Tower of Song: A new biography retraces Leonard Cohen’s longings for the flesh and spirit

Klinitsky-Klein impressed upon his grandson a “vision of Judaism radically different from the polite theology on offer at the Cohens’ Conservative synagogue; its language of punishment and justice, of damnation and salvation, was not the sort that the gentlemen in the top hats spoke fluently.” Several reviewers decried the book as “filth”—and for the record, it did feature passages such as “Her freakish nipples make me want to tear up my desk when I remember them, which I do at this very instant, miserable paper memory while my cock soars hopelessly into her mangled coffin, and my arms wave my duties away.” In the late summer of 1967, a “nervous young artist” entered Columbia’s studios to record his self-titled debut album. The merger of Cohen’s prophetic Jewish faith with contemplative Buddhist devotion was an improvisation of sorts, but as Leibovitz notes, it came naturally to Cohen: “Like God, the pious must learn to be in loneliness while striving all the while to create the world around them.”