Matters of Vital Interest: A Forty-Year Friendship with Leonard Cohen

In this affectionate memoir, novelist and screenwriter Lerner (Pinkerton’s Secret) chronicles his friendship with the late singer and songwriter Leonard Cohen. The two first met in 1977, when they were in their 40s, at a Zen retreat in California. For several years they shared a house in California, where they supported each other through divorces and fatherhood (both men favored their daughters over their sons), and through various illnesses and surgeries. Lerner tells of Cohen’s love of performing and the struggles he had with the Sony record company, which refused to publicize his 1988 album, I’m Your Man. As both men aged, they continued to be inspirational forces in each other’s lives, affectionately referring to each other as “Old Boy.” Lerner’s descriptions of Cohen’s last days are moving: in a final email exchange between them, Cohen writes, “I wrote back quickly, desperately, several times, but there was no reply. Our long conversation had finally come to and end.” Lerner’s tender, moving memoir reveals Cohen as a devoted friend and father, a side of him not often seen in public. (Oct.)