A review by nickfourtimes
Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen

lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

[cw lewd language]

1) "The French gave the Iroquois their name. Naming food is one thing, naming a people is another, not that the people in question seem to care today. If they never cared, so much the worse for me: I'm far too willing to shoulder the alleged humiliations of harmless peoples, as evidenced by my life work with the A——s."

2) "The Plague! The Plague! It invades my pages of research. My desk is suddenly contagious. My erection topples like a futuristic Walt Disney film of the leaning Tower of Pisa, to the music of timpani and creaking doors. I speed down my zipper and out falls dust and rubble. Hard cock alone leads to Thee, this I know because I've lost everything in this dust."

3) "F. said: Of all the laws which bind us to the past, the names of things are the most severe. If what I sit in is my grandfather's chair, and what I look out of is my grandfather's window – then I'm deep in his world. F. said: Names preserve the dignity of Appearance. F. said: Science begins in coarse naming, a willingness to disregard the particular shape and destiny of each red life, and call them all Rose."

4) "We had been to a double feature and had then eaten a huge Greek meal in one of his friends' restaurants. The jukebox was playing a melancholy tune currently on the Athenian Hit Parade. It was snowing on St. Lawrence Boulevard and the two or three customers left in the place were staring out at the weather. F. was eating black olives in a disinterested fashion. A couple of the waiters were drinking coffee, after which they would begin to stack the chairs, leaving our table, as usual, to the very end. If there was an unpressurized place in the whole world, this was it. F. was yawning and playing with his olive pits. He made his remark out of the blue and I could have killed him. As we walked through the rainbow haze of the neon-colored snow he pressed a small book into my hand.

– I received this for an oral favor I happen to have performed for a restaurateur friend. It's a prayer book. Your need is greater than mine."

5) "Get your hand off yourself. Edith Edith Edith long things forever Edith Edie cuntie Edith where your little Edith Edith Edith Edith Edith stretchy on E E E octopus complexion purse Edith lips lips area thy panties Edith Edith Edith Edith knew you your wet rivulets Eeeeddddiiiittthhhh yug yug sniffle truffle deep bulb bud button sweet soup pea spit rub hood rubber knob girl come head bup bup one bloom pug pig yum one tip tongue lug from end of bed of lips multiple lost sunk gone rise girl head small come knob splash sunk lost-lick search nose help wobble hard once more lurk up girl knob bob bubble sunk in normal skin folds lab drowned lady labia up up appear pea bean brain jewel where where hurt hiding bruised?"

6) "Arm in arm, we climbed the streets that led to the mountain, Mont Royal, which gives its name to our city. Never before had the shops of Ste. Catherine Street bloomed so brightly, or the noon crowds thronged so gaily. I seemed to see it for the first time, the colors wild as those first splashes of paint on the white skin of the reindeer.

– Let's buy steamed hot dogs in Woolworth's.

– Let's eat them with our arms crossed, taking risks with mustard.

We walked along Sherbrooke Street, west, toward the English section of the city. We felt the tension immediately. At the corner of Parc Lafontaine Park we heard the shouted slogans of a demonstration."

7) "Spring comes into Québec from the west. It is the warm Japan Current that brings the change of season to the west coast of Canada, and then the West Wind picks it up. It comes across the prairies in the breath of the Chinook, waking up the grain and caves of bears. It flows over Ontario like a dream of legislation, and it sneaks into Québec, into our villages, between our birch trees. In Montréal the cafés, like a bed of tulip bulbs, sprout from their cellars in a display of awnings and chairs. In Montréal spring is like an autopsy. Everyone wants to see the inside of the frozen mammoth. Girls rip off their sleeves and the flesh is sweet and white, like wood under green bark. From the streets a sexual manifesto rises like an inflating tire, 'The winter has not killed us again!' [...] Spring comes to Montréal so briefly you can name the day and plan nothing for it."