The piece itself is spare and taut, chronicling the descent of the narrator following the arrival of his grandfather, who comes to live in his room at a boarding house. “A Ballet of Lepers,” the novella, is the most substantial work in the volume, an existential exploration of violence and beauty, love and cruelty, obsession and renunciation. The fiction all predates Cohen’s two novels, “The Favourite Game” (1963) and “Beautiful Losers” (1966). As Pleshoyano notes, “his early books of poems, “Let Us Compare Mythologies” (1956) and “The Spice Box of Earth” (1961) … in a sense bookend the works contained in this volume.” The stories were written in Cohen’s childhood home in Montreal and various other addresses there, in New York City (when he was studying at Columbia), and on Hydra, the Greek island to which Cohen decamped in 1960 (courtesy of a Canada Council grant). Cohen’s shift to music was years away, but he was already in the process of becoming an established poet. The fiction in “A Ballet of Lepers” was written between 19.

Uneven in places, and undeniably young (from an artist who always seemed prematurely aged and sagacious), it’s definitely worth reading. It is a relatively strong collection of fiction.

“A Ballet of Lepers” isn’t particularly revelatory nor is it simply an exercise in looting the archives. The question of value, however, is somewhat harder to answer. According to editor Alexandra Pleshoyano’s Afterword, “we know from Leonard’s letters in the archive that he tried consistently to have these works published.” Despite the fact that “consistently” doesn’t seem to have a time-frame attached, we can be secure in the knowledge that, at some point at least, he intended them for publication (thereby avoiding questions around intent and consent such as those still surrounding the publication of Harper Lee’s “ Go Set A Watchman” in 2015).Īs to the timing of the publication, the faithful Cohen fan (myself included) will likely answer, why not now? Any time is a good time for more from Leonard Cohen. When it comes to the new publication of Leonard Cohen’s “A Ballet of Lepers,” a collection of early fiction, including the title novella, more than a dozen short stories and a play script, the answer to the first of these questions seems straightforward enough. When faced with a collection of a writer’s early, previously unpublished work, it is natural to have some questions: Is it being released with the author’s consent? Why is it being published now? And, perhaps, most crucially, what is the value of these works? Are they revelatory in some way, or are they profit-driven barrel scrapings?

Leonard cohen young