From reviews of the hardcover edition:"[Various Positions is] more a literary than a rock bio—quiet of tone, serious without being worshipful. Drawing on Cohen's own archives, Nadel plots aspects of Cohen's life—Zen, love affairs, drug use—against the evolution of his writing. He fashions a biography that is revealing but also mindful of its subject at his best."—Booklist"An excellent biography, one that manages to be both thoroughly scholarly and genuinely entertaining at the same time."—Montreal Gazette"An honest and sympathetic biography."—New York Times Book Review"The most authoritative work yet on the 'poet laureate of pessimism.'"—Library Journal


Known as the "Prince of Bummers," Leonard Cohen is a multi-talented poet, singer-songwriter, novelist, and Zen Buddhist whose career has spanned more than forty years and inspired countless other artists. In this critically acclaimed biography originally published in 1996 by Pantheon Books, Ira Nadel draws on extensive interviews with Cohen, as well as excerpts from his unpublished letters, journals, notebooks, songs, and other writings, to offer a full portrait of this enigmatic man and his artistic career. A new concluding chapter brings Cohen's story up-to-date, including the release of the albums Dear Heather, Ten New Songs, The Essential Leonard Cohen, and Blue Alert, as well as the publication of Book of Longing and the screening of the documentary film Leonard Cohen, I'm Your Man.