Victoria University Hunter Building, Wellington, NZ
A Dream Fulfilled Thanks To Leonard Cohen
This is one of those tales that begin, “Long ago in a land faraway, … .” OK, the faraway land was Joplin, Missouri, but it was, in fact, a time so ancient that DrHGuy was simply HGuy, a college student anticipating graduation from Missouri Southern College1 with a BA in English, which would entitle him not only to attend the commencement ceremony featuring an address by Dennis Weaver (of “McCloud” fame), but also to spend the next few years in graduate school reading AE Housman, Yeats, and other dead poets, offering erudite, witty pronouncements on the diminution of literature in this benighted age, and arguing the necessity of rebellion against repressive sexual mores to besotted, invariably attractive female undergrads.
Eventually, in the natural course of events, he would become DrHGuy, albeit of the PhD sort.
In pursuing this path, the incipient DrHGuy aspired to the two trappings typically associated with success in his chosen career: (1) the capacity to wear a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and smoke a pipe without looking pretentious and (2) an article published in an esoterically prestigious professional journal.
As it turned out, in those days a BA in English actually entitled young, healthy American males to wade through Southeast Asian swamps in full combat gear. In the nick of time, DrHGuy discovered he actually aspired to improve the mental health of his fellow man and preferred the fashion statement produced by a clinician’s white coat rather than the academician’s tweed jacket.
The desire to be published in a scholarly journal, however, endured.
And now, that dream has been (sorta, kinda) fulfilled.
The International Institute of Modern Letters Occasional Newsletter
The following excerpt is from the February 07, 2010 post on Beattie’s Book Blog
Nicknames for Leonard Cohen:
It must be about a year ago that I attended the wonderful Leonard Cohen Concert in Auckland’s Vector Stadium, the best live concert I have ever attended. So I was interested to come across the following item on the International Institute of Modern Letters occasional newsletter on Friday.
Nicknames for Leonard Cohen:
Lord Byron Of Rock’n’Roll
Bard Of The Boudoir
Ladies Man
Grandson Of The Prince Of Grammarians …
The post goes on to include the entire (then-current) list and, of course, the proper link to the Heck Of A Guy web page, Leonard Cohen, AKA … – The Nicknames.
That Beattie’s Book Blog entry ends on this
Note: This is the 152nd in a series of occasional newsletters from the Victoria University Centre of the International Institute of Modern Letters. … You can also read this newsletter online. … The International Institute of Modern Letters was established at Victoria University in 2001 to promote and foster contemporary imaginative writing.
Great Lists Of Our Time
And, upon investigating, one finds, under this undeniably impressive letterhead and after the warm-up items (the arrival of a new poet in residence, a prize-winning volume of poetry, an opportunity for a New Zealand writer to enter the University of Iowa Writers’ Residency 2010, a Fringe Festival poetry show, … ), the astutely worded heading, “Great lists of our time,” which is itself followed by the list of Leonard Cohen aliases found at Leonard Cohen, AKA … – The Nicknames.
DrHGuy is humbled but otherwise unaltered by this honor.
The New Addition To The List Of Leonard Cohen Nicknames
The list was only recently (post-publication in International Institute of Modern Letters Occasional Newsletter) extended to include Nickname #66, a particularly choice sobriquet that itself has the ring of a title of a scholarly paper: Prince of Prurience and Loss (from The Prince of Prurience and Loss by John Leland. GQ. November, 2001).
Perhaps the Institute should be notified.
Credit Due Department: The photo of the Hunter Building, which is, as far as Heck Of A Guy can determine, linked to the content of this post only by the fact that both the Hunter Building and the International Institute of Modern Letters operate under the imprimatur of the Victoria University of Wellington, was found at OurEnglish.
February 07, 2010
- Missouri Southern College was formerly Joplin Junior College and is now Missouri Southern State University. [↩]
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