DrHGuy is taking some time off from blogging to fry those other fish about which one hears so much, perhaps with a side of sour grapes and a hot potato or two.

In the meantime, readers are offered a powerful tactical tool, the Fundamental Troubleshooting Flow Chart, and the profoundly utilitarian philosophy it embodies.

The following content was originally published here on September 24, 2006.

The Fundamental Troubleshooting Flow Chart

The Troubleshooting Flow Chart

Problem-solving is clearly an essential skill, regardless of ones profession or socioeconomic setting. Thus, when I recently happened onto these versions of the Troubleshooting Flow Chart that depict this process at its most fundamental level, I recognized the opportunity and obligation to introduce them to viewers unfamiliar with the schematic and, more importantly, its powerful underlying concept.

The diagram at the top of this post (for best viewing click on charts) is said to have circulated on the internet before it was the internet¹ but is nonetheless certainly a distant iteration of the original.²

I first glimpsed a variation of this chart at a conference so long ago that I was young enough to buy into the speaker’s implication that he had created the diagram himself. Some time later, disillusioned of such foolishness, I recalled enough of the chart to develop my own moderately Bowdlerized version for a flowcharting tutorial I was presenting. That model is pictured below.

Troubleshooting Flow Chart

1. The internet did not arrive completely developed, like Athena springing full-grown in a suit of armor from the head of Zeus (I suppose a more accessible simile these days would be “like a Amazon.com order delivered by FedEx” but that gets tangled since a pre-internet Amazon.com would be an anachronism). The internet had a precursor, the ARPANET (The Advanced Research Projects Agency Net), and the consequences of its evolution from that beginning include some of the most beneficial, most cumbersome, most dangerous, and most creative aspects of the net. The Wikipedia article on this topic can be accessed at ~ Wikipedia: ARPANET ~
2. While the author of Version 1.0 will probably never be ascertained, my personal conviction is that Adam and Eve, after being cast from the Garden of Eden, paused, using accepted Quality Cycle methodology developed by their contemporaries, Deming and Juran, to reflect and review recent events with an eye toward performance improvement. The result was the prototype of the Fundamental Troubleshooting Flow Chart. In any case, it certainly fits:

   OK, what happened? We had the Garden of Eden, which seemed to work fine. Then what happened? Then we screwed with it. And then? …

And She Feeds You Constant Comment

And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China

Today’s post examines these two well-known lines from Leonard Cohen’s classic, “Suzanne,” to offer  insight into Cohen’s songwriting methodology,

Origin: In The Beginning …

Leonard Cohen’s songwriting process is an inversion of premise set forth in the opening verses of the Gospel of John.  John 1:1 begins

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

There follows an elaboration of the creation of all things by God through the Word. Then, verse 14 identifies this Word:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

The Cohen creation mythology, however, has the flesh becoming the Word. The content of “Suzanne,” like much of Cohen’s oeuvre, is grounded in the Canadian singer-songwriter’s personal experience, as Cohen himself points out in these two excerpts:

From a 1994 Leonard Cohen interview on BBC Radio:¹

She [Suzanne Verdal]  had a space in a warehouse down there, and she invited me down, and I went with her, and she served me Constant Comment tea, which has little bits of oranges in it.

From  Leonard Cohen: Inside the Tower of Song by Paul Zollo:²

It [Suzanne] is a miracle. I don’t know where the good songs come from or else I’d go there more often. I knew that I was on top of something.

… I was spending a lot of time on the waterfront and the harbor area of Montreal. It hadn’t been reconstructed yet. It’s now called Old Montreal and a lot of buildings have been restored. It wasn’t at that time. And there was that sailor’s church that has the statue of the Virgin. Gilded so that the sun comes down on her. And I knew there was a song there.

Then I met Suzanne, who was the wife of Armand Villancour a friend of mine. She was a dancer and she took me down to a place near the river. She was one of the first people to have a loft on the St. Lawrence. I knew that it was about that church and I knew that it was about the river. I didn’t know I had anything to crystallize the song. And then her name entered into the song, and then it was a matter of reportage, of really just being as accurate as I could about what she did.

[Interviewer]: Did she feed you tea and oranges, as in the song?

She fed me a tea called Constant Comment, which has small pieces of orange rind in it, which gave birth to the image.

Constant Comment: From Grocery To Sacrament

Some background information about  Constant Comment tea is helpful.

Constant Comment, a black tea flavored with orange rinds and sweet spices, was the foundation upon which  Connecticut-based Bigelow Tea Company was built in the 1940s and is today America’s most popular specialty tea.³

Constant Comment was the subject of a 1945 New York Times article, News of Food: New Tea Mixture Appears in the Market; Economy of Use a High Recommendation, by Jane Holt:⁴

Ruth Campbell Bigelow and Bertha West Nealey [are] both interior decorators whose enthusiasm for tea has led them to blend their own… an unusual and delicious brew called Constant Comment, which has just been introduced in city stores…. Unlike the ordinary sorts, it is so concentrated that a little goes a long way. For example, in preparing it, a scant half-teaspoon is recommended for three cups…. Several other varieties are in the process of experimentation in the laboratory…. The price ranges from 67 to 75 cents a [two-and-a-half-ounce] jar.

Constant Comment is not considered an exotic or gourmet item. According to a 2003 article in TeaMuse,⁵

[Constant Comment] was named by its creator, Ruth Campbell Bigelow, who developed the tea at her kitchen table in the mid-forties, allegedly using an “old Colonial recipe” as inspiration to achieve a more zestful flavored black tea. Why she wanted her tea more zestful is an enigma …

After testing it on her friends and receiving those “constant comments” of approval, Ruth and her husband David launched their company, Bigelow Tea, in 1945 to great and continued success. Constant Comment could have been called constant success as it remains the number-one selling flavored black tea in the United States. That such an ordinary product with a clinging, intense fragrance should achieve this rank is an amazement to this author.

Often designated as a “tea connoisseur,” Mrs. Bigelow was a few notches below having a sophisticated palate. What she did have was a keen sense about what would sell and an understanding that catering to the American public’s desire for “zestful” in fragrance and taste is a key to financial success. Constant Comment retains its huge appeal because it has a strong aroma (predominantly cinnamon, that feel-good spice that connotes hot chocolate, New Year’s eve eggnog, and Christmas all in one.) It also has the bit of citrus in its orange peel and “holiday” spices. The reason it is hardly a connoisseur-level product is that it would be impossible to tell what kind of tea is underneath all that flavoring. If anyone can determine if the black tea used is from a particular region in the world, they win the Lynn-Worthy Tastebuds of the Year Award.

… Bigelow Tea, which produces approximately 1 billion tea bags a year, (about 150 to 400 bags per minute) has 330 employees …

The company is a true American success story. It has not only carved out a particular niche in the American tea market, it has made it primarily on the foundation of one consistently produced product, added others designed with bright graphics, careful packaging, and consistent if mediocre ingredients.

To summarize, the tea Suzanne prepared for Leonard Cohen, the tea that inspired  those compelling lines, is a popular, widely distributed commodity,  developed and manufactured by a  Connecticut-based company, the chief gastronomic virtues of which are “consistent if mediocre ingredients” and “economy of use.”

And as for the tea and oranges “com[ing] all the way from China,” the customer service folks at Bigelow inform me that neither the tea or the orange rinds are imported from China. The black tea used is grown primarily in Sri Lanka and India; the orange rind is obtained domestically.

 The Transformation

Leonard Cohen’s preferred field of exploration is Leonard Cohen.

He eschews, in fact, the conceptual and metaphysical:

I think you work out something [by writing songs]. I wouldn’t call them ideas. I think ideas are what you want to get rid of. I don’t really like songs with ideas. They tend to become slogans. They tend to be on the right side of things: ecology or vegetarianism or antiwar. All these are wonderful ideas but I like to work on a song until those slogans, as wonderful as they are and as wholesome as the ideas they promote are, dissolve into deeper convictions of the heart. I never set out to write a didactic song. It’s just my experience. All I’ve got to put in a song is my own experience.⁶ [emphasis mine]

…most of the time you’re just scraping the bottom of the barrel to find any kind of voice at all. It could be a few words, a tone of voice, two chords together–it’s a ragpicker’s trade as I practice it; I don’t stand on the mountain and received tablets.⁷

Cohen possesses three qualities that come into play at this point in his songwriting.

First, he has the capacity to invoke what psychoanalysts call an observing ego. In oversimplified form, the observing ego is the part of  the self that can view ones own behavior as it happens with curiosity and interest but without judgement, thus allowing the toleration of  anxiety produced.  The observing ego has no emotional reactions, is not concerned about making decisions or changing ones life. It simply perceives the internal psychological movements. Leonard Cohen’s observing ego is particularly robust and can inspect his own behavior without guilt, defensiveness, angst, rationalization, or any similar feeling-states.⁸

Second, he is able, by intuition or intellectual deduction or some combination of the two, to recognize the potential of certain actions, objects, people, etc. that have been part of his experience to serve as elements in his songs.  In this case, he perceived in  the tea he is served by Suzanne something emblematic – and that, as he says, “gave birth to the image.”

Third, Leonard Cohen is a gifted wordsmith who is skilled in the mechanics of poetry. He can create lyrical imagery that powerfully and gracefully affects the listener.

And that’s how it works. Leonard Cohen, having detected something special in being served a rather ordinary brand of tea, artistically reconfigured that action into an image that conjures up, in those who listen to those two lines of “Suzanne,” exotic, oriental tones and intense sexuality, an integral part of the gratifying  experience of listening to the song.

 And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China

1. Transcript of BBC Radio 1 programme about Leonard Cohen, broadcast Sunday August 7, 1994, found at Speaking Cohen.
2. Leonard Cohen: Inside the Tower of Song by Paul Zollo. SongTalk, April 1993. Found at Speaking Cohen.
3. Bigelow website
4. Holt, Jane (1945), “News of Food: New Tea Mixture Appears in the Market; Economy of Use a High Recommendation” The New York Times, May 21, 1945, p. 16
5. Bigelow Tea: A Recipe for Success by Agnes Lynn-Worthy. TeaMuse: November 2003
6. Leonard Cohen: ‘All I’ve got to put in a song is my own experience’ by Dorian Lynskey. The Guardian, 19 January 2012.
7. Leonard Cohen: The Romantic in a Ragpicker’s Trade by Paul Williams. Crawdaddy: March 1975.
8. That Leonard Cohen can observe his internal psychological state does not, however, mean he will reveal that intimate understanding to others.  An observing ego can be used to protect secrets as well as set them out for examination by others.

The Thing Is Said; The Thing Is Done

On April 26, 2013, Heck Of A Guy published Monetizing Leonard Cohen’s Resumption Of Smoking At 80 Soliloquy, a proposal that Leonard Cohen’s stage routine about making his resumption of smoking at age 80 part of his show represented a product placement opportunity with the potential for a huge payout.

At the Winnipeg concert later that same day, Leonard Cohen added a detail to his I’ll start smoking again when I’m 80 monologue when, for the first time, he named the brand of the cigarette he’ll smoke: du Maurier.

Ah, it’s gratifying to have the value of one’s idea immediately recognized and executed with such alacrity.

2013 Leonard Cohen Tour Status Check

Today’s Leonard Cohen Regina Concert was originally scheduled for March 9, 2013.  The official notice of the cancellation and rescheduling follows:

Leonard Cohen’s March 9 concert at Brandt Centre in Regina, SK has been rescheduled to April 28. Due to an outbreak of the flu among several band members, Mr. Cohen has regretfully made the rare decision to reschedule the show. In addition to his concern for the health and well-being of his musicians, Mr. Cohen wants to ensure that fans are given nothing less than the highest standard concert experience that he has consistently delivered to audiences worldwide for more than 300 concerts over the past five years.

The next Leonard Cohen show will be held June 18, 2013 at the Palais Omnisports de Bercy, Paris, France.

Review & Photos From Winnipeg Free Press

First he takes a Juno. Then he takes the ’Peg.

Leonard Cohen may be at the top of the Canadian musical mountain, but he still knows his place in the universe.

The 78-year-old Montrealer kneeled on his prayer bones at the MTS Centre Friday night, pleading for redemption from a higher power and begging for forgiveness from an adoring crowd.

He was supposed to perform here on March 11, but the flu swept its way through his exceptional band, so the gig was rescheduled until Friday night.

The wait was worth it.

From Review: Cohen still a musical, lyrical force by Alan Small. Winnipeg Free Press: April 27, 2013. The full review, which ranked the Cohen concert “4 1/2 stars out of five” is available at the link as is a slide show of nine photos, including the two samples posted here, by Trevor Hagan.

Tribute To Fallen Workers In Song

The review includes a description of Leonard Cohen’s tribute to recently deceased Canadian folk & country singers, Stompin’ Tom Connors and Rita MacNeil and to country legend George Jones, who died the same day as the Winnipeg show, April 26, 2013.

In a 2001 interview with Mark Binelli, Cohen talked about Jones:¹

I listened to country as a kid. I could get WWVA from West Virginia, late at night. Have you heard George Jones’ last record, Cold Hard Truth? I love to hear an old guy laying out his situation.² He has the best voice in America.

In honor of Jones, Cohen played “Choices,” a ballad Jones wrote in 1999 following a car wreck attributed to drinking, his final alcohol-related incident. “Choices”won a Grammy for Best Male Country Vocal Performance.

“Choices” is one of three George Jones songs posted as selections at Leonard Cohen’s Jukebox, a series which features songs the Canadian singer-songwriter has specifically named and lauded in interviews.

• “Choices” By George Jones Is On Leonard Cohen’s Jukebox
• “The Grand Tour” by George Jones Is On Leonard Cohen’s Jukebox – Or At Least His Funeral Setlist
• “Cold Hard Truth” Is On Leonard Cohen’s Jukebox

Setlist: Leonard Cohen Winnipeg Concert
April 26, 2013

Dance Me To The End Of Love
The Future
Bird On A Wire
Everybody Knows
Who By Fire
Darkness
Ain’t No Cure For Love
Amen
Come Healing
First We Take Manhattan
Thousand Kisses Deep
Anthem

Set 2
Tower Of Song
Suzanne
Waiting For The Miracle
Show Me The Place
Anyhow
Lover Lover Lover
Alexandra Leaving
I’m Your Man
Hallelujah
Take This Waltz

Encore 1
So Long Marianne
Going Home
Closing Time

Encore 2
Famous Blue Raincoat
If It Be Your Will
Choices (Tribute To George Jones)
Different Sides

Encore 3
I Tried To Leave You

Setlist Source: LeonardCohenForum posting by joyezekiel

1. Q&A: The New Leonard Cohen -  by Mark Binelli. Rolling Stone. Posted Oct 19, 2001.
2. I also love to hear an old guy laying out his situation. Incidentally, George Jones was born September 12, 1931, making him only 3 years older than Leonard Cohen, who was born September 21, 1934. It was because Jones began his professional career at 16 and was singing on Texas stations in the 1940s that his songs could possibly have been available on radio while Cohen was still an adolescent. I haven’t been able to track down when Jones began singing at WWVA, but, according to allmusic, the first George Jones recording (a single called “No Money in This Deal”) was released in early 1954, just after Jones returned from a stint in the Marines, on a local Texas label where it received no attention. At that time, Leonard Cohen would have been 19 years old

The Key Correlation: DrHGuy Postings & Leonard Cohen Earnings

As ongoing readers know, DrHGuy has undertaken numerous projects to revise and enhance  Leonard Cohen’s lyrics, concerts, ad campaigns, and  merchandise (e.g., the development of the Leonard Cohen Bobble Head Doll), all with the goal of increasing profit

The success of these efforts is made obvious by the exponential growth in Mr Cohen’s wealth since 2006, at which time he was in financial free fall, his  savings having been wiped out by embezzlement. Serendipitously,  2006 was when DrHGuy began publishing posts about the Canadian singer-songwriter.

Over the years, DrHGuy.com and 1HeckOfAGuy.com became more and more Cohencentric and now host thousands of Leonard Cohen postings.  Over those same years, Mr Cohen’s net worth has grown to umpteen zillion gazillion bucks (Canadian).

How much clearer could the connection be?

The fiscal consequences of today’s DrHGuy proposal, however, far surpass  the bounty resulting from its predecessors.

From Stage Schtick To Cash

In an April 2, 2013 post, DrHGuy outlined the evolution of Leonard Cohen’s I’m going to start smoking again at 80 shtick from his claim to have smoked “millions of cigarettes” through his discontinuation of smoking in 2003, to his incorporation of his plan to start smoking again at age 80 as part of his stage routine.

The following rendition and rough transcript of the I’m going to start smoking again at 80 monologue is from the introduction to Anyhow at the March 30, 2013 Leonard Cohen Louisville concert. It differs in details but not in substance from the same story at other recent shows:

It is worth noting that the saga includes imagery (“the little Parthenon / of an unopened pack of cigarettes”) from Cohen’s poem, “The Cigarette Issue”¹ and segues neatly into “Anyhow.”

Leonard Cohen – Anyhow
Louisville: March 30, 2013
Video by Wirebirds (Henry Tengelsen)

This is the moment when I take my first cigarette

I’ll have waited until I’ll be 80 and I’m really looking forward to this moment. It’ll be part of the show. A young nurse in a white uniform, white lisle stockings, and she’ll be carrying a pack of cigarettes on a silver tray. She’ll walk across the stage – I hope there won’t be any untoward catcalls. The pack will be opened. It will be gleaming, like those pillars of the Parthenon – a beautiful Parthenon of Tobacco. I’ll take one of the cigarettes out of the pack and tap it on my wrist like I learned to do in those movies. She’ll light me up, I’ll take my first [inhales deeply] yeah, it’s gonna be so good. Before she leaves, I’ll say “Nurse, before you go would you mind tapping out a few of those bubbles in my i.v.

I’ll step back into my old self. I’ll begin to hear the strains of the music of the most beautiful jazz orchestra in the world. My thoughts will settle, they’ll smooth out. I’ll be able to develop some kind of charitable take on my shabby life. I’ll be thinking of the past.

the 2014 Leonard Cohen Where There’s Smoke Tour

Naturally, DrHGuy was compelled to do whatever possible to assure the Canadian singer-songwriter’s Tour featuring his resumption of smoking was successful.  Consequently, Heck Of A Guy published a post, 2014 Leonard Cohen Where There’s Smoke Tour, discussing the form such a tour might take and offering tactics.  For example,

Given the applause Leonard Cohen receives for his elementary one hand Tower Of Song keyboard solo, propelling a few smoke rings  at the audience would guarantee a standing ovation.

The Concept:  Leonard Cohen’s Resumption Of Smoking At 80 As Product Placement Opportunity

DrHGuy now reveals the greatest product placement ploy of all time.

Consider the following:

1. Tobacco, which has historically demonstrated a willingness to spend huge amount of money on advertising,² labors under  highly regulated marketing. Some or all forms of tobacco advertising are banned in many countries. In addition to governmental controls, many corporations and trade groups (e.g., Universal Pictures,   the Motion Picture Association of America, Google, Microsoft, etc) severely restrict tobacco ads. Tobacco companies have been particularly excoriated for campaigns directed toward youngsters and non-smokers.
2. Product placement can be highly profitable. Aston martin, for example, paid $50 million for its cars to appear in James Bond films.³ Of course, classic product placements for tobacco in movies and on TV are, as noted above, limited.
3. Celebrity endorsements have long been a successful advertising strategy. Even more effective, however, are celebrity-specific promotions.  The classic example of this sort took place in 1968 when Joe Namath shaved off his Fu Manchu mustache with a Schick electric razor.

So, how much might it be worth to a tobacco company to have the 80 year old poet-novelist-singer-songwriter-icon light up its brand on stage sometime after Sept 21, 2014?

But wait – there’s more.

Leonard Cohen has never been brand loyal. A quick survey of his interviews shows that he has smoked at least five different brands:

1. Vantage⁴
2. Marlboro Light⁵
3. King’s,⁶
4. Tekel (Turkish brand)⁷
5. Greek cigarette (not named)⁸

Yep, it should be a good old fashioned bidding war between the various cigarette manufacturers.

And, imagine using Leonard Cohen’s imagery for your cigarette promotion:

the little Parthenon / of an unopened pack of cigarettes

A young nurse in a white uniform, white lisle stockings

a pack of cigarettes on a silver tray

[after the first inhalation] I’ll step back into my old self. I’ll begin to hear the strains of the music of the most beautiful jazz orchestra in the world. My thoughts will settle, they’ll smooth out. I’ll be able to develop some kind of charitable take on my shabby life. I’ll be thinking of the past.

What else is there to say, other than a sip of wine, a cigarette and then it’s time to go …

1. “The Cigarette Issue” by Leonard Cohen from The Book of Longing, published in 2006:

   But what is exactly the same
   is the promise, the beauty
   and the salvation
   of cigarettes
   the little Parthenon
   of an unopened pack of cigarettes
   and Mumbai, like the Athens
   of forty years ago
   is a city to smoke in

2. E.g., the FTC calculates that tobacco spent $15.12 billion on advertising in 2003
3. Sold on film: product placement deals by Jess Brown. AOL Money & Finance: Nov 29, 2012.
4. Brother of Mercy by Mikal Gilmore, Spin (US), March 2002)
5. I never discuss my mistresses or my tailors, Nick Paton Walsh,  The Observer, 13 October 2001
6. Leonard Cohen Gave Me 200 Franc by Martin Oestergaard Euroman, Denmark September 2001
7. Look Who’s Back at 67: Gentle Leonard Cohen By Frank DiGiacomo New York Observer 10/15/01
8. Leonard Looks Back On The Past by Kari Hesthamar, Los Angeles, 2005

Say What?

First, let’s confirm what it is that Leonard Cohen says.  This video from the April 13, 2013 Halifax show begins 30 seconds before Cohen issues his signature promise to the audience.¹

Video by Mhwal

Indeed, I cannot find a single video or audio recording of Leonard Cohen promising, as a number of grammar bowdlerizers transcribe it,  “We’ll give you everything we’ve got.”²

The Power Of Elegantly Employed Vernacular

Simply put, Leonard Cohen promises “We’ll give you everything we got” rather than “We’ll give you everything we’ve got” because the former is more arresting and more earnest.

In his essay, Slang in America, Walt Whitman, accounted slang³ “the lawless germinal element, below all words and sentences, and behind all poetry.” He goes on to describe it as

an attempt of common humanity to escape from bald literalism, and express itself illimitably, which in highest walks produces poets and poems, and doubtless in pre-historic times gave the start to, and perfected, the whole immense tangle of the old mythologies.

And no other songwriter – and few poets – match Cohen’s ability to install precisely selected, unavoidably recognizable chunks of vernacular into his lyrics and his spoken word that powerfully impact the audience, enhancing and sometimes serving as the primary carrier of his message without disrupting  the sense  or the flow of the song or speech.

Rather than construct a dissertation on the literary mechanics involved in this feat (no one wants that), I can muster, I submit, a strong argument by presenting a few examples of Cohen’s use of the vernacular.  Consider which instance of the following pairs is more compelling:

• “Ain’t No Cure For Love”
  or
  “[There] Isn’t A Cure For Love”
• “and the Holy Spirit’s crying, ‘Where’s the beef?’”⁴
  or
  “and the Holy Spirit’s crying, ‘Where’s the substance?’”
• “from the brave, the bold, the battered
  heart of Chevrolet:
  Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. ”⁵
  or
  “from the brave, the bold, the battered
  heart of America’s middle class:
  Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. “

Thus it is, at least to my ear, that Leonard Cohen promising “We’ll give you everything we got” is grittier and more determined, more aligned with Cohen’s self-professed working stiff persona, and altogether more convincing than the more grammatical “We’ll give you everything we’ve got.”

The efficacy of  opting  for “we” instead of “we’ve” in that line, whether as a result of instinct or a calculated decision, is a prime example of Leonard Cohen’s capacity to both sculpt masterpieces of language and connect with his audience.

Update: For an alternative theory, see The 7-11 Heist Hypothesis and Leonard Cohen’s New Look

1. “We’ll give you everything we got” has been a promise consistently given at 2012 and 2013 concerts and was sporadically offered at shows before 2012 dating back to 2009.
2. Occasionally, “you” comes out as “ya,” but for now, let’s focus on we/we’ve. Besides, the  you/ya discussion is still being played out in the Hallelujah debate re “But you don’t really care for music, do you?” Vs “But you don’t really care for music, do ya?”
3. In this context, slang is a close approximation of, if not a synonym for the vernacular.
4. From Closing Time by Leonard Cohen
5. From Democracy by Leonard Cohen

The Leonard Cohen Corrections Agency

The Leonard Cohen Corrections Agency is a privately-funded organization dedicated to the rectification of inaccuracies promulgated by Leonard Cohen, no small task given the Canadian singer-songwriter’s admission that “I don’t want to let the facts get in the way of the truth.”¹

Cases already completed have ranged from cleaning up simple verbal typos such as Cohen’s misidentification of the decade in which he met the young Spaniard who taught him guitar lessons (it was the 50s, not the 60s)² to setting right mistaken references such as the name of the fast food chain that ran the 1984 “Where’s The Beef?” advertising campaign (it was a promotion for Wendy’s not Burger King or McDonald’s as Mr. Cohen stated)³ to spotlighting inconsistencies such as Mr. Cohen taking both sides in a debate about the relationship of his songs and his poems:

… I regard everything I write as being set to music, almost as if I hear a giant guitar accompanying me!⁴

I never did set poetry to music. … I got stuck with that. It was a bum rap. I never set a poem to music. I’m not that hopeless. I know the difference between a poem and a song!⁵

Life, Death, Art, & Misattributed Quotes

The problem begins in a 2001 interview ‘I never discuss my mistresses or my tailors’ by Nick Paton Walsh in the 13 October 2001 edition of The Observer, in which Leonard Cohen is quoted:

‘I don’t think much about [death], but in a certain stage in your life it becomes very clear that your time is not unlimited. Tennessee Williams said: “Life is a fairly well-written play, except for the third act.” I’m maybe at the third act, where you have the benefit of the experience of the first two acts. But how it ends is nobody’s business and is generally accompanied by some disagreeable circumstances.’

I thought this an appropriately pithy expression to warrant its publication as a “Words By Leonard Cohen” post, and as I am wont to do,  checked the source of Tennessee Williams quote.

And I indeed found several references to  that Tennessee Williams quote, but, oddly, every example save one mentioned not only the epigram itself and Tennessee Williams, but also Leonard Cohen offering the quote.

It turns out that the quote is actually worded a bit differently:

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

It also turns out that the source of the quote is significantly different; it was produced by Truman Capote rather than Tennessee Williams.

But pointing out a  mistake made by Leonard Cohen – while great fun – is not my primary mission.

Even at my most pedantic, I find it difficult to view attributing a clever remark made by Truman Capote to Tennessee Williams a signal of the end of civilization as we know it. ⁶

The remarkable thing, it seems to me, is that none of the interviewers or their publications checked the source of the quote.

Cohen, who is known for repeating successful phrases and anecdotes in interviews, has, true to form, used the third act line with other interviewers:

A Happy Man by Mireille Silcott. Saturday Night, Canada: September 15, 2001

“Tennessee Williams had this famous quote: ‘Life is a fairly well-written play except for the third act,’” says Cohen, flicking an ash off the table. “And I’m at the beginning of the third act. The end of the third act — nobody has a handle on that one. But the beginning — there is a certain relief for me here. It is palpable.”

Leonard Cohen returns to music by Robert Hilburn. Chicago Tribune: October 18, 2001

I remember something Tennessee Williams said about life being a fairly well-written play except for the third act. By this point in my life, we have the experience of the first two acts, but we haven’t really encountered what is in store in the third.

Even worse, this has become a popular quote writers have recycled, misattribution intact, into articles about the Canadian singer-songwriter.

The godfather of gloom lightens up for third act by Barry Egan. Independent.ie: March 23, 2008

Asked about death a few years old, Bono’s favourite poet answered with a wisdom that suggested that perhaps he was descended from the Kohanim after all. “I don’t think much about [death],” Laughing Lenny said, ” but, in a certain stage in your life, it becomes very clear that your time is not unlimited. Tennessee Williams said: ‘Life is a fairly well-written play, except for the third act.’ I’m maybe at the third act, where you have the benefit of the experience of the first two acts. But how it ends is nobody’s business and is generally accompanied by some disagreeable circumstances.”

‘I’m blessed with a certain amnesia’ by Jian Ghomeshi. The Guardian: 9 July 2009

In 2001, you said to the Observer that you were at a stage of your life you refer to as the third act. You quoted Tennessee Williams saying: “Life is a fairly well-written play except for the third act.” You were 67 when you said that, you’re 74 now – does that ring more or less true for you still?

The same line is also quoted in, among many others, the following pieces:

• Leonard Cohen: his wit, warmth and wisdom. The Telegraph: 14 Jun 2008
• The Rock& Roll Hall of Fame welcomes a renewed Leonard Cohen by Nate DeMontigny. Precious Metal: March 10, 2008
• Leonard Cohen. World Tour. Europe, USA. Through 13 November 2009, Las Vegas. Another Travel Guide
• The Color Orange and My First Cousin Jesse: Rediscovering Family  by Elizabeth Boleman-Herring. Huffington Post: March 7, 2013.

Still worse, the exact line as misquoted by Leonard Cohen and credited to Tennessee Williams, has almost certainly been lifted from a Cohen interview and been used in an article about Michael Jackson.⁷

So, now you know Truman Capote is responsible for “Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act,”  that, as far as I can determine, Tennessee Williams did not come up with his famous quote “Life is a fairly well-written play except for the third act,’” that Leonard Cohen makes the occasional error, and, that, apparently, one can’t rely on interviewers and publcations to check the information they receive before presenting it to the reader.

1. See Leonard Cohen Tells Sexologist About His Dog, His Mother, His Impermanence, Seduction, Men As Cocker Spaniels, and Rules Between Men & Women
2. Leonard Cohen: The Prince Of Asturias Awards Speech With Annotations & Commentary
3. Rarely Viewed Video – Leonard Cohen On His Atrocious Voice, Dylan, Lead Belly, Ice-T, Songwriting, Love, & Where’s The Beef
4. Leonard Cohen Seventeen. March 1968
5. “Porridge? Lozenge? Syringe?” by Adrian Deevoy, Q Magazine, 1991
6. For one thing, the two are easy to confuse. Capote and Williams not only shared many qualities but also knew each other and occasionally hung out together.
7. The boy in the bubble, the man in the mirror by Peter Murphy. Hot Press: July 3, 2009

The Leonard Cohen Collection At The University Of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

Ever wonder what’s in the University Of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library Leonard Cohen manuscript collection – and how much that institution paid for those papers? Well, here are a few items acquired by 1966, …¹

Then, as we learn from He’s Our Man by Stacey Gibson (U of T Magazine: Autumn 2006),

Almost half-a-century later, Canada’s most revered poet has contributed more of his literary past to U of T: a staggering 140 banker’s boxes that trace his life from bohemian writer to iconic singer-songwriter to Buddhist monk. “U of T’s been very kind to me over the years – and when I really needed it. They bought manuscripts when I was about 25 years old – and they did that twice – so I feel very grateful to the university and to the library,” says Cohen, 71. U of T archivist Richard Landon and his wife, Massey College librarian Marie Korey, packed the first 99 boxes during a visit to Los Angeles in 2005. Cohen and his partner and musical collaborator, Anjani Thomas, also sifted through the papers, which were housed at his daughter’s antique store.

The day before Passover, Cohen sang part of the Seder service to the U of T couple and regaled them with stories over dinner. (Cohen, who lived for many years at Mount Baldy Zen Center in L.A., said his teacher, Joshu Sasaki Roshi, taught him the art of contemplation. He, in turn, taught Roshi how to drink single malt scotch.) The newly acquired literary treasures include manuscripts of Death of a Lady’s Man and Stranger Music, and a handbound copy of The Spice-Box of Earth (inscribed “For Mother with love, Leonard. December 1965, Montreal”).

There is correspondence with poets Irving Layton and Allen Ginsberg, and photos taken at a studio session with Phil Spector and Joni Mitchell in the 1970s. There is also an abundance of fan mail that ranges “from the serious to the seriously disturbed,” jokes Landon.

For those interested in (modestly) more detail, a brief description of the contents of the boxes of his material can be downloaded in PDF format at Leonard Cohen Papers 1953-ongoing.

Leonard Cohen Archive pictured here at the University Of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. Photo tweeted by mkirschenbaum

Bucks For Books

To discover We now turn to Build a literary legacy for yourself: Smart aspiring writers have their archives ready by Robert Fulford (The National Post: 24 May 2005):

The US$2.5-million [Norman Mailer received from the University Of Texas for his papers] will no doubt be welcome in the Mailer household, where the word “alimony” retains its terrifying power, but it’s probably no more heartening than the US$3,000 Leonard Cohen received from the University of Toronto 45 years ago. Cohen was not yet a singer or novelist, just a good poet with no money and a flair for titles, such as Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956). But he delivered. He sent poetry manuscripts, galley proofs, letters from McClelland and Stewart, a CBC contract for a 30-minute program and anything else he could find. The $3,000 he received covered his expenses for a year on Hydra, his favourite Greek island.

Like most universities, Toronto can no longer pay for manuscripts. But Cohen and many others donate their files in return for a tax credit that can be spread, if desired, over several years. This means that collections at several big universities, notably McMaster, Calgary and Toronto, continue to grow.

Credit Due Department: Photo atop this post found at University Of Toronto Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library web site. No photographer given.

1. From A hot market for manuscripts by Robert Fulford. Toronto Daily Star: April 21, 1966.

Adam Cohen Accepts Award On Father’s Behalf

Veteran singer Cohen was given the honours for songwriter of the year Sunday, with the award citing three songs from his latest album Old Ideas — Amen, Going Home and Show Me the Place. Cohen also was absent, but his son Adam Cohen accepted it on his behalf.

“I know he has a deep fondness for the love that Canada has always expressed toward him,” Adam Cohen said. “He refers to Canada as the beating heart of his career.”

On Saturday night, when the bulk of the prizes were handed out, Cohen scored another major prize — artist of the year.

From CBC News