to join his nationalistic Québécois movement. They are linked through their childhoods, as both came of age in a Jesuit orphanage in Montreal. puts him through a series of emotional and sexual trials. is severely depressed, physically constipated, agoraphobic, refuses to bathe, and is driven to repeatedly masturbate. were also sleeping together for a long time. His male lover, F., the voice of Book 2, has also passed away at this time. His wife Edith dies in a freak elevator accident that is implied to be a suicide. is living in Montreal, suffering from great loss at the time of his narration. is also studying a First Nations tribe called the A-s, of which very little remain – his wife Edith is the last of her people. Throughout this section and the other two books, the history of her tribe and her life are intertwined with the three lovers’ own lives. He finds deep spirituality in his desire for her, reaching out across time. Through study, he falls in love with the idea of her, wishing he could be with her. The other two narrators share his obsession, implicitly linking them. As she is further convinced of this rift, she self-harms and punishes her body. Catherine experiences a rift between her physical self and spiritual self. Book 1, titled “The History of Them All,” begins with I.’s obsession with a 17th-century Mohawk, Iroquois and catholic-converted woman named Catherine Tekakwitha. Book 3 is written in third person, showing I. Book 2 is in letter format from the perspective of “F.,” writing in response to I.’s narration. He is unnamed, and is thus often referred to by critics as “I.”. It is divided into three books: book 1 is narrated by a white, male, English-speaking folklorist and scholar. The novel focuses on the three members of a love triangle.

It is important to grasp the style and perspective of the novel, as past and present constantly blur, and memories are unreliable. The style is stream-of-consciousness, nonlinear, and there is no distinct timeline that connects the narrative.

The novel is maximalist in its approach, incorporating many literary devices and broaching a wide range of subjects including 1960s counter-culture, mysticism, and sexuality. While it was critical and commercially unsuccessful during its initial publishing, it gained popularity after Cohen’s music career began to flourish. It is a postmodern fiction novel and one of the early examples of postmodernism in Canadian literature. He wrote two novels before he began his music career. Beautiful Losers is the second and final novel by singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, published in 1966.

Beautiful losers novel