Just Finished Reading John Lennon's In His Own Write

John Lennon of the Beatles wrote a few books along the way of his musical career, the first being In His Own Write, which came out at the height of Beatlemania in 1964.  Although it received popular press at the time, this small collection of nonsensical and ironic stories and poems probably wasn't read by many people.  After having just finished reading this rather short book, I think I know why...

I just checked out James Joyce's final work, Finnegans Wake, from the library.  In it words and phraseology are deliberately distorted in their spelling and application, making it pretty difficult to figure out what the [expletive] he's talking out almost all of the time. Apparently, Lennon had read some of Joyce since he employed the same strategy of misspelling and such...but he still was able to slyly get his meanings across and concocted some wickedly humorous short stories in the process.  His intentionally muddled writing is one reason I think few people ever got around to reading this book, which is loaded with overwhelming irreverence at many of society's institutions, including religion, ethnicities, genders, politics, and more.  Just two years later people would be burning Beatles records in protest after Lennon, in an interview, had simply stated in passing that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ, yet In His Own Write contains some pretty explosive material in itself.  Why not check it out for yourself...you can search and read it online in pdf now.  I thought it was pretty clever and imaginative for him to have come up with this stuff, and he was only around 24 when it was published.  A warning before you read it, though: some of the humor is really dark, and the political incorrectness here is often way over the top...