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A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen, by Liel Leibovitz

A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen, by Liel Leibovitz

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A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen, by Liel Leibovitz

A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen, by Liel Leibovitz



A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen, by Liel Leibovitz

Best PDF Ebook Online A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen, by Liel Leibovitz

Brings to life a passionate poet-turned-musician and what compels him and his work.

Why is it that Leonard Cohen receives the sort of reverence we reserve for a precious few living artists? Why are his songs, three or four decades after their original release, suddenly gracing the charts, blockbuster movie sound tracks, and television singing competitions? And why is it that while most of his contemporaries are either long dead or engaged in uninspired nostalgia tours, Cohen is at the peak of his powers and popularity?

These are the questions at the heart of A Broken Hallelujah, a meditation on the singer, his music, and the ideas and beliefs at its core. Granted extraordinary access to Cohen’s personal papers, Liel Leibovitz examines the intricacies of the man whose performing career began with a crippling bout of stage fright, yet who, only a few years later, tamed a rowdy crowd on the Isle of Wight, preventing further violence; the artist who had gone from a successful world tour and a movie star girlfriend to a long residency in a remote Zen retreat; and the rare spiritual seeker for whom the principles of traditional Judaism, the tenets of Zen Buddhism, and the iconography of Christianity all align. The portrait that emerges is that of an artist attuned to notions of justice, lust, longing, loneliness, and redemption, and possessing the sort of voice and vision commonly reserved only for the prophets.

More than just an account of Cohen’s life, A Broken Hallelujah is an intimate look at the artist that is as emotionally astute as it is philosophically observant. Delving into the sources and meaning of Cohen’s work, Leibovitz beautifully illuminates what Cohen is telling us and why we listen so intensely.

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A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen, by Liel Leibovitz

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #748989 in Books
  • Published on: 2015-03-23
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: 8.30" h x .80" w x 5.50" l, .0 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 288 pages
A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen, by Liel Leibovitz

From Booklist *Starred Review* Leibovitz presents a thoughtful examination of the music of Leonard Cohen, the elegant Canadian wordsmith and musician, through a strong Jewish perspective. Tellingly, Leibovitz calls Cohen a prophet. He examines the musician’s life and work through the angles of Jewish eschatology, Zen Buddhism, Canadian poetry, and American rock and roll, as well as “lust and lucre.” Yes, there are biographical details here, but A Broken Hallelujah offers something else: a finely etched musical portrait of a complicated man—both highly spiritual and sensual—and the often exquisite music that he has created over many decades, austere and melancholy songs that dare to find beauty amid ugliness. Leibovitz himself has a distinctive voice and approach to Cohen’s work as he looks at the influence two Jewish scholars had on Cohen, the Canadian poets Irving Layton and A. M. Klein. He explores the evolution of Cohen’s public persona as the Poet, and states that the one theme that has consistently preoccupied Cohen is redemption, which he describes as “a discretely Jewish affair,” “a wholly Canadian affliction,” and unquestionably universal. “It was more than enough for a lifetime of work,” he concludes. A sparkling and psychologically insightful perspective on a unique artist. --June Sawyers

Review “A spiritual odyssey. . . . Thoughtful, ruminative . . . learned, eloquent . . . artful and precise.” (David Yaffe - Christian Science Monitor)“Lively, erudite and affecting. . . . Leibovitz makes a convincing case that Cohen has claimed his rightful place within the prophetic tradition that inspired him all along.” (Washington Post)“An elegant, beautifully crafted book that Cohen's fans will instinctively understand.” (Ruth Rosen - Truthdig)“Well crafted and captivatingly written.” (1Heckofaguy. com)

About the Author Liel Leibovitz is a senior writer for Tablet magazine and teaches at New York University. He is the coauthor of Fortunate Sons, Lili Marlene, and The Chosen Peoples. He lives in New York City.


A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen, by Liel Leibovitz

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Most helpful customer reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful. This slender volume has very specific concerns, which are rendered deftly through a number of haunting episodes By Bookreporter Liel Leibovitz begins the preface to his biography of Leonard Cohen with the following assertion: “This is not a biography of Leonard Cohen.” What are we to make of such a claim? Pure affectation? Perhaps. It’s certainly a bold opening line, and as a critic, it rather pulls the rug from under your feet; you no longer have a fixed lens through which to view the book.As one progresses through A BROKEN HALLELUJAH, it becomes ever clearer how this is not a conventional biography. For one thing, it is very much on the short side. Leibovitz does not cram his book with every scrap of information he can scour concerning his subject’s life; he does not present us with Cohen’s every adolescent pimple, nor do we see the poet/singer brushing his teeth at night or practicing his guitar in the mornings. This slender volume has very specific concerns, which are rendered deftly through a number of haunting episodes. Leibovitz sets out not to write yet another life of a musician, not really to see him as a singer at all, but to imagine him as a kind of Old Testament Prophet. “So what is the Prophet Cohen telling us?” he asks at the end of his preface. “And why do we listen so intently?”To a secular Jew such as myself, this is both an appealing and a suspect premise. On the one hand, Laughing Lenny is just the sort of prophet I can get on board with. After all, one does not recall Isaiah or Elijah writing about getting “head/ On the unmade bed” the way Cohen does. On the other hand, there is the nagging fear that this is another tired attempt to make religion “cool” to an increasingly secularized society. This gives Leibovitz a precarious road to follow, and he treads it judiciously.The religiosity of Cohen’s lyrics has been apparent from his first record. The archetypal stranger is in his words “just some Joseph looking for a manger”; in another early song, a woman clutches her lover desperately, as though he is “some kind of crucifix.” Despite the overtly Christian bent of these allusions (and many of Cohen’s other lyrics), Liebovitz does a fine job of setting Cohen up as a figure whose home is really amidst the leaders found in the Torah. The grandson of a Talmudic scholar, Cohen never renounced his Jewish identity despite spending long periods studying with a Zen Buddhist. In a few glittering moments, Leibovitz brings Cohen the prophet standing magnificently before us. At the disastrously anarchic Isle of White festival, he tames an angry mob of 600,000 people by telling them a “goddamn bedtime story.” Shades of Daniel taming the lions abound. As a child whose father has just died, Cohen writes a message to his deceased parent, wraps it up in his father’s tie, and buries it in the garden of the family home. It is a ritual no less moving than the chanting of the Mourner’s Kaddish.Inevitably, the grandeur of Leibovitz’s vision of Leonard Cohen sometimes overstretches itself. For instance, on Cohen’s decision to ditch the classical guitar in favor of those now hopelessly dated keyboard-generated backing tracks, Leibovitz writes, “If the guitar had been the instrument to write songs that played out like diary entries, the Casio was a portal to a higher plain of consciousness.” If spiritual transcendence were so easily achieved, it would be a wonder we needed prophets at all. Still though, overreaching is far from the greatest fault in a biographer, and this unusual synthesis of Jewish theology and pop music history makes for an amusing and thoughtful little book. Finally, Cohen’s message to us, as transcribed by Leibovitz, is one that is simple enough but quite beautiful. “All that humans [can] do” he writes, “[is] go about life, admit defeat, and try to find beauty in all that remained.”Reviewed by Frederick Lloyd

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful. Beautiful By AudreyLM A beautifully written, soulful work, worthy of its subject. I bought it on Audible so also had the pleasure of hearing it read by the author.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. for any Cohen fan. By Marge's Opinion It's great to ride along to explore his youth, failures, aging and successes. I am not a lover of poetry, but for his I convert. I think his poetry in music is the highest level achievable for listening and understanding. He thinks and writes in a manner so incredibly touching that one can almost experience what he lived in order to get to those lines. The author does a very good job of comparing and relating the music and lyrics of other performers with Leonard's. Mr. Cohen's fresh and unique creations help us be a little more insightful, clever and unusual in our own thinking. Reading about the evolution of some of the lyrics exposes how. I should have taken notes along the way because now I have to read it again to save some of the great lines Mr. Cohen has said and or written. Loved it.

See all 32 customer reviews... A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen, by Liel Leibovitz


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