If you want to read the rest of it, you can find it here.When a poet dies, his publishers often hurry into print whatever scraps lie stuffed in his desk drawers or overflow his wastebasket. This is the book business at its darkest and most human, but many balance sheets have been balanced by a posthumous work or two. Death is the moment when all eyes are upon the poet for the last time; beyond, for most harmless drudges, lies the abyss. Leonard Cohen, who died two years ago, wore many a fedora — poet, novelist, songwriter, a singer of sorts — but only the last trade, which he took up reluctantly, made him a star.
Cohen was never taken very seriously as a poet. He wasn’t much of a singer, either; but the gravelly renderings of his lyrics gradually attracted a mass audience that seemed more like a cult. Many found him a bit much, his heart-on-his-sleeve misery no more appealing than plunging your hands into boiling tar. Still, songs like “Suzanne,” “Bird on the Wire” and the rather preposterous hymn of praise “Hallelujah” have been so widely covered as to be nearly inescapable. At any moment of the day, “Suzanne” is probably playing in an elevator somewhere.
The rest of it is in the same vein as his second paragraph, and clearly Logan has a low opinion of Cohen. That's fine: there's no law that you have to like Cohen. But if I were asked to write a review of, for example, a prominent hip-hop artist such as Kanye West I wold refuse on the grounds that I don't like his music and, more importantly, I don't get it. Some people like it and can see past the misogyny of some of his lyrics. I can't even though I think I am smart enough to tell the difference between the actor and the lines he speaks. But my review, because I don't like or understand his stuff, would be unhelpful to those who do, and who might be wondering whether to spend the $$.
I think that NYT should, after reading Logan's review of Cohen's miscellany which quickly morphed into a review of Cohen and his fans, have junked it. Maybe my old grandma's advice - 'If you can't say something nice about someone who is dead, shut your mouth!" - is still valid.