Beautiful Losers

I was once told that “art is the point where order meets chaos”, and that definition is one that kept coming back to me while reading this novel, as it is very concerned with the points at which opposites meet. The plot of the book concerns istelf with a nameless, faceless narrator, his complex relationship with his best friend F. and his wife Edith, and his increasing obsession with a 16th-century Iroquois saint. However, it's important to remember that this is poetry, so plot is relatively unimportant.

One of the most interesting elements of Beautiful Losers is that while the story of Kateri Tekakwitha, the Iroquois saint, is presented with crystal clarity, the story of the narrator and F. is told in a beatnik stream-of-consciousness that I found reminiscent of Burroughs. I think that Cohen is making a statement about nostalgia here - people yearn for the past not necessarily because it was better, but because it is structured, organized, and predictable. That's a strong pull, especially when contrasted with the pandemonium of choice that the present provides for us.

As it moves into its second part, Beautiful Losers transitions from the nameless narrator of the first part to F., who is composing a letter to his friend. In this we are presented with an opposing view - that the past was never as perfect as we made it out to be, and that the present is a source of opportunity as well. F. states this most clearly when he states that, even in the secularized, technological times in which we live, “God is alive. Magic is afoot.” Einstein said that he can live our lives as if nothing is a miracle, or that everything is a miracle. Cohen counters, with this book, that both of those statements are equally true, forming a yin and yang to one another.

An intriguing experimental novel from poet/songwriter Cohen. It's a very Leonard Cohen book, fascinated with Catholic themes of suffering and salvation, concerned with the outsider's place in Canadian society. Some of the more outrageous elements feel very much of its milieu (of Hunter Thompson, Tom Robbins, etc) but Cohen's poetic way with language elevates it.