So, I get that they’re trying to justify their literary necrophilia with a late life quote, but frankly, in late life the guy was desperate. He’d been ripped off while trying to find his way spiritually, and went back on tour and started releasing substandard books to recover. His final album was brilliant, but once it sold well, the people around him dug out the outtakes and scrips and scraps of creative slag and tried to sell that too. And now they’re doing the same with his writing. If he was so proud of this material, why did he not publish it himself? I don’t know. I hope I raise my own children better than this. And I hope whoever handles whatever literary legacy I might leave has a modicum of intellect untempted by capitalism. Make no mistake, publishers don’t do this sort of thing to “benefit fans and scholars”, they do it because they think they can make money from it. It’s a business decision, not an artistic one. And I suspect THAT’s why he didn’t publish this material in his lifetime. Anyone who tells you otherwise is engaged in marketing.
A Ballet of Lepers: A Novel and Stories includes short fiction, a radio play, and an early novel, all of which were written between 1956, when Cohen was still living in Montreal, and 1961, when he was living in Hydra, Greece.
“Leonard said before his death that his life’s true masterwork was his archive, which he kept meticulously for the benefit of fans and scholars one day to discover. I’m pleased that, with this book, his readers and listeners can begin that rich journey,” Robert Kory, trustee of the Leonard Cohen Family Trust, said in a release.
Bookninja 