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Topic spans: 1961 - 1993
Leonard Cohen: Canada's Melancholy Bard
Poet, musician, novelist, ladies' man, monk, actor... Leonard Norman Cohen, one of Canada's most influential cultural icons was born on Sept. 21, 1934 in Montreal. Whether from a mountaintop at a Buddhist retreat in California, on the Greek island of Hydra or strolling along the streets of his beloved ville d'amour, the melancholy bard of popular music has delighted fans worldwide with his poetry, novels and music.
6 television clips
7 radio clips
Beautiful Losers praised and condemned
Broadcast Date: May 23, 1966
Leonard Cohen's second novel Beautiful Losers (1966) is described on its dust jacket as "a disagreeable religious epic of incomparable beauty." It would become one of the most radical and extraordinary works of fiction ever published in Canada. Upon the publication of Beautiful Losers, The Boston Globe declares, "James Joyce is not dead. He is living in Montreal under the name of Cohen." But not everyone is a fan.Back home, critic Robert Fulford calls it "the most revolting book ever written in Canada," and a review in The Globe and Mail newspaper describes it as "verbal masturbation."
Beautiful Losers praised and condemned
• Artist Harold Towne, who did the artwork for the cover of Beautiful Losers, called those critical of the book "vacuous… lint pickers and dandruff."• The book follows the members of a love triangle, their sexual obsessions and their fascination with a 17th-century Mohawk saint.
Beautiful Losers praised and condemned
Medium: Television
Program: Take 30
Broadcast Date: May 23, 1966
Guest(s): Leonard Cohen
Host: Adrienne Clarkson, Paul Soles
Duration: 11:28
Last updated:
Jan. 13, 2011
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13 clips in this topic . page
Radio
9:18
Feb. 27, 2000
Extraordinary writer of the ordinary, Carol Shields, talks about the challenges of living with breast cancer.
Television
4:50
Jan. 4, 2006
The grand man of poetry who hoped his words would heal a nation's ills has died at 93.
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Leonard Cohen on the road to singing sensation- The Guess Who: together again
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- Celebrating Canada's 'songbird' Anne Murray
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Beautiful Losers praised and condemned.
The CBC Digital Archives Website.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Last updated: Jan. 13, 2011.
[Page consulted on Feb. 14, 2012.]