A voluminous account of Leonard Cohen as pained artist and superseducer. For die-hard fans only.
An exhaustive oral history of the Canadian icon, focusing on his sexual escapades.
Many of the stories in Canadian journalist Posner's lengthy book appeared in Sylvie Simmons' acclaimed 2012 biography of Leonard Cohen (1934-2016), I'm Your Man. But Posner certainly turned over a lot of stones in his quest to come up with fresh stories about the great songwriter and poet. Drawing from more than 500 firsthand sources, the author chronicles Cohen’s privileged boyhood in Montreal, his literary life at McGill University, and his career-making meeting with "Suzanne" interpreter Judy Collins. Though Posner touches on Cohen's love-hate relationship with his mother, his insecurities as a singer, and his brushes with LSD, Scientology, Bob Dylan, depression, and guns, the author seems most interested in keeping score of the number of women this prolific romancer bedded—and then documented in his songs. Though Posner frequently uses the terms "decency," "honesty," and "warmth" to describe Cohen, they don't always apply to his treatment of women. During his epic, on-and-off affair with Marianne Ihlen, which stretched from the Greek island of Hydra to New York, he forced her into having as many as five abortions, according to folk artist Julie Felix. "There were few 18-year-old women that Cohen failed to seduce, including virgins,” writes Posner. Adds Carol Zemel, a distinguished art historian who was a friend of Cohen's from the 1960s, "The womanizing was intense. It drove me crazy over the years. And all the men around him were treated to the women, whether they were married men or not." Such revelations could taint the image of the courtly gentleman that Cohen created for himself in his twilight years—and lower expectations for Volume 2 of this long-winded project.
A voluminous account of Leonard Cohen as pained artist and superseducer. For die-hard fans only.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-5263-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Canada
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
Highly instructive for would-be tycoons, with plenty of entertaining interludes.
Well-crafted memoir by the noted media mogul.
Diller’s home life as a youngster was anything but happy; as he writes early on, “The household I grew up in was perfectly dysfunctional.” His mother lived in her own world, his father was knee-deep in business deals, his brother was a heroin addict, and he tried to play by all the rules in order to allay “my fear of the consequences from my incipient homosexuality.” Somehow he fell into the orbit of show business figures like Lew Wasserman (“I was once arrested for joy-riding in Mrs. Wasserman’s Bentley”) and decided that Hollywood offered the right kind of escape. Starting in the proverbial mailroom, he worked his way up to be a junior talent agent, then scrambled up the ladder to become a high-up executive at ABC, head of Paramount and Fox, and an internet pioneer who invested in Match.com and took over a revitalized Ticketmaster. None of that ascent was easy, and Diller documents several key failures along the way, including boardroom betrayals (“What a monumental dope I’d been. They’d taken over the company—in a merger I’d created—with venality and duplicity”) and strategic missteps. It’s no news that the corporate world is rife with misbehavior, but the better part of Diller’s book is his dish on the players: He meets Jack Nicholson at the William Morris Agency, “wandering through the halls, looking for anyone who’d pay attention to him”; hangs out with Warren Beatty, ever on the make; mispronounces Barbra Streisand’s name (“her glare at me as she walked out would have fried a fish”); learns a remedy for prostatitis from Katharine Hepburn (“My father was an expert urological surgeon, and I know what I’m doing”); and much more in one of the better show-biz memoirs to appear in recent years.
Highly instructive for would-be tycoons, with plenty of entertaining interludes.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780593317877
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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