New Releases by Leonard Cohen

An illustrated mantra style poem taken from the novel, BEAUTIFUL USERS, by the Canadian singer and songwriter, Leonard Cohen.

Stranger Music brings together, at last, the words of a Canadian artist who has been anything but a stranger to so many of us for so long ... Cohen has woven a chain of words that binds us together. --Calgary Herald.

The monograph aims for a comprehensive look at the history of «The Big Apple», incorporating material that has come to light since the first edition of this work was published in 1991. The overall picture now is: Apples, always important, became especially so with the appearance of the Big Red Delicious Apple in Iowa, 1870''s. «The Big Apple» therefore came to refer to somebody or something very important. In 1920 an African-American stablehand in New Orleans mentioned in conversation: «We''s goin'' to ''the big apple''» (NYC racetracks as the big time in horseracing). Turf writer John J. Fitz Gerald overheard this statement and adopted «The Big Apple» (1921ff.) in his columns, popularizing it to refer particularly to the NYC tracks. Secondarily it could refer to big time horseracing in general. In the 1930''s «The Big Apple» was picked up by black jazz musicians to designate NYC in general (and Harlem in particular) as the place where the greatest jazz in the world was being played. And in 1971 Charles Gillett revived «The Big Apple» as part of a public-relations campaign on behalf of NYC. Despite the increasingly clear picture of what happened, various incorrect etymologies have arisen about «The Big Apple». The monograph addresses and rejects them in some detail.

The present monograph lays the groundwork for a revived study of syntactic blending by emphasizing its frequency in everyday speech and providing considerable raw material for analysis. Attention is also drawn to the possibility of idioms arising from successive changes and to the relevance of blends for evaluating the various main theories of general linguistics.

Shyster has been one of the most difficult items for etymologists of English, but a Rosetta Stone to its origin exists: the previously overlooked 1843-1844 material in a New York City newspaper. This material contains an all-important conversation on shyster at the moment of its inception and permits the unearthing of the detailed story behind this term; very briefly, shyster arose as part of the editor''s crusade against legal and political corruption in NYC and the attempts of the authorities to silence him. The present monography discusses the earlier unsuccessful attempts to find the term''s etymology and then sets forth (and analyzes) the new material.

Digte.

Published in 1956 to immediate acclaim, the singer/songwriters first published book, now released for a new generation, contains poems written between the ages of 15 and 20.

In this unforgettable novel, Leonard Cohen boldly etches the youth and early manhood of Lawrence Breavman, only son of an old Jewish family in Montreal. Life for Breavman is made up of dazzling colour a series of motion pictures fed through a high-speed projector: the half-understood death of his father; the adult games of love and war, with their infinite capacity for fantasy and cruelty; his secret experiments with hypnotism; the night-long adventures with Krantz, his beloved comrade and confidant. Later, achieving literary fame as a college student, Breavman does penance through manual labour, but ultimately flees to New York. And although he has loved the bodies of many women, it is only when he meets Shell, whom he awakens to her own beauty, that he discovers the totality of love and its demands, and comes to terms with the sacrifices he must make.