Leonard Cohen: The Man Who Saw the Angels Fall Audiobook By Christophe Lebold cover art

Leonard Cohen: The Man Who Saw the Angels Fall

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Leonard Cohen: The Man Who Saw the Angels Fall

By: Christophe Lebold
Narrated by: Vlasta Vrana
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Leonard Cohen has aimed high: to be all Jewish heroes at once. Like Jacob, he struggled with angels. Like David, he sang psalms and seduced women. But he never ceased doing what he did best: going from city to city and reviving our hearts. Leonard Cohen: The Man Who Saw the Angels Fall follows the singer’s cosmopolitan life from Montreal and New York to the Greek island of Hydra and examines his perpetual dialogues with himself, God, and avalanches.

We see how six decades of radiant pessimism and a few thousand nights in hotel rooms transformed a young Jewish poet who longed to be a saint into an existentialist troubadour in love with women and a gravelly voiced crooner who taught a thousand ways of dissolving into love.

After more than two decades of research and travels, Christophe Lebold, who befriended the poet and spent time with him in Los Angeles, delivers a stimulating analysis of Cohen’s life and art. Gracefully blending biography and essay, he interrogates the mission Cohen set out for himself: to show us that darkness is just the flip side of light.

©2024 Christophe Lebold (P)2024 Audible Inc.

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Editorial Review

A deep look at a songwriting genius
Leonard Cohen always defied easy categorization. A writer who penned two novels before becoming famous as a singer-songwriter, he was a crooner who loved a well-cut suit, a poet who lived in austerity, and a Sabbath-observing Jew who practiced Zen Buddhism. Reveling in seduction as much as solitude, his work was both voluptuous and spare, metaphysical and sensual. Christophe Lebold’s biography does more than embrace these seeming contradictions; the contradictions, in fact, are the point. We all contain multitudes, and Cohen’s writing, Lebold tells us, “restores us to the full weight of our lives.” First published in French in 2013, this deep philosophical analysis of Cohen’s six-decade career is finally being released in English and in audio for the first time. As Cohen said upon the book’s release three years before his death, “I am deeply respectful of the mind that has produced this book.”— Phoebe N., Audible Editor

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This book is a deep dive into Leonards life that I can’t even comprehend even after reading it. I don’t just mean deap as in thorough but deap as in spiritually and beyond.

A story about an ascension.

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It’s as if he wrote and read it himself. So great. 6/5 stars. Will read several more times.

Absolutely incredible

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The book made me complete my like for Leonard’s music with a human identification with the man…or angel. Made me feel the pain and joy of his life relating them to mine.

Touching view of Leonard’s life.

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You have to be a real Cohen fan to hang in through this overly long book. However, for those who do hang in, it effectively fills in some gaps and places Cohen's work in the context of his life and personal struggles. I'm glad to gain a better understanding of the quiet man I saw only in passing as he listened to jazz in a Montreal club.

as much an analysis as a biography

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Well, " Hallelujah " about sums it up. This book is SUPERB. Everything about it is perfect. The author knew the poet, which really helps. And is a fan, which also helps. And did his homework. I can't stop thinking about it.
(And, incidentally, I was given deeper insights into both the Old Testament and the songs than I'd ever dreamed could be done so succinctly. But what else could one expect from a perfect book about Leonard Cohen?).
And the narrator could not be better.
DO NOT HESITATE!!!!!!!

Hallelujah!!!!!!!!

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