Beautiful Losers

Beautiful Losers Leonard Cohen (Vintage, $11) As a novelist, Cohen is sharper, raunchier, and more complex than he is as a songwriter. First published in '66, this cult classic does inventive riffs on '60s themes: revolution, liberation, love, drugs, ecstasy, transcendence. None of it could play on radio. The plot is just a pretext, an excuse to mock and celebrate everything Canadians hold sacred. A widowed history professor obsesses over a 17th- century Iroquois virgin who won sainthood by torturing her flesh. Now she tortures the prof, with desire. Like James Joyce, Cohen spoofs the Catholic faith while longing for its absolution. ''Be with me, religious medals of all kinds, those suspended on silver chains, those pinned to the underwear with a safety pin, those nestling in black chest hair,'' begins one sad, sexy litany. He sets his story in his native Montreal, cramming its history, its slang, its streetcars, movie palaces, and pinball arcades into one wildly funny, deeply rueful book. A -Suzanne Ruta