This is my second Lennon, and it reads a lot like the rest of Lennon, though they are a bit shorter. It is amazing to me that Lennon was producing stuff like this so early in his career. The book is a testament to the fact that Lennon was ahead of his time and past the rest of the Beatles as artists at a very early stage. It is my belief that the Beatles didn't actually begin to change music until after 1965 when they stopped touring. Lennon poetry and short stories in this collection goes far beyond what the Beatles were doing at the time in music. Lennon understands satire and puns and plays a lot of fun word association games with his writings.
What I think I most like about it is the fact that the reader really has to apply his or her own meaning to the text. The text itself is very engaging and filled with humor, but meaning has to be found by the reader, and one reader's interpretation may be incredibly different from another's. In fact, I found myself applying multiple different meanings to the same piece.
One thing I noticed, being a bit (or maybe more than a bit) of a Lennon aficionado is his references to the grotesque (including a talking bump on a man's head) and the disabled (including a girl in a wheelchair). Through a lot of my biographical reading of Lennon, it has been noted that Lennon was always fascinated with these differences in humankind. Lennon often did routines where he would imitate mentally challenged individuals, which most would find off-putting today, but were a part of Lennon's sense of humor. This fascination is evident in In His Own Write.
The line drawings are great as always and very comical. His drawing are mostly so elementary, but somehow, I have never seen anything quite like them. I do think that Lennon's later line drawings are better, but the ones in the book are very identifiable as Lennon.
I think some of my favorite pieces are the poems, my favorite piece in the book being "I Sat Belonely." I highly recommend the book to anyone. It only takes about an hour to read, but it is definitely worth rereading many times. I think that I will find something new every time I read it for the rest of my life (something I believe true of all of Lennon's writings).
I love "In His Own Write" but I don't think it's proof that John was ahead of the other Beatles as "artists," unless you mean as a writer. I think McCartney, for instance, was a pretty sophisticated artist in his own write...err...I mean right. I think. :)
ReplyDeletePaul was a different type of "artist" with a different, not less developed, set of skills than John.
Just my opinion.