Book of the week

Book of Cohen by David Cohen (Steele Roberts) $29.99

I well remember the first time I heard the music of Leonard Cohen. It was on the back of a ship ploughing through the Mediterranean. His gravelly rendition of that most haunting of love poems, Suzanne, remains firmly etched in my mind.

The same is true for David Cohen – except more so. The Wellington writer is selfconfessedly ‘‘Cohen mad’’. Leonard’s music and David’s life intertwine inextricably. The latter

even goes to the length of a pilgrimage to Leonard’s hometown, Montreal, and to his New York sojourn. David visits their shared tu¯ rangawaewae, Israel.

Yet David’s book is not just a star-struck hagiography of Leonard. It is part memoir, part travelogue, part meditation.

It is also, to a large extent, a conversation between Cohen and the reader. He gushes, leaps, stops and ponders, dances on and pins us back with his glittering eye.

Highly opinionated, he always has a strong view on everything, but particularly music. His views can be irritating, even infuriating, but they are always

challenging. His bias is, predictably, pro-Israeli.

At the risk of dilettantism, Cohen draws in a wide range of references. He locates Leonard within the context of the wide Jewish tradition, then triangulates his place in Western intellectual history, from Saint Augustine to Susan Sontag. From Sontag, he takes the amusing position that reviews are ‘‘the intellect’s revenge on art’’. His book would seem to belie that idea.

Dividing the book into chapters focused on Leonard’s albums, David uses each as a springboard for discussion. It does not – and this is key to our appreciation – depend

on our intimate knowledge of the songs, although that certainly helps.

Above all, David liberates Leonard’s songs from the singer’s initial impression as the ‘‘bedsit prophet of gloom’’. They are based on real loves, on Leonard’s sexual encounters, on actual travels. As David says, Leonard ‘‘unriddles the claustrophobia of a relationship’’. He sheds light, not darkens.

What struck me most, however, was not Leonard’s life, but David’s own journey. A high school dropout and Borstal survivor, as detailed in his Little Criminals, he is an autodidact. He argues passionately – maybe too much sometimes – but his arguments are always supported by the views of others. He has read widely and likes to show it, but the effect is illuminating, not ostentatious.

Just before the book was published, David received some stunning news: he had a sister. He wrote about this, and the background to this book, in

Stuff earlier this year. It is an astonishing tale, resulting in the book being amended and reprinted.

The book won’t be to everybody’s taste. But for the adventurous, the curious and the aficionados of late 20th century music, it’s well worth a look.

– Steve Walker

What struck me most, however, was not Leonard Cohen’s life, but David Cohen’s own journey.