upon you as a must read.

Entertaining but I am not yet convinced of its greatness........2005-06-01

Beautiful Losers is impressive as a work of free association, of stark poetic imagery, of isolation and even, at moments, filth and loathing. Cohen deftly navigates the sublime as both beautiful, delicate and vauntedly tragic and as self-indulgent, filthy, desperate, despondent and ill. I admire his work for this reason, he seems able to strip his descriptions of any political or even polemical quality. And, in spite of this apparent "honesty," I never get the sense the world has lost its beauty or wonder in his eyes. It is disinterest, I suppose, that makes him delve so deeply into his subject. And what isn't his subject?

Catherine Tekawitha is a saint, an Iroquois who forsook her faith and became a Catholic. Her healing powers and capacity for suffering are well within the purview of the Catholic metaphysic. She is a mysterious creature not of the stone chapels and cloistered gradens of Europe but of the North American wilderness, a wilderness surrounding Montreal, city of the protagonist's birth and the place he calls home. This wilderness, both real and perceived, never ceases to suffuse the intellect and libido of the narrator. He chooses St. Kateri as his life's work, discoursing (in French and English) on her history and the many reasons she is both a saint and a legend. Her transcendent power is a source of desire for this young man who has married an Iroquois woman himself and appears to try and make St. Kateri a presence in his own conjugal bed.

But his wife dies. Commits suicide. She was long suffering, misunderstood and even neglected by her lover. Our protagonist remembers her in all of her potency before she took her own life. Is she his wife? Is she the reincarnation of Catherine? Who is she? And what does he want from her? From anyone? He lives in his cloistered apartment that, after his wife's suicide, becomes filled with filth. He seldom removes himself from this degradation and only a male friend/lover can bring him, moment to moment, out of himself.

He is searching for a teacher, longing for someone to show him how to forget himself. It is this search that makes you wonder whether all of this suffering and loss and wastefulness is self-imposed. The narrator is enraptured by St. Kateri's pain threshold, her self-abnegation, the way her scarred body heals itself upon her death. The mysteries of her flesh are many and this apparent detachment of body and spirit (is it detachment really? Cohen makes you wonder) leads her to sainthood, to communion. Does the narrator want the same? He lives in a world where his flesh is not entirely his ally. He has trouble admitting to himself he is bisexual and has a steady liason with his male friend from childhood. This distress, confusion and internal conflict appears to lead him toward this great suffering woman.

But is this a great work? I am not yet convinced. Like Joyce and Miller, Cohen has no trouble bringing forward a variety of stunning images. But is this style over substance? In Joyce I can grasp his intentions and am more easily led toward the development of his aesthetic. Here, I am more resistant. Is there a great story being told within these pages? The jury is still out on this question for me. However, maybe you will decide for yourself? I certainly believe this is worth your effort.

Four stars.

Average customer rating:

Germ of Genius
Classic collection

Selected Poems 1956-1968
Leonard Cohen
Manufacturer: Viking
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Book of Longing
Beautiful Losers
Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs
Leonard Cohen Anthology (Pvg)
The Favorite Game

ASIN: 0670002348

Customer Reviews:

Germ of Genius.......2003-01-24

This volume contains the full lyric of Suzanne, here called "Suzanne Takes You Down" and an embryonic version of True Love Leaves No Traces, a beautiful song from his much maligned album Death Of a Ladies' Man, here called "As The Mist Leaves No Scar" ( I also love the breezy pop version by Dead Famous People on the tribute album I'm Your Fan). The poem The Only Tourist In Havana Turns His Thoughts Homeward (1961) reminds me of his song "Stories of the Street" on the album Songs of Leonard Cohen that also deals with a visit to Havana. Queen Victoria And Me appears on the album Live Songs as just "Queen Victoria." The poem It's Good To Sit With People mentions the obscure 60's singer Tim Hardin (the same guy or a relative inspired Dylan's album title John Wesley Harding). I won't try to venture into literary criticism (my frame of reference is limited to Beats like Allen Ginsburg and Confessionals like Robert Lowell, John Berryman and Anne Sexton) but I love Cohen's imagery and I enjoy most of these. The book concludes with an index of first lines. This is a must for all Cohen completists.

Classic collection.......2001-12-15

Originally issued in 1968, after Cohen had released his first album and become something of a cult figure. People heard Suzanne and thought, "Oh, I hear this guy's a poet, too; I wonder what he writes..." This book was published to appease such sentiments. And it does a good job of it - covering all of Leonard's poetry books released up to that time, featuring the highlights from each, as well as a good slew of new poems. Although some of Leonard's best poetry (and lyrics) were published after the release of this book - and this omnibus itself has been rendered largely unnecessary due to the release of Leonard's career-spanning collection, Stranger Music (although this does contain several works that that doesn't) - it is still a good collection, and an accurate summing up of Leonard's career up to that point. Reccommended for Cohen fans, if you can find it.

Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs

Average customer rating:

Vintage Cohen
Happy Birthday to Me....
Fantastic Collection & Perfect 1st Cohen Book to Buy
songs and poems
One Of A Kind Artist

Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs
Leonard Cohen
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book of Longing
Book of Mercy
Beautiful Losers
Leonard Cohen Anthology (Pvg)
The Favorite Game

ASIN: 0679755411
Release Date: 1994-11-01

Book Description

For the first time in paperback--the selected work of the legendary singer, poet, and performer. Stranger Music presents a magnificent cross-section of Cohen's work--including 11 previously unpublished poems--and demonstrates definitively that Cohen is a writer of dazzling intelligence and a force that transcends genres.

Customer Reviews:

Vintage Cohen.......2007-01-27

More than once I've read poetry by favorite musicians and though, "Oh. Without music, this isn't very good." But Cohen was a writer first--the strength of his songs has always been the lyrics. This book is a collection of both poetry and lyrics (and a little poetic prose). It's vintage Cohen--dark and passionate and violent and melodramatic. It's about torrid love affairs and failed marriages and betrayal and war. If you like Cohen's lyrics, you'll like these poems, though you won't find any departures here.

Happy Birthday to Me...........2005-06-29

I had been introduced to Leonard Cohen in the late '80's through a high school boyfriend, and my roommate in college used to read his poetry when we had gatherings - when she read "Suzanne" aloud I realized for the first time how beautiful the lyrics were and, despite loving Cohen's music, I wanted to see more of his lyrics stripped bare so I could enjoy them on their own. I was in Austin on my birthday in th early 90's and was window-shopping the Tower Records on Guadelupe. Lo and behold, "Stanger Music" was on display. I remember it being expensive ( I was in college, $20.00 was a lot of money!) but heck, it was my birthday so I splurged. It's still one of my favorite gifts to myself and my all-time favorite book of poetry.
Cohen's writing reveals a lot of tenderness and soul while being very masculine. He writes about mundane things and makes them beautiful with his words, he observes everything with appreciation and is able to fully immerse himself in a moment - probably a quality honed during his monastic years. His poetry is very honest and unashamed, there is no fear of vulnerability. Some of it is deeply romantic and some is just downright sexy (but always tastefully so.) "My Room" is the most provocative two lines of poetry I've ever read. Truly amazing stuff, highly recommended.

Fantastic Collection & Perfect 1st Cohen Book to Buy.......2004-08-25

-
One of my top gift items: Turn people on to this book. It is a terrific, full anthology that includes much out-of-print material. The poetry is stylistically wide in scope (from how-did-he-do that perfect to sparse, intense, free-verse); it has unique, emotionally-driven language choices, rhythm and content. Its tenor is lugubrious, and its subject matter tends toward sex and religion.

This, as opposed to his individual books of poetry: The individual books are typically short and some are wonderful -- each is very different, thus liked by different tastes. If you don't own any Cohen books, buy this first -- it's got great poems (plus clips of prose, as from "Beautiful Losers"). The chapters are laid out by book and album title (lyrics are here, too); therefore, if/when you want another book after, you will know which one. One thing I don't like about it is the change in poem titles from their originals.

This books ends when Cohen is in his 50's, at least in the previously unpublished poems at the end -- so, before the monastery part of his life, though religion is well part of him (he is Orthodox Jewish and views his Buddhism as compatible with his Judaism). I'm not much a fan of his post-monastery work, and if I have one regret it's that I discovered Leonard Cohen within the past ten years, and never got to see him live.

Know, too, that Cohen was a published poet--well-known in Canada--before he recorded music. He began to play guitar while reading poetry -- it went over well!

songs and poems.......2004-03-19

Some people who listen to Leonard Cohen's music hardly realize that he was (or is) well-known as a poet for a very long time. There was a real tradition of songwriters who were poets, especially starting back in the '50s and '60s, like Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Jim Morrison, etc. I think Cohen's classic work however is "Beautiful Losers", especially excerpts like "All Right, Edith" and "Believe Me, Edith". It's in here. As well as lotsa poems and the lyrics to some of his songs that pass for poetry.

David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding heart"

One Of A Kind Artist.......2003-12-03

I would not be the writer that I am today if I hadn't discovered the works of Leonard Cohen when I was a 16 yr old kid.

Leonard Cohen's poetry is beatiful and scary and sensual. No one writes like him; he is truly one of a kind.

Dance Me to the End of Love (Art & Poetry)

Average customer rating:

Dance Me to the End of Love
Great song, lame irrelevant Matisse
Way to go again Leonard
Unique and highly recommended title
The best birthday present ever!

Dance Me to the End of Love (Art & Poetry)
Leonard Cohen
Manufacturer: Welcome Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book of Longing
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Book of Mercy
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ASIN: 1932183930
Release Date: 2006-08-15

Amazon.com

The Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen, known primarily for his mournful tunes of love misplaced, has produced a surprising message of hopeful passion in this playful picture book for grownups in love. The 21 Matisse illustrations sprawl luxuriously across the pages. Art, poetry, and the suggestion of erotic delights... what more can a lover ask?

Book Description

10 years ago, Welcome Books published the star of its Art & Poetry Series, Dance Me to the End of Love, a deliriously romantic song by Leonard Cohen that was brilliantly visualized through the sensual paintings of Henri Matisse. Now for its 10-year anniversary, Welcome is thrilled to present the entirely re-imagined and redesigned Dance Me to the End of Love. With the art of Matisse and the words of Cohen still at the heart of the book, the new look and feel of this Art & Poetry book is overwhelmingly beautiful.
Cohen's song is a lyrical tribute to the miracle of love, the grace it bestows on us and its healing, restorative power. Originally recorded on his Various Positions album, and featured in Cohen's anthology, Stranger Music, this poetic song is gloriously married to the art works by Henri Matisse, perhaps the greatest artist of the twentieth century. "I had this dance within me for a long time," Matisse once said in describing one of his murals. Dance Me to the End of Love is the perfect book for art lovers, song lovers, and all other lovers as well.

Customer Reviews:

Dance Me to the End of Love.......2007-09-01

It's hard to believe Matisse did not collaborate on this book. The perfect symbiosis of the poetry and illustrations truly dance you through to the end. I bought this book as a gift. I'm keeping it.

Great song, lame irrelevant Matisse.......2007-05-12

Dance Me to the End of Love is a supremely great song, but the sketchy Matisse paintings that promiscuously drape this book do nothing to enhance it.

Way to go again Leonard.......2007-04-17

Top quality. Really lovely. Nice for couples to read together. Great for the coffee table.

Unique and highly recommended title.......2006-10-08

Based upon an original poem by Leonard Cohen which is showcased through the distinctive artwork of Henri Matisse, Dance Me To The End Of Love is a lyrical tribute to the emotion of love and its power to heal broken hearts and broken lives. Gracing the picturebook collections of family, school, and community libraries, this Dance Me To The End Of Love is a unique and highly recommended title that will have a very special appeal to young children and their parents,

The best birthday present ever!.......2005-11-13

Theo my boyfriend, produced this book for my birthday in Feb 2004, it was the best present I have received so thoughtful and different. The words and illustrations compliment each other beautifullly, it is a short book but definetly one you will want to read over and over again.

Average customer rating:

leonard cohen anthology
Excellent selection presented well
The Singer Songwriter's Reference, A Must Have

Leonard Cohen Anthology (Pvg)
Leonard Cohen
Manufacturer: Hal Leonard Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Songbooks | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

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Similar Items:

Book of Longing
Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs
Book of Mercy
Beautiful Losers
The Favorite Game

ASIN: 0825612381

Book Description

This thick collection includes 43 favorites penned by legendary singer-songwriter, poet, novelist and iconoclast Leonard Cohen. Includes: Ain't No Cure for Love * Avalanche * Bird on a Wire * Chelsea Hotel #2 * (No) Diamonds in the Mine * Famous Blue Raincoat * The Guests * I'm Your Man * Jazz Police * Joan of Arc * Lady Midnight * A Singer Must Die * Sisters of Mercy * So Long, Marianne * Suzanne * Take This Longing * Tower of Song * You Know Who I Am * and more.

Customer Reviews:

leonard cohen anthology.......2005-11-21

This book is very good and does contain many sons which are difficult to come by, however it does not contain any guitar tablature as the description states.

Excellent selection presented well.......2005-01-31

The 43 songs in this book cover Leonard Cohen's work up through 1988, with his I'm Your Man album being the last one represented. While the 1969 book Songs of Leonard Cohen contained an essay and many photographs with vocal lines and guitar tablature from his first two albums, there are no photographs or extras in this collection.

This book presents vocal lines, guitar chords, and a grand staff for piano arrangements. The typography and layout are excellent, though the piano arrangements cause a number of songs to be run out for six, eight or ten pages. The 43 songs included represent a good cross-section of Cohen's most prolific period of songwriting.

The Singer Songwriter's Reference, A Must Have.......2000-06-26

As I have always been attracted to Leonard Cohen's mysterious poem and song writing; now I can and you too, experience the thrill of playing guitar or piano to Leonard's classic songs such as, Sister's of Mercy, Suzanne, Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye, etc. We can do justice to these compositions since chord charts are provided making each page in this anthology easy to read with melodies - accurately -chord matched. In other words, it's not a fake book. Lyrics, though not text underlayed, can be manipulated under first verses, especially if you are a guitar player and are not in need of the piano treble and bass systems. Regardless, you won't be let down. Make this Anthology of Mr. Cohen's life's work masterpieces part of your creative library. Ok, I've gotta go now, Bird on A Wire is hovering over my guitar.

Machers and Rockers: Chess Records and the Business of Rock & Roll (Enterprise)

Average customer rating:

Tries to write poetry, succeeds in slobbering
Author a fan, but not too accurate
How Leonard Chess built one of America's truly great indie labels
What A Mess
An excellent survey

Machers and Rockers: Chess Records and the Business of Rock & Roll (Enterprise)
Rich Cohen
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Story of Chess Records
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Lake Effect

ASIN: 039305280X

Book Description

A tour-de-force history of Jews, blues, and the birth of a new industry.

On the south side of Chicago in the late 1940s, two immigrants—one a Jew born in Russia, the other a black blues singer from Mississippi—met and changed the course of musical history. Muddy Waters electrified the blues, and Leonard Chess recorded it. Soon Bo Diddly and Chuck Berry added a dose of pulsating rhythm, and Chess Records captured that, too. Rock & roll had arrived, and an industry was born.

In a book as vibrantly and exuberantly written as the music and people it portrays, Rich Cohen tells the engrossing story of how Leonard Chess, with the other record men, made this new sound into a multi-billion-dollar business—aggressively acquiring artists, hard-selling distributors, riding the crest of a wave that would crash over a whole generation. Full of absorbing lore and animated by a deep love for popular music, Machers and Rockers is a smash hit. 12 illustrations.

About the series: W. W. Norton and Atlas Books announce the launch of a dynamic new series: ENTERPRISE pairs distinguished writers with stories of the economic forces that have shaped the modern world—the institutions, the entrepreneurs, the ideas. Enterprise introduces a new genre—the business book as literature.

Customer Reviews:

Tries to write poetry, succeeds in slobbering.......2007-01-04

What looks like a history of Chess records is a bloated, unwieldy tome that deeply disappoints. While you hope to hear about Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley and other Chess greats, you get Cohen's slobbering rambling.

Here's a typical sentence (speaking of a piece of art in the Metropolitan Museum, surely a necessary comparison for a book about a roots-oriented blues-and-rock record label in Chicago): "This man, as Avedon portrays him, is rough and angry, unsociable, clear-eyed, ancient and folkloric, a relic from another age, genetically no different than those who came later, yet touched by the residue of a great evil." HUH?

Fully half of the book is history of Chicago going as far back as the Civil War. This is a startlingly bad history that pretends to be about records and instead is a palette for palaver.

Author a fan, but not too accurate.......2006-03-24

Rich Cohen's heart is in the right place here, but he needs to get some facts straight, e.g., the band is J. Geils, not Jay Geils. I liked his previous effort, "Cooler by the Lake", but this needs some serious editing.

How Leonard Chess built one of America's truly great indie labels.......2005-07-13

These "record men" were a special breed. Men like Herman Lubsinky at Savoy in New Jersey, Sam Phillips at Sun in Memphis, Syd Nathan of King Records in Cincinnati and one Leonard Chess were the driving force in the evolution of the music we now call rock and roll. "Machers and Rockers" concentrates on Leonard Chess and tells the remarkable story of Chess Records. In the span of 20 years beginning in 1948, the Chess brothers, Leonard and Phil, would build Chess records into the second largest independent record company in America. No small achievement! More importantly, it was Leonard Chess who played a pivotal role in bringing the blues out of the fields and into America's cities. It was this development, perhaps more than any other, that would ultimately result in the emergence of what we now call rock & roll in the mid 1950's.
How did these guys do it? Why did these men succeed when so many others tried and failed? As author Rich Cohen points out there was really nothing terribly mysterious about it.
Leonard Chess was a savvy businessman who was determined to succeed in the record business. And God knows, he was not afraid of hard work. Successful "record men" would do whatever it took. Leonard Chess was actively involved in nearly every aspect of his business. He beat the bushes in search of talent. He signed the artists and produced the records. Then he would stuff thousands of records into the trunk of his car and hustle them all over the Midwest. For the indies like Chess there was little margin for error. A major miscalculation could doom a small record company.
"Machers and Rockers" is a revealing look into the underbelly of the recording industry in 1950's America. However, as other reviewers have pointed out there are several glaring errors in this book. Some pretty sloppy research if you ask me. The best I can muster is a lukewarm recommendation. Since there are a number of books devoted to the subject of Chess records you might want to check out one of those.

What A Mess.......2005-03-26

I've read a couple of Cohen's books and enjoyed his tough prose style...

In "Machers and Rockers", he lets the style get away from him. Reading like an out of control Nick Tosches or a less violent James Elroy, Cohen uses his tough guy style loose on a number of unrelated tangents that immediately doom this book.

Even worse for a book about Chess Records, Cohen commits a number of horrific blunders about the artists and their music. This suggests either a lack of familiarity with his subject matter, a lack of editing and/or fact checking at the publishers, or a lack of caring.

When the lyrics to Muddy Waters' seminal "Hoochie Coochie Man" are badly mangled near the start of the book, it sets a dagerous precedent. (Note - Cohen badly messes up the third line of the song) If he can't even get a simple lyric right, why should we believe anything else that he wants to tell us?

To use a yiddishism to describe this book - "feh"...

An excellent survey .......2005-01-04

Avid followers of popular music will readily understand the importance of Chess Records in the early to modern business of rock and roll production, and won't want to miss Rich Cohen's Machers And Rockers: Chess Records And The Business Of Rock & Roll, an excellent survey of the two immigrants who changed the course of musical history by recording such artists as Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry. Cohen's lively coverage tells how Chess rose to become a multi-billion-dollar business, aggressively marketing artists and riding the rock and roll wave.

Average customer rating:

Lovely
Poetic and amazing... just like the writer!
This is the place to begin Cohen's prose work.
Magnificent
Sadly ahead of its time

The Favorite Game
Leonard Cohen
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Similar Items:

Beautiful Losers
Book of Longing
Book of Mercy
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Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man

ASIN: 1400033624
Release Date: 2003-10-14

Book Description

In this unforgettable novel, Leonard Cohen boldly etches the youth and early manhood of Lawrence Breavman, only son of an old Jewish family in Montreal. Life for Breavman is made up of dazzling colour – a series of motion pictures fed through a high-speed projector: the half-understood death of his father; the adult games of love and war, with their infinite capacity for fantasy and cruelty; his secret experiments with hypnotism; the night-long adventures with Krantz, his beloved comrade and confidant. Later, achieving literary fame as a college student, Breavman does penance through manual labour, but ultimately flees to New York. And although he has loved the bodies of many women, it is only when he meets Shell, whom he awakens to her own beauty, that he discovers the totality of love and its demands, and comes to terms with the sacrifices he must make.

From the Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews:

Lovely.......2007-05-06

This is one of the best books I ever read, I prefered it to his beautiful losers although that was lovely too. I am a big Cohenite and definately recomend practically anything he has ever done, this book for example is glorious.

Poetic and amazing... just like the writer!.......2006-02-11

This is quite possibly my favorite book.
As a fan of Mister Cohen and the city of Montreal, I loved this book. Mind you this was written before his musical career. You can actually see some of the songs forming way before they were committed to tape.

That being said, I love Cohen's Montreal, the late night drives, the small little dives and parks.

Also this is Cohen's best expample of wrestling with his Jewishness.

Simply an amazing book and an amazing read.

If you like Salinger, Cohen's music or the city of Montreal itself, you need to read this.

This is the place to begin Cohen's prose work. .......2005-06-06

The Favorite Game is the book I should have picked up before reading Beautiful Losers. It is as if the stylistic experiments Cohen attempted in his second novel make far more sense now. However, having said this I must add that this is the more entertaining and enjoyable work.

This book is about romance. It is always entertaining to hear people talk about love, affection, adoration even fixation as being something only people can have for one another. Lawrence Breavman (the protagonist) feels this way about his life and the many persons and places that populate it. Lisa, Tamara, Shell and the city of Montreal, all are adored by this young man. He loves his best friend Krantz with whom he begins an empassioned dialogue unveiling the many layers of Montreal and Quebecois life oscillating around him in both the city and out in the Laurentian highlands. Breavman truly treats the world as "other." It is beautiful to witness.

There is mysticism in this work. The way Breavman notices the angles of sunlight on his beloved mountain, the colors of the surface of the Saint Lawrence and then the Hudson. The park that he walks through each night and protects. The color of the snow under the moonlight and the sound it gives off when he and a young Lisa are walking home from Hebrew School. Each of these things is as vivid as the young man's search for a partner, for sexual fulfillment. As in Cohen's later work, beauty and grotesqueness and filth coexist and are both the possession of his protagonist's soul. Breavman wanders endlessly through his city (Montreal) taking in every detail he can. His friend Krantz acknowledges -one summer night- that they would walk endlessly and never sleep if they were to follow Breavman's whims, his aesthetic eye, the contours of his persistent and ever unfolding dialogue.

This is a beautiful story. Like James Joyce, Cohen has taken up the development of the young artist's personal aesthetic sense (and appetite). Joyce made the distinction between "fetishism" and admiration for beauty in The Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man. Stephen Daedalus didn't want to possess beauty, he wanted to really learn how to admire it, appreciate it, recreate it if he could. Lawrence Breavman wants to appreciate beauty as well and he moves beyond merely desiring to possess what he sees. He may pause and admire the infinite little details of being in the world, but he learns to never possess but to engage. His dialogue is an engagement with beauty that, interestingly, supersedes his literary career. The young man, like Stephen Daedalus, is an emerging artist. But his dialogue is what Cohen cares about and his peregrinations, his questions and escapades are all the real art. Stephen Daedalus learned that he could recreate the world in his imagination and then place this on paper and by doing so, would have done his aesthetic duty, would have engaged the world. In Cohen's account, we see the artist as wanderer, as more than reticent observer. But he is no fetishist, he does not need to drown in sensual pleasures. Life is sensual for him. Life is enduring and eternal and he needs no false Gods to redeem him from a fallen state or from desolation.

Five stars. At times this work is breathtaking.

Magnificent.......2005-01-09

I was forced to read this book in my English 101 in college. Having only known Leonard Cohen by reputation, I was reticent of reading it but I did because I had to. At the end, though, I learned to appreciate this book because everything made sense and I started relating to his character. It's quite touching. Having seen Ghost World about a year after, it reminded me of this book, same basic, same principal of being disappointed by the poeple you care about and not being able to accept those changes. I suggest you read this book, it's a good read and a good intrusion into the mind of a little boy growing up.

Sadly ahead of its time.......2005-01-03

I enjoyed this book because it helped explain sexual deviance. It's even more relevant now that it was then. Sex is certainly not held to be sacred, or even valued at all by most people today. One thing I don't agree with the author on is whether this is a good or bad thing- he actually seems to think it's enlightened and for the best!

The Record Men: The Chess Brothers and the Birth of Rock & Roll (Enterprise)

Average customer rating:

Great book about Leonard Chess and the American experience
Nice, but something's missing

The Record Men: The Chess Brothers and the Birth of Rock & Roll (Enterprise)
Rich Cohen
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

Machers and Rockers: Chess Records and the Business of Rock & Roll (Enterprise)
The Story of Chess Records
Tough Jews : Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams
The Pop, Rock, and Soul Reader: Histories and Debates
Jook Right On: Blues Stories and Blues Storytellers

ASIN: 0393327507

Book Description

"Brilliant…the best book I have ever read about the recording industry…a classic."—Larry King

On the south side of Chicago in the late 1940s, two immigrants—one a Jew born in Russia, the other a black blues singer from Mississippi—met and changed the course of musical history. Muddy Waters electrified the blues, and Leonard Chess recorded it. Soon Bo Diddly and Chuck Berry added a dose of pulsating rhythm, and Chess Records captured that, too. Rock & roll had arrived, and an industry was born.

In a book as vibrantly and exuberantly written as the music and people it portrays, Rich Cohen tells the engrossing story of how Leonard Chess, with the other record men, made this new sound into a multi-billion-dollar business—aggressively acquiring artists, hard-selling distributors, riding the crest of a wave that would crash over a whole generation. 12 illustrations. Originally published in hardcover as Machers and Rockers.

About the series: Enterprise pairs distinguished writers with stories of the economic forces that have shaped the modern world—the institutions, the entrepreneurs, the ideas. Enterprise introduces a new genre—the business book as literature.

Customer Reviews:

Great book about Leonard Chess and the American experience.......2007-09-05

This is a wonderful book--extremely well-written--that profiles Leonard Chess as a symbol of the American-immigrant experience, taking us back to the Chess family roots in Poland and their coming through Ellis Island. While lots of books discuss how rock and roll was born of integration, this one looks specifically at how the Jews, as fellow outsiders, were critical in finding and recording African American artists. It also acknowledges the fortunes Chess made off the musicians and how that affected him and the company as the Civil Rights Movement took hold. I teach American Studies at the college level and will use this in my classes.

Nice, but something's missing.......2007-03-06

This is a nice book about the Chess family. However, it is mostly a short history of American popular music of which there are already so many. The history of Chess is short and not in much depth and you constantly feel you are missing something.
Nice to buy when the price is low, but really not that special.

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