Leonard Cohen
LUGGAGE FIRE SALE
I flew to Paris two days early to get the homework done.
There were no books where I lived and I had to read five by Mary
McCarthy, four by Romain Gary, and about a thousand articles by
Malcolm Muggeridge. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation had
set up a panel discussion with these three writers on "Is there a Crisis
in
Western Culture?"
It
was to be taped in a large gold room in the
Hotel Napoleon and my job was Moderator. I was doing it for
money, and to get out of a very sunny place where there were no
books
and no prospects ,and a couple of women who knew me too
well.
I took a coffin-sized, coffin-colored room in the Hotel Cluny
Square which is on the north-west corner of Blvd. St. Germain and
Blvd. St. Michel. Expenses and a small gold room in the Hotel
Napoleon could not be claimed for 48 hours. A wide varnished shelf
about a foot above the bed ran the entire right angle of the corner
into which the bed was fastened, and I knew that it would clip me
every time I rose from the pillow.
All that remained of my travels in the East were a very small
piece of Lebanese hashish and a complete suntan which recorded my
major life success, the discovery of hot beaches where I could live
naked with someone worth watching. I put the crumb of hash on
the shelf beside two books which I had written, and I stretched the
suntan out on the bed alongside a number of books from the Amer–
ican Library which I had not written.
It
was the middle of October,
about
40
years too late for me to make history in Paris. I read their
books
quickly and carefully because one of the few pleasant things
I could be
in
that situation was a professional. They were paying
me 600 dollars.
