In novels like “Land of Cockaigne” and “Bealport,” writer Jeffrey Lewis reckoned with big issues and the ways in which they impact their communities. The former addressed income inequality and racial prejudice; the latter explored the fate of a manufacturing business in a deindustrialized society. Much of Lewis’s work feels like a 21st century take on the social novel. Given that he made his name as writer for the groundbreaking, narratively complex television series “Hill Street Blues,” that’s not entirely surprising.

“Leonard Cohen,” by Jeffrey Lewis. Haus Publishing. $22.95
Lewis’s new novel, “Leonard Cohen,” is a somewhat different beast. For starters, it’s a relatively taut book, just 150 pages. And it’s one that’s largely centered around its protagonist, who shares a name with the better-known Canadian musician, poet and novelist behind “Hallelujah” and “Beautiful Losers.” This other Leonard is 22 years old in 1968 and is himself a songwriter — though not necessarily on the same level as his better-known counterpart. It’s in that year that the novel’s protagonist travels to Greece and meets the woman who will haunt his life in the years and decades to come.
Several of the chapters of “Leonard Cohen” consist of letters that the novel’s protagonist writes to his counterpart. And for all that the more famous Cohen’s career and history suffuse this book, it’s also reminiscent of another work by a famous writer born in Canada in the first half of the 20th century: specifically, Saul Bellow’s “Herzog.” Like that novel, this one features plenty of letters written to prominent people; here, too, Lewis, who divides his time between Los Angeles and Maine, raises the question of whether or not these letters were ever actually sent.
The bulk of the novel follows young Leonard in Greece, with Lewis’ prose attentive to both Leonard’s own state of being and the mood around him, as with this early scene on a ferry: “Leonard slipped down a Dramamine. Others pawed the air and an American couple spontaneously remembered old Kingston Trio lyrics, as if more innocent times implausibly loomed.”
It’s on the island of S. that Leonard meets a young woman named Daphne. He’s immediately besotted. If the idea of a woman in a story set in Greece being named Daphne rings some mythological bells for you, you’re not off-base. The legend of Apollo and Daphne, in which a god pursued a woman who eventually turned into a tree to repel his advances, also looms over the story Lewis is telling. It’s notable here that music is among Apollo’s purview.
It would be spoiling the novel to say too much else about how Lewis does and does not evoke the mythological in this particular story. There’s also a broader, almost meta-mythological aspect to be found: Just as legends differ, sometimes substantially, depending on the teller, so too does Lewis elegantly offer the reader a few different interpretations of how Leonard and Daphne’s story concludes.
“Leonard Cohen” is the story of the connection between Leonard and Daphne and its subsequent effect on Leonard’s later life. In the second half of the novel, Lewis elaborates on how Leonard’s time in Greece and his awareness of his shortcomings as a songwriter compared to the celebrated Leonard Cohen changed the direction of his life. “My trial, I decided, was whether I had a wonderful song to write,” the protagonist writes in the letters section of the novel. “And I didn’t.” This aspect of the novel, following a once-idealistic protagonist as he ages and loses touch with his enthusiasm for life, is its most familiar component. While Leonard’s struggle with his past and the bittersweet feelings those memories spark are genuine, these are the most broadly generational elements in a book that works best when it is more specific.
Thankfully, Lewis sprinkles plenty of smaller, compelling details in the background for readers to discover. It so happens that an authoritarian military regime is in power at the time Leonard is visiting Greece. The sense of political repression — and the fear felt by those characters who are dissidents — lurks just below the surface.
“Leonard Cohen” is a slim book, and its structure includes Leonard’s letters as well as third-person accounts of his trip to Greece and his life in the years that followed. It’s a story that feels both highly specific and rooted in legend; either way, it feels like a sharp break from Lewis’ recent work. But it’s also a memorable immersion into its protagonist’s sense of himself — and his growing feeling that he may never have understood his life as well as he once believed.
New York City resident Tobias Carroll is the author of four books, most recently the novel “Ex-Members.” He has reviewed books for The New York Times, Bookforum, the Star Tribune and elsewhere.
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