"We only want more..." No, we can't want more because we haven't seen it. You saw it and are telling us about it, remember? "We can't get enough" Ditto. "We even suffer through..." Again. All in such a short space. "We've all heard Leonard Cohen's music described as depressive." I haven't. I've never heard that quote before. Stop speaking for me.

The description of Cohen on the cover of his first album, and how he looks today, and even the qualities of his poetry, almost read as a parody of Kael. You're not thinking for yourself, you're writing post-mortem reviews for Kael.

I love Kael's work. Followed it enthusiasically when she was writing, going through the published reviews and keeping up with the new ones in the New Yorker. I still re-read her now. She could use this device and not have it sound like either pushy salemanship or the royal first person. You don't have that knack, and as a result, the rhetorical tick is irritating as hell. Don't you remember Kael's response when asked what she though of writers who emmulate her style? "It creeps me out."

Find your own style, your own expressions. You can't imitate Picasso's Blue Period and have the same impact on modern art. You can't sing behind the beat and do for jazz what Billie Holiday did. You can't immitate Kael and become a great critic. Stop. Please. Let your own voice speak.

Don't you realize that what made Kael's style work was that it so effectively conveyed her individual personality, and could make a reader feel as if he were being spoken to by a person sitting next to him, rather than reading some annoymous critic? Mimicking her has the opposite effect. The reader isn't connecting with an individual voice. He's catching a routine by Rich Little.

I can't read your reviews anymore. And it has nothing to do with you taste in movies. It's entirely due to your purloined style. It has the same effect on me as fingernails scratching on a chalk board.

I got to interview Cohen in the early 90s - and I've interviewed LOTS of celebs and big artists - not bragging, just background.

My boss told me to keep it short (radio interview) since he was an artist not a huge number of people knew. I was to play a song, chat a bit and play another and thank him. Before we went live (he was on the phone) he asked me a few questions about myself and my family and completely charmed me - over the phone in a matter of seconds. I cannot explain how. Maybe it's just that fantastic voice.

I have never felt so flustered and overwhelmed by an attraction to someone in my entire life, over the phone - in seconds. I cut the interview even shorter than I intended so I didn't babble. The record company called my boss and said that Cohen had expressed concern that he'd offended me in some way. His ability to cut to the heart of the human condition and what's important is unmatched.

I wish I had a way to say "Leonard, you slay me." I have every recording he ever made and hope he makes more. I can certainly understand why when others praise him that it comes off like parody.

Unless the woman being referred to in this anecdote was the French-Canadian dancer named Suzanne Verdal, the anecdote is b*llsh*t. I knew Suzanne and her two young children (at the time, a girl about 11 and a boy about 8) in the very early eighties. Leonard's mild (fleeting) thing for Suzanne was unrequited and they remained platonic friends as both will happily admit. Suzanne was a still-beautiful woman in her mid-to-late '30s when I met her; she was still dancing and her children R. and K. were dressed like a fairytale prince and princess. The living room of the temporary flat she was then living in (she was in Minneapolis waiting for a house of hers to be sold) was decorated with blow-up images of her dancing on French TV in the '60s. She was (and probably is) quite cool and her accent, to a 21 year old kid who at the time was barely aware of Leonard Cohen, was impossibly romantic. After being filled-in as to Suzanne's pedigree as a muse by the older Bohemians I was in those days hanging out with, I bought the Cohen records and subsequently wore them out. 'Suzanne' didn't even end up being my favorite track, but she is definitely one of my favorite memories.

"We only want more..." No, we can't want more because we haven't seen it. You saw it and are telling us about it, remember? "We can't get enough" Ditto. "We even suffer through..." Again. All in such a short space. "We've all heard Leonard Cohen's music described as depressive." I haven't. I've never heard that quote before. Stop speaking for me.

The word "we" does not necessarily include you.

If a bottle of red wine, midnight, and half a pack of clove cigarettes got together and wrote music, it would sound like Leonard Cohen. His words will make you remember every person you ever kissed, and you might remember every kiss you ever had, including the ones you regret, and perhaps a few of the reasons you regret them.

Or maybe Leonard Cohen’s music will simply encourage you to savor a good buzz, nicotine or caffeine, alcoholic or erotic, or any of these treats in any combination.

All good music contains this power. The power to render you fully attuned to every last terminus of every last nerve of all five of your senses.

If you can't get enough of LC -- listen to his great interview on a recent Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5422403

If you want to know what became of the real Suzanne Verdal, read the profile here: http://www.cbc.ca/national/news/suzanne/

Hey, love Leonard Cohen.

And yea, isn't that guy, Mel Gibson, "totally weird!" I mean, he actually made a movie about that guy, who was it again? Jesus? Oh, and it only made about half a billion at the box office. A lot of weird people out there. Oh, and Mel Gibson is Catholic! That's weird too! And he likes the traditional Latin Mass! How weird! That Mass had music composed for it by those other weirdos called Beethoven and Mozart!

I'm glad Miss Zacharek had the fantastic insight to call Mel Gibson totally weird! My gosh, it's a wonder that weirdo Mel Gibson even likes Leonard Cohen! How'd that happen?!