A Ballet of Lepers: A Novel and Stories by Leonard Cohen

Imagine you are a young Canadian writer in your 20s in the mid-to-late 1950s. Howl became legal in ’57, Lady Chatterley’s Lover in ’60. You want to write about sex, but how? For whom?

You will soon be lifted into lofty matters, into the upper reaches of consciousness, but matters of the flesh will always matter. You will drop acid, study Indian philosophy, go clear with Scientology, and eventually become an ordained Buddhist monk, but you’re not there yet.