Beautiful LosersOne of the best-known experimental novels of the 1960s, Beautiful Losers is Leonard Cohen’ s most defiant and uninhibited work. As imagined by Cohen, hell is an apartment in Montreal, where a bereaved and lust-tormented narrator reconstructs his relations with the dead. In that hell two men and a woman twine impossibly and betray one another again and again. Memory blurs into blasphemous sexual fantasy--and redemption takes the form of an Iroquois saint and virgin who has been dead for 300 years but still has the power to save even the most degraded of her suitors. First published in 1966, Beautiful Losers demonstrates that its author is not only a superb songwriter but also a novelist of visionary power. Funny, harrowing, and fiercely moving, it is a classic erotic tragedy, incandescent in its prose and exhilarating for its risky union of sexuality and faith. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
arms Aunts beautiful Beautiful Losers blood Blue Beetle body buttocks cabin Catherine Tekak Catherine Tekakwitha Charles Axis Chauchetière Cholenec confess Constipation cried cunt cure dance darling death dream ears Edith Edith Edith eyes face fingers French fuck GAVIN GATE girl GODDESSES Good-by hair hand happen happy heart History hurt Indians Iroquois Jacques de Lamberville Jesuits KATERI TEKAKWITHA kiss knees knew legs Leonard Cohen listen live long house look Magic Mary Voolnd mind miracles missed movies mission Mohawk Mohawk River Montréal morning mouth movie needle never night nipples pain Pierre Cholenec Pray prayer priest pulled Québec radio remember River saint Saint Lawrence River shadows Shhh shit shoulder skin smell smiled suck telephone tell thigh thing tiny tion tongue tortured treehouse trying turned Uncle village voice wart window young τὸ