Leonard Cohen's Notebook: Rare Book of the Week

This week's Rare Book of the Week is a green Apica notebook belonging to singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen including handwritten notes and song lyrics which has just gone under the hammer at Julien's Auctions.

There were various items in addition to Cohen's notebook at the sale (including a large iron skeleton key to the front door of his home on the Greek island Hydra) but this was the star, the only known Cohen notebook outside his private archives, selling eventually for $120,650. 

With a front cover inscribed by Cohen "Jan 21, 2007", the notebook contains 76 pages of notes, poems and drafts of lyrics written by Cohen, including two pages of drafts for Treaty from You Want It Darker and seven pages of drafts for It’s Torn from Thanks for the Dance. The notebook also includes unpublished poems and lyrics, such as a piece about the value of Cohen’s paintings and songs. Cohen kept notebooks, dating them chronologically for decades often referring back to them.

Additional notes include a poem about his longtime collaborator, singer-songwriter and pianist Anjani Thomas. The notebook contains a poem dedicated to her, and also acts as a record ledger of the many bets between th two. One example reads: "$100 bet / Anjani says / I will never hear / Half The Perfect World / in a bar or restaurant / Leonard says: / you will / Leonard won!!"

"We used to bet on any number of things and the stakes were ridiculously high," said Thomas, "but I never collected on them. We'd bet on things like whether or not Phil Spector would go to jail, and I said he would. This is the only notebook of Leonard’s in private hands outside of the Cohen Family Trust Archives, and I imagine those will never be available for purchase."