Endless Love (Second Quarter)

 

Endless Love

 In the second quarter of the book, we slowly start to understand the feeling the narrator has towards the other characters. He feels forlorn. “Oh, my love. Don’t you understand how long I’ve been in the kitchen alone?” This quote clearly represents how lonely and abandoned the character feels. Indeed, he misses Edith and F. and he doesn’t think Edith really committed suicide. This passage is all about the sadness and loneliness the unnamed character feels. He says, “Thank you F. Thank you, my lover. When will I be able to see the world without you, my dear?” This sentence demonstrates how difficult it is for the main character to live alone. The narrator expresses this feeling by saying, “I NEED YOU, F.” repeatedly.  A lot of flashbacks are presented in this quarter and can explain the nostalgia that the main character feels about his past.  

The image below represents the feeling of mourning and isolation awakened after the loss of his loved one.

 

The Beginning of Everything (the First Quarter)

The First Quarter 

The story of the novel called ‘’ Beautiful Losers’’ starts off as an illusion, it tells the story of Catherine Tekakwitha, of how she came to be the Saint that she is today. As the story goes on, we learn more about the characters in the book, we learn of the unnamed narrator, his beloved friend F. who may or may not exist, and of his darling wife Edith. But as the story continues, we learn that everything may not be as it seems, we discover the terrible things that happened to Edith in her youth and how she came to take her own life. Her dear husband, the unnamed narrator, has a very hard time believing that his beloved simply took her own life. He begins a little investigation, to discover the secrets that she was keeping from him. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t have secrets of his own… During the first quarter of this book, he uses the expression: ‘’ F. does Edith know that we are Fairies?’’ Which means homosexual in their time, meaning that he kept things from her too. As for the rest, you’ll just have to read the rest of the book and discover for yourself…

This picture represents the major events that happened in the first quarter of the book. The suicide of Edith, which has affected the rest of the book.

Beautiful Losers: Time Period and Socio-Economic Realisation

Beautiful Losers is a  novel that was published in the year 1966 which, today, is over 54 years ago. A lot of things happened in the sixties: a lot of women started building a place for themselves in their society. Even if they still had to do the things that were considered to be "women tasks" ( Cleansing up, making dinner, taking care of the children), they still manage to rank higher in the social status.  The sixties were a moment of transformation and innovation for little Canada, especially for the city of Montréal who hosted the  World Expo '67. Montréal was now on the map. The metropole welcomed millions of visitors and with visitors came innovation: the underground metro, or the "Quiet Revolution". This helped to put some distance between religion and politics. The churches lost their power over Canadians and science took over. The middle class, who we assume the main characters are from, became richer and got a better quality of life. We can see that the main character and his friends are able to afford inessential things such as nail polish for a reproduction of the acropolis made in plaster. We also noticed that the main character, whose name is not revealed, is quite educated. He was able to receive a proper education. 

    As for the setting of the story, there is no actual statement of a date in the book, however, it is revealed that the location in which the book takes place is the city of Montréal, Québec. The author leaves us completely blind to the aspect of time and confuses us by shifting from past to present. He uses flashbacks to throw us off completely of what is now and what is in the past. In other works of fiction, when the author doesn't give us a date, we assume the story takes place in the current time. That is why we assumed Beautiful Losers takes place in the sixties. We confirmed our assumption, thanks to some clues splintered in the novel: the fact that elevators were used in the book or that food delivery is accessible for our characters (chapter five). The characters also state that they were able to watch Hollywood movies, but this industry only emerged in the sixties in Québec. This confirms our previous assumption: the novel took place not so long ago, precisely in the sixties.

    An important aspect of the novel would be the story of the first nations. Leonard Cohen acknowledges Canada's flaws and exposes how the first nations were treated. How foreigners stole the land of the natives and proceeded to convert their people to a more common lifestyle and how they were treated as savages and not as humans being.

     As we said in the previous blog post, Cohen was in Greece for a short period of time.  When he came back to Québec, he learned about the thought of separating the country. This political agitation inspired some themes in Beautiful Losers. Themes like religion and mysticism were approach in this text. In conclusion, this book was written in a period of time in which a lot of events happened and those events may have inspired Cohen during his writing of the novel. 

Leonard Cohen (Biography of the Author)

Leonard Cohen

 Can you think of a single Canadian who has been a novelist, a writer, a singer, a songwriter, a painter and a poet? I can, and his name is Leonard Cohen. 

Born on September 21, 1934, in Westmount, in Quebec, Leonard Cohen is Marsha Klonitsky's son. His grandfather on his father's side, Lyon Cohen was the founding president of the Canadian Jewish Congress. His parents gave him the Jewish name “Eliezer” which means “God's help”. His father was Nathan Bernard Cohen (1891-1944). He owned a substantial clothing store. Also, he died when Leonard was only 9 years old, this strong event has marked his childhood forever. 

 

Cohen once described his childhood by saying “I had a very Messianic childhood”. What he meant by “Messianic” is that he is the savior of a group of young people in a person’s life. Ever since he was a child, people would tell him that he was a descendant of Aaron. Aaron was the elder brother of Moses and the younger brother of Miriam, two very important people who lived in Ancient Egypt. Cohen attended Roslyn Elementary School and completed seventh grade through ninth grade at Herzliah High school where his literary mentor Irvin Layton taught. In 1948, he transferred to Westmount High School where he studied music and poetry. However, while he was at school he didn’t just study music and poetry, he took part in other activities such as photography, cheerleading, the yearbook staff, etc. While starring in the school theatre program, he taught himself how to play the guitar and started a group called “Buckskin Boys”. After having lessons from a Spanish guitar player, he switched to classical guitar. During his high school years, Cohen took an interest in Federico Garcia Lorca's work, a famous poet. Cohen then pursued his studies at Mc Gill University where he published his first poem in a magazine, the CIV. At the time, his literature inspirations were William Butler Yeats, Irving Layton and many more. Not even a year after he graduated from Mc Gill with a bachelor's degree, he published his first official book of poetry titled “Let Us Compare Mythology” and three years later, in 1959, he published “The Spice Box of Earth” that brought him a lot of popularity. That same year, he made a deal with the publishing company McClelland & Stewart. They published his poetry and his novels until his death. This arrangement allowed Cohen to obtain two million dollars. He wrote this poetry book while he lived in Greece, on Hydra Island on which he stayed for seven years, living alongside many other artists. 

During this time, he also wrote the famous novel “Beautiful Losers”, but what some people never knew, is that he was in a deep depression at the time. He suffered from clinical depression, a disorder his mother also fought against for about 50 years. But, while he lived on the island, he also met Marianne Ihlen who became one of his partners. She was his muse and inspired him to write the song “So long, Marianne” who was released on his first album in 1967, “Songs of Leonard Cohen”. He eventually left the island to pursue his career in other aspects such as music. Throughout his life, Cohen wrote many novels, poetry and about 23 albums of music, but he also did some visual art such as drawing and painting. Some of his drawings were even used as covers for his albums and in 2010, in Montreal, an exposition of his work will be created. When he was in his thirty, he met Suzanne Elrod who will become the mother of his two children; Adam Cohen and Lorca Cohen.

 

In 2004, soon before he was going to retire, his daughter Lorca realized that a lot of money had disappeared from his account. They later found out that his manager, Kelly Lynch, who has been working under him for 17 years, had stolen about five million dollars, and he decided to sue her. In 2006 the court ordered her to pay Cohen 9.5 million dollars in damage, but she was never able to repay the money. Soon after she got fired, she started harassing the artist by sending him hundreds of voice messages and long e-mails that could reach 50 pages, in which she would threaten him or his family. As a result of her behavior, she was sent to jail for 18 months in 2012.

 

Leonard Cohen was truly an amazing artist; he dedicated his life to his work, creating content that made him rich and popular and for which he received many prized such as the Juno award for the public’s choice, artist of the year, the album of the year and many others. He also received the Grammy award for lifetime achievement award, for the best album of the year and for the best rock performance. His work of literature also got many prizes. He was particularly proud of the award he received in Quebec for the literary competition since he was able to obtain it even if it was during a very difficult period of his life. 

 

Sadly, every good thing has an end, the famous artist took his last breath in 2016, in Los Angeles, California. The great Leonard Cohen will always be remembered for his amazing work.