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A review by jenok
Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen
1.0
I hated this book. I think that Cohen was trying to do two things:
1) utilise flawed characters and experimental form to give us a picture of the human condition
2) challenge readers and literary norms with unsettling form and content
Assuming these were the aims of the book (I suggest them in an effort to be generous) I think Cohen comes closer to achieving the second aim, but really fails on both. Beautiful Losers sticks in the mire of its own ugly content, failing entirely to reach any meaning beyond that ugliness.
Let me explain why I am of that opinion, first considering Beautiful Losers as an attempt to show us what the human condition is like. The content of the book, as I have mentioned, is utterly ugly. There are occasional beautiful lines, but they are so interspersed with racist, misogynistic ramblings that their effect is entirely lost. In a different novel, this interspersing of beauty among the mire might indeed be suggestive of the human condition. Here, however, the narrative is so singularly located within the confines of an ego-centric and morally malnourished consciousness that this concept can't begin to take hold. This work is in no way representative of human consciousness, or by extension, the human condition. It is dehumanising to all but one small faction of humanity - to gross effect.
This "gross" effect may be a deliberate move towards the second aim: to challenge readers and literary norms with unsettling form and content. It isn't effective. Art that makes people uncomfortable is impressive when readers are uncomfortable because they are challenged. This text isn't challenging. It is uncomfortable because it is repulsive. To write a text that is ethically reprehensible without challenge to a dominant view or engagement with the issues at hand is artistically lazy and certainly cannot bring us any closer to understanding the condition that we live in. Sure, it might be illustrative of some of the *kinds* of people who exist in our world, but it doesn't touch on anything transcending those individuals.
It also doesn't make any great literary statement stylistically. Beautiful Losers has aged terribly since the sixties. It's crass sexual descriptions would have been radical for the literary scene of the day, but now come across as nothing more than what I suspect they always were - shock value for the sake of shock value. This doesn't do any artistic favours for the novel.
Ultimately, I just don't think there's anything radical about a white man writing about rape, race and paedophilia in an unblinking, unflinching manner. I don't deny the stark facts of these aspects of existence, or that there should be a place for expressing them in literature - but it's not here, and it isn't like this.
1) utilise flawed characters and experimental form to give us a picture of the human condition
2) challenge readers and literary norms with unsettling form and content
Assuming these were the aims of the book (I suggest them in an effort to be generous) I think Cohen comes closer to achieving the second aim, but really fails on both. Beautiful Losers sticks in the mire of its own ugly content, failing entirely to reach any meaning beyond that ugliness.
Let me explain why I am of that opinion, first considering Beautiful Losers as an attempt to show us what the human condition is like. The content of the book, as I have mentioned, is utterly ugly. There are occasional beautiful lines, but they are so interspersed with racist, misogynistic ramblings that their effect is entirely lost. In a different novel, this interspersing of beauty among the mire might indeed be suggestive of the human condition. Here, however, the narrative is so singularly located within the confines of an ego-centric and morally malnourished consciousness that this concept can't begin to take hold. This work is in no way representative of human consciousness, or by extension, the human condition. It is dehumanising to all but one small faction of humanity - to gross effect.
This "gross" effect may be a deliberate move towards the second aim: to challenge readers and literary norms with unsettling form and content. It isn't effective. Art that makes people uncomfortable is impressive when readers are uncomfortable because they are challenged. This text isn't challenging. It is uncomfortable because it is repulsive. To write a text that is ethically reprehensible without challenge to a dominant view or engagement with the issues at hand is artistically lazy and certainly cannot bring us any closer to understanding the condition that we live in. Sure, it might be illustrative of some of the *kinds* of people who exist in our world, but it doesn't touch on anything transcending those individuals.
It also doesn't make any great literary statement stylistically. Beautiful Losers has aged terribly since the sixties. It's crass sexual descriptions would have been radical for the literary scene of the day, but now come across as nothing more than what I suspect they always were - shock value for the sake of shock value. This doesn't do any artistic favours for the novel.
Ultimately, I just don't think there's anything radical about a white man writing about rape, race and paedophilia in an unblinking, unflinching manner. I don't deny the stark facts of these aspects of existence, or that there should be a place for expressing them in literature - but it's not here, and it isn't like this.