Jeffrey Lewis – författare

An old shoe factory in a costal New England town is up for sale again. When a private equity mogul with a fondness for the factory’s shoes buys it, he sets in motion a story with profound implications for the way we live today. The people of Bealport depend on Norumbega. Their livelihoods, their self-respect and their interconnectedness are all at stake. The shadow of the factory’s fate looms over the people of the town. Idiosyncratic and humane, the cast is the kind that small communities under threat produce. Bealport is a portrait of a place, at once sympathetic, mordant, unsparing, comic, tragic and universal, and of a way of life that is passing. It is a novel of a town, and to no small degree of every town in America and beyond.

A novel written as a sharp parable of American society, addressing love, purpose, discrimination, and poverty. In Jeffrey Lewis's novel, the Land of Cockaigne, once an old medieval peasants' vision of a sensual paradise on earth, is reimagined as a plot on the coast of Maine. In efforts to assuage their grief over their son's death and to make meaning of his life, Walter Rath and Catherine Gray build what they hope will be a version of paradise for a group of young men from the Bronx. As Walter and Catherine work to reinvent this land, formerly a summer resort, the surrounding town of Sneeds Harbor proves resistant. The residents' well-meaning doubts lead to well-hidden threats, and the Raths' marriage unravels as Walter loses faith in democracy. Meanwhile, the Bronx boys, who have only ever known the city, try to navigate this new land that is completely alien to them. Written as a parable of contemporary American society, Land of Cockaigne is by turns furious, funny, subversive, tragic, and horrifying. Faced with the question of what to do amid disastrous times, Walter Rath offers a clue: Love is an action, not a feeling. Once you go down this path of faith, there is much to be done.

The Leonard Cohen at the center of Leonard Cohen: A Novel is an everyman, a would-be artist, a would-be lover, a would-be tragic figure, yet a man haunted by the greatness of his namesake. He struggles to compete. He struggles to be more than a punchline in his own mind. He struggles, in particular, to write one song as great as the least of the great Leonard Cohen's songs. At the center of Leonard's life is Daphne. In their meeting on a Greek island, a contemporary fable of Daphne and Apollo plays out. But even with Daphne, Leonard is shadowed by the "other" Leonard Cohen, whom he fears is the real Apollo. The ancient myth haunts the fated lovers, and the “nobody” Leonard Cohen’s life becomes at once a mystery, a miracle, and a myth on its own terms. Once upon a time, Apollo fell hard for Daphne, who turned herself into a laurel tree. No less a fate awaits the protagonists of this slender yet universal novel, where art, love, and fame all fatefully intertwine.

Dear Leonard Cohen,Could I ask you something, just between us? How was it that you never changed your name? You could have been Lawrence Cole. You could have been Lindsay Kohl, or Lionel Cone...So begins the story of an everyman Leonard Cohen, a would-be artist, a would-be lover, a would-be tragic figure, yet a man haunted by the greatness of his namesake. He struggles to compete. He struggles to be more than a punchline in his own mind. He struggles, in particular, to write one song as great as the least of the great Leonard Cohen's songs.At the center of Leonard's life is Daphne. In their meeting on a Greek island, a contemporary fable of Daphne and Apollo plays out. But even with her, Leonard is shadowed by the "other" Leonard Cohen. The ancient myth haunts the fated lovers of this novel, in which art, love, and fame all fatefully intertwine.