[Leonard Cohen]The Favorite Game(epub){Zzzzz}

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.

Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (October 14, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1400033624
ISBN-13: 978-1400033621

Editorial Reviews
Review
"He is a writer of terrific energy and color, a Rabelaisian comic and a visualizer of memorable scenes." --The Observer

“Is there any Canadian novel as compelling and as good as at capturing youthful anxieties as J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye? Absolutely. . . . Leonard Cohen’s first novel, The Favorite Game.” –Globe & Mail

“The Favorite Game is a morally brave book, intimate and unflinching. . . . Leonard Cohen sustains the highest level of poetic craftsmanship throughout.” –Paul Quarrington

“It is the kind of book that becomes a law unto itself, simply because there is nothing with which to compare it.” –Calgary Albertan
From the Inside Flap
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.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

This is the place to begin Cohen's prose work.
By J. N. Marks on June 6, 2005
The Favorite Game is the book I should have picked up before reading Beautiful Losers. It is as if the stylistic experiments Cohen attempted in his second novel make far more sense now. However, having said this I must add that this is the more entertaining and enjoyable work.

This book is about romance. It is always entertaining to hear people talk about love, affection, adoration even fixation as being something only people can have for one another. Lawrence Breavman (the protagonist) feels this way about his life and the many persons and places that populate it. Lisa, Tamara, Shell and the city of Montreal, all are adored by this young man. He loves his best friend Krantz with whom he begins an empassioned dialogue unveiling the many layers of Montreal and Quebecois life oscillating around him in both the city and out in the Laurentian highlands. Breavman truly treats the world as "other." It is beautiful to witness.

There is mysticism in this work. The way Breavman notices the angles of sunlight on his beloved mountain, the colors of the surface of the Saint Lawrence and then the Hudson. The park that he walks through each night and protects. The color of the snow under the moonlight and the sound it gives off when he and a young Lisa are walking home from Hebrew School. Each of these things is as vivid as the young man's search for a partner, for sexual fulfillment. As in Cohen's later work, beauty and grotesqueness and filth coexist and are both the possession of his protagonist's soul. Breavman wanders endlessly through his city (Montreal) taking in every detail he can.

Cohen-as-Salinger
By Eric Ziegenhagen on February 22, 2000
The Favourite Game is wistful and sentimental (in a good way), well-written, fun to read, and especially evocative in recreating the early 1960's in urban North American and Montreal in particular. It's a coming-of-age novel in the Salinger vein, following a Young Bright Man (too young for the Beats) and his midadventures. This is only Cohen work that could be optioned for the movies (and succeed as a movie, too). Not as heartbreaking as Cohen's other work, more straightforward than Beautiful Losers, The Favourite Game is arty entertainment that's worth taking on the train or to the beach. (And cheap, too!)