The Life of a Troubadour

Cohen did not shy away from autobiography in his work, and so his fans may have a sense that they already know his life story. Yet, except for his novel The Favourite Game , Cohen’s work typically makes unexplained references to his personal history rather than to narrate episodes of it. In order to provide a frame for the more particular aspects his life featured in later chapters, this chapter will offer an essayistic overview of Cohen’s life from his boyhood in the Westmont neighborhood of Montreal, to the Greek island of Hydra and the Chelsea Hotel, through his stays at Zen Monastery on Mt. Baldy, to his triumphant late tours necessitated by his manager’s theft. Along the way, Cohen encountered and was influenced by lovers, poets, other songwriters, and religious teachers, not to mention the family into which he was born and the more disparate one that he fathered.