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Playing The Favourite Game

Poet, musician, novelist, ladies' man, monk, actor... Leonard Norman Cohen, one of Canada's most influential cultural icons was born on Sept. 21, 1934 in Montreal. Whether from a mountaintop at a Buddhist retreat in California, on the Greek island of Hydra or strolling along the streets of his beloved ville d'amour, the melancholy bard of popular music has delighted fans worldwide with his poetry, novels and music.

"You have to be very charitable to reviewers," says Leonard Cohen, who has just released The Favourite Game, a new novel. "They're very unhappy people who have generally failed at an art they would like to excel in." Cohen's book, about a young Jewish man from Montreal, is getting mixed reviews in Canada. In this 1963 interview, Cohen doesn't seem perturbed by the critics. What's irritating, he says, is the perception that the book is about him: "I cringe before the tyranny of fact, but it is not autobiographical. I made it up."
• The Favourite Game was made into a movie by Quebec director Bernar Hébert in 2003.

• Cohen was living on the Greek island of Hydra when he wrote The Favourite Game. While living there he produced another novel, Beautiful Losers, in 1966, and two more collections of poetry: Flowers For Hitler (1964) and Parasites of Heaven (1966).

• The house Cohen bought on Hydra cost him $1,500 - an inheritance from his grandmother - in 1960. It had no plumbing or electricity. Of the house, he wrote to his mother: "It has a huge terrace with a view of dramatic mountains and shining white houses. The rooms are large and cool with deep windows set in thick walls. I suppose it's about 200 years old and many generations of seamen must have lived here."

• After Cohen had been living there a while, telephone service came to Hydra. He was inspired to write the song Bird on a Wire because of the birds that would gather on the new telephone wire.

Medium: Television
Program: Youth Special
Broadcast Date: Nov. 12, 1963
Guest(s): Leonard Cohen
Commentator: Paddy Springate
Host: Stuart Smith
Duration: 12:20

Last updated: October 30, 2012

Page consulted on March 22, 2013

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