So Long, Marianne: A Love Story by Kari Hesthamar
My rating: 3/5 cats
Everybody was beautiful and young and full of talent and covered with a kind of gold dust. -l.c.
for hardcore cohen fans, this book is a must, but for more casual fans, there is not much for y’all. it is only a 200-page book, and marianne doesn’t even meet up with cohen until about halfway through, and it is less illuminating-biography than casually anecdotal-snippets. also—be warned that as far as all the extra material goes: the unreleased photos and letters and poetry—the ARC has much less of this than the finished book, which i went out and bought after reading the ARC. not because it was the best book ever, but since the whole purpose of reading this book was for the extras, i wanted to have it in its completed form.
marianne left norway when she was 22 to follow her writer-boyfriend alex jensen to the greek island of hydra where she became involved in an expatriate-artist community, had a child by jensen, was abandoned by him, married him, was abandoned by him again, and then met leonard cohen. expatriate-artist communities like these are typically made up of people prone to drifting, and who have a flexible sexual loyalty—leonard ended up with marianne, axel ended up (briefly) with leonard’s girlfriend, etc etc.
axel was pretty much a dick. he constantly left marianne for other women, and for the pursuit of his craft, and was generally condescending and belittling towards her. here is an excerpt from one of his letters:
It is night on this little island of ours and two lamps are burning, it smells of them, and my head is tired and I’m thinking of Little Axel and you, and it brings light and movement in this tired brain. When I come to Oslo in February he’ll be walking, won’t he? And he’ll have a head of hair? God, I’m sitting here and it’s night and the lamps are smelling and I’m a pretend family man and have left so much to you. But what else could I do than to write this book? Everything else is just a waste of time. Comical and posturing. So I’m writing a book.
so, he basically just called her and the life they created together “a waste of time,” and every single thing he does in this memoir points to his selfishness and his carelessness with the feelings of others. have you ever heard of him?? i sure hadn’t. have you heard of leonard cohen?? yeah, you have. and that’s as it should be. cohen, by contrast, is shown to be ever the gracious gentleman—taking care of marianne’s child so she can go help axel out of a difficult situation, offering her support and love and stability. and a song, eventually. he even goes so far as to wear this outfit, which is a true sign of love—the willingness to look like a complete dork:
the book has some problems. it frequently changes tense—from past to present, sometimes in the same sentence, and that can be a bit jarring. it also jumps ahead of itself at times. leonard is described, in their early acquaintance, as being
polite and somewhat old-fashioned, raised in a traditional Jewish family in Montreal. Marianne recognized in Leonard the manners that she’d learned at her grandmother’s—the niceties that were rarely encountered among people of their generation. He was the kind of man who removed his hat when a woman entered the elevator.
considering they are still in hydra at this point; a place that doesn’t even have running water, this elevator scenario is not something that could have been experienced yet, although i do not doubt it comes up later, in montreal or someplace with more modern conveniences.
and just when they are planning to leave hydra the first time, she to go back to norway and he to go to montreal because he is running out of money, he buys a house there in hydra. which is strange, because i am pretty sure houses cost money, and if you are on your way out and won’t be using the house…i don’t know—there are just details like that that confused me and aren’t helped by the kind of vague structure in which this book is recounted. marianne and cohen drift in and out of each others’ lives for a long time, and the book is more of a “highlights reel” than anything truly illuminating.
also, in trying to learn more about this axel jensen guy, i read his wikipedia entry, and while this book talks about his leaving marianne to marry an artist named “patricia,” who later gets into a terrible car accident and requires extensive medical care for the rest of her life, in the article, it says her name was “pratibha,” and there is no mention of her having an accident. in fact, it states to opposite: that after he contracted ALS in the last years of his life, “His wife also used all of her available energy to nurse her husband until he drew his last breath in his home in Ålefjær.” and that some of his medical care was paid for by cohen. who is the classiest guy in the world. so i don’t know what to make of that.
so, yeah—if you are a superfan of cohen (and you should be) this book will reinforce everything you already know about him, and will give you access to some poems you have never read, and some letters that he wrote to his favorite muse. but overall, it’s a little aimless and spotty on the details.
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HOLY CRAP!!!
this is my first firstreads win in FOUR YEARS!!!!
DON’T STOP BELIEVING!!!
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