1940 1941 1942	...The jukebox wailed.  He believed he understood the longing of the cheap tunes better than anyone there.  The Wurlitzer was a great beast, blinking in pain.  It was everybody's neon wound.  A suffering ventriloquist.  It was the kind of pet people wanted.  An eternal bear for baiting, with electric blood.  Breavman had a quarter to spare.  It was fat, it loved its chains, it gobbled and was ready to fester all night... The Favourite Game

"A Zest for Life" appeared in The Tamarack Review, Winter, 1964 (30).

A Zest for Life by Joan Irwin It's tough to fight your way up from the bottom, to claw for an identity and a place in the sun. But it's just as hard to fight your way down from the top, out of the marshmallow world and into reality. In his first novel, prize-winning young poet Leonard Cohen describes the struggle of a bright young maverick eager to escape the toils of the wealthy Jewish community in Montreal. Lawrence Breavman is the only son of an ailing financier (who dies early in the book without making much impression) and an old-fashioned Jewish mamma who is lonely and bitter because nobody needs her (and who is a brilliantly drawn figure). The book follows him, from the time he is a small boy until he is a young man in his twenties, through friendships and love-affairs to a growing awareness of himself and the world around him. It's a beautiful story, joyously physical, witty, and introspective, written with a wonderful surging intensity. A few poems from The Spice Box of Earth are included, but the real poetry of The Favourite Game is Lawrence Breavman's passionate, lyrical zest for life, for the beauties of molten brass and fresh fish in ice, for the individuality of people and places, noses and dawns. Incidentally, the dust-jacket says that The Favourite Game itself is love, which is not at all my impression. I know what I think it is; you'll have to read The Favourite Game to know what you think.

Once again, bundles and bunches of gratitude to Dick Straub for sharing his collection of Cohen treasures with us.

"Blossom Show" is taken from the book, Leonard Cohen: The Artist & His Critics, edited by Michael Gnarowski (1976). It originally appeared in Alphabet, No. 9, November, 1964, p. 78.

Blossom Show (a review of The Favourite Game) by Ed Kleiman Basically this novel is a record of a boy's growth into manhood. As the boy's life unfolds, one has the impression of looking into a peepshow at a Penny Arcade. One turns the handle, and there is Lawrence Breavman seducing the family maid in the cellar -- or is it Tamara in a rented room? or Norma in the woods? or Wanda in a boathouse? At his worst, Mr. Cohen repeats his situations without creating any new revelations, though an attempt is made to suggest that Breavman's relations with women vary from blind sexual responses to a love which works its own wondrous alchemy. All his experiences as a lover are, after much inner struggle, made to serve as an imaginative treasure-house on which Breavman the poet can draw for inspiration. Repetition could have been avoided if the contest between the lover and the poet, within the heart of Breavman, had been presented in a series of variations reflected in the lives of characters revolving around him. At the best, Mr. Cohen reveals a gift for creating outrageously comic situations and startling and illuminating metaphors. His ability to crystallize the inter-relationships of these metaphors allows many of the chapters to be read as individual poems. When the author suggests, on the last page, that all his characters' lives are like different kinds of blossoms springing from a common source, he displays an imaginative power which makes one puzzle all the more at the novel's weaknesses. They seem so unworthy of his talent, so unnecessary.

1946-1947

Leonard Cohen has mentioned many times the influence of the jukebox in his life.  The beautiful pictures of this "beast" are taken from The Wurlitzer website, which unfortunately no longer exists.

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