In His Own Write

''In His Own Write'' is a 1964 nonsense book by English musician John Lennon. His first book, it consists of poems and short stories ranging from eight lines to three pages, as well as illustrations.

After Lennon showed journalist Michael Braun some of his writings and drawings, Braun in turn showed them to Tom Maschler of publisher Jonathan Cape, who signed Lennon in January 1964. He wrote most of the content expressly for the book, though some stories and poems had been published years earlier in the Liverpool music publication '' Mersey Beat''. Lennon's writing style is informed by his interest in English writer Lewis Carroll, while humorists Spike Milligan and "Professor" Stanley Unwin inspired his sense of humour. His illustrations imitate the style of cartoonist James Thurber. Many of the book's pieces consist of private meanings and in-jokes, while also referencing Lennon's interest in physical abnormalities and expressing his anti-authority sentiments.

The book was both a critical and commercial success, selling around 300,000 copies in Britain. Reviewers praised it for its imaginative use of wordplay and favourably compared it to the later works of James Joyce, though Lennon was unfamiliar with him. Later commentators have discussed the book's prose in relation to Lennon's songwriting, both in how it differed from his contemporary writing and in how it anticipates his later work, heard in songs like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "I Am the Walrus". Released amidst Beatlemania, its publication reinforced perceptions of Lennon as "the smart one" of the Beatles, and helped to further legitimise the place of pop musicians in society.

Since its release, the book has been translated into several languages. In 1965, Lennon released another book of nonsense literature, ''A Spaniard in the Works''. He abandoned plans for a third collection and did not publish any other books in his lifetime. Victor Spinetti and Adrienne Kennedy adapted his two books into a one-act play, ''The Lennon Play: In His Own Write'', produced by the National Theatre Company and first performed in June 1968 to mixed reviews.

Background

Earliest influences

John Lennon was artistic as a child, though unfocused on his schooling. He was mostly raised by his aunt Mimi Smith, an avid reader who helped shape the literary inclinations of both Lennon and his step-siblings. Answering a questionnaire in 1965 about which books made the largest impression on him before the age of eleven, he identified Lewis Carroll's nonsense works ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' and ''Through the Looking-Glass'', as well as Kenneth Grahame's children's book '' The Wind in the Willows''. He added: "These books made a great impact and their influence will last for the rest of my life". He reread Carroll's books at least once a year, being intrigued by the use of wordplay in pieces like "Jabberwocky". His childhood friend Pete Shotton remembered Lennon reciting the poem "at least a few hundred times", and that, "from a very early age, John's ultimate ambition was to one day 'write an ''Alice'' himself". Lennon's first ever poem, "The Land of the Lunapots", was a fourteen-line piece written in the style of "Jabberwocky", using Carrollian words like "wyrtle" and "graftiens". Where Carroll's poem opens Twas brillig, and the...", Lennon's begins:T'was custard time and as I
Snuffed at the haggie pie pie
The noodles ran about my plunk
Which rode my wrytle uncle drunk
...

From around the age of eight, Lennon spent much of his time drawing, inspired by cartoonist Ronald Searle's work in the St Trinian's School cartoon strips. He later enjoyed the illustrations of cartoonist James Thurber and began imitating his style around the age of fifteen. Uninterested in fine art and unable to create realistic likenesses, he enjoyed doodling and drawing witty cartoons, usually made with either a black pen or a fountain pen with black ink. Filling his school notebooks with vignettes, poetry and cartoons, he drew inspiration from British humorists such as Spike Milligan and "Professor" Stanley Unwin, including Milligan's radio comedy programme ''The Goon Show''. He admired the programme's unique humour, characterised by attacks on establishment figures, surreal humour and punning wordplay, later writing that it was "the only proof that the WORLD was insane". Lennon collected his work in a school exercise book dubbed the ''Daily Howl'', later described by Lennon's bandmate George Harrison as "jokes and avant-garde poetry". Made in the style of a newspaper, its cartoons and ads featured wordplay and gags, such as a column reporting: "Our late editor is dead, he died of death, which killed him".

Despite Lennon's love of literature, he was a chronic misspeller, saying in a 1968 interview that he "never got the idea of spelling", finding it less important than conveying an idea or story. Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn raises the possibility that Lennon had dyslexia – a condition that often went undiagnosed in the 1940s and 1950s – but counters that he exhibited no other related symptoms. Lennon's mother, Julia Lennon, similarly wrote with uncertain spelling and displayed weak grammar in her writing. American professor James Sauceda contends that Unwin's use of fractured English was the foremost influence on Lennon's writing style, and in a 1980 interview with ''Playboy'', Lennon stated that the main influences on his writing "were always Lewis Carroll and ''The Goon Show'', a combination of that".

Art college and Bill Harry

Although most teachers at Quarry Bank High School for Boys were annoyed at Lennon's lack of focus, he impressed his English master, Philip Burnett, who suggested he go to art school at the Liverpool College of Art. In 2006, Burnett's wife, June Harry, recalled of Lennon's cartoons: "I was intrigued by what I saw. They weren't academic drawings but hilarious and quite disturbing cartoons." She continued: "Phil enjoyed John's slant on life. He told me, 'He's a bit of a one-off. He's bright enough, but not much apart from music and doing his cartoons interests him. Having failed his GCE "O" levels, Lennon was admitted into the Liverpool College of Art solely on the basis of his art portfolio. While attending the school he befriended fellow student Bill Harry in 1957. When Harry heard that Lennon wrote poetry he asked to see some, later recalling: "He was embarrassed at first... I got the impression that he felt that writing poetry was a bit effeminate because he had this tough macho image". After further pressing, Lennon relented and showed Harry a poem, who remembered it as "a rustic poem, it was pure British humour and comedy, and I loved it". Harry retrospectively stated that Lennon's writing style, especially his use of malapropisms, reminded him of Unwin. Harry described his poetry as displaying an "originality in its sheer lunacy", but found his sense of humour "absurdly cruel with its obsession with cripples, spastics and torture".

After Harry started the Liverpool newspaper '' Mersey Beat'' in 1961, Lennon made occasional contributions. His column "Beatcomber", a reference to the "Beachcomber" column of the ''Daily Express'', included poems and short stories. He typed his early pieces with an Imperial Good Companion Model T typewriter. By August 1962, his original typewriter was either broken or unavailable to him. He borrowed an acquaintance's, spurring him to write more prose and poetry. He enjoyed typewriters, but found that his slow typing left him unmotivated to write for long periods of time and so he focused on shorter pieces. He left keystroke errors uncorrected to add further wordplay. Excited about being in print, he brought 250 pieces to Harry, telling him he could publish whatever he wanted of them. Only two stories were published, "Small Sam" and "On Safairy with Whide Hunter", because Harry's fiancée Virginia accidentally threw out the other 248 during a move between offices. Harry later recalled that after telling him about the accident, Lennon broke down in tears.

Paul McCartney

Lennon's friend and bandmate Paul McCartney also enjoyed ''Alice in Wonderland'', ''The Goon Show'' and the works of Thurber, and the two soon bonded through their mutual interests and similar senses of humour. Lennon impressed McCartney, who did not know anyone else that either owned a typewriter or wrote their own poetry. He found hilarious one of Lennon's earliest poems, "The Tale of Hermit Fred", especially its final lines:I peel the bagpipes for my wife
And cut all negroes' hair
As breathing is my very life
And stop I do not dare.

Visiting Lennon's 251 Menlove Avenue home one day in July 1958, McCartney found him writing a poem and enjoyed the wordplay of lines like "a cup of teeth" and "in the early owls of the morecombe". Lennon let him help, with the two co-writing the poem "On Safairy with Whide Hunter", its title's origin likely the adventure serial '' White Hunter''. Lewisohn suggests the renaming of the lead character at each appearance was probably Lennon's contribution, while lines that were likely McCartney's include: "Could be the Flying Docker on a case" and "No! But mable next week it will be my turn to beat the bus now standing at platforbe nine". He also suggests the character Jumble Jim was a reference to McCartney's father Jim McCartney. Lennon typically wrote his pieces by hand at home and would bring them when he and his band, the Beatles, were travelling in a car or van to a gig. Reading the pieces aloud, McCartney and Harrison would often make contributions of their own. Upon returning home, Lennon would type up the pieces, adding what he could remember of his friend's contributions.

Publication and content

In 1963, Tom Maschler, the literary director of Jonathan Cape, commissioned American journalist Michael Braun to write a book about the Beatles. Braun began following the band during their Autumn 1963 UK Tour in preparation for his 1964 book '' Love Me Do: The Beatles' Progress''. Lennon showed Braun some of his writings and drawings, and Braun in turn showed them to Maschler, who recalled: "I thought they were wonderful and asked him who wrote them. When he told me John Lennon, I was immensely excited." At Braun's insistence, Maschler joined him and the band at Wimbledon Palais in London on 14 December 1963. Lennon showed Maschler more of his drawings, mainly doodles made on scrap pieces of paper that had mostly been done in July 1963 while the Beatles played a residency in Margate. Maschler encouraged him to continue with his pieces and drawings, then selected the title ''In His Own Write'' from a list of around twenty prospects, the pick originally an idea of McCartney. Among the rejected titles were ''In His Own Write and Draw'', ''The Transistor Negro'', ''Left Hand Left Hand'' and ''Stop One and Buy Me''.

Lennon signed a contract with Jonathan Cape for the book on 6 January 1964, receiving an advance of £1,000 (). He contributed 26 drawings and 31 pieces of writing, including 23 prose pieces and eight poems, bringing the book's length to 80 pages. Its pieces range in length from the eight-line poems "Good Dog Nigel" and "The Moldy Moldy Man" to the three-page story "Scene three Act one". Lennon reported that his work on the book's illustrations was the most drawing he had done since leaving art school. Most of the written content was new, but some had been done previously, including the stories "On Safairy with Whide Hunter" (1958), "Henry and Harry" (1959), "Liddypool" (1961 as "Around And About"), "No Flies on Frank" (1962) and "Randolf's Party" (1962), and the poem "I Remember Arnold" (1958), which he wrote following the death of his mother, Julia. Lennon worked spontaneously and generally did not return to pieces after writing them, though he did revise "On Safairy with Whide Hunter" in mid-July 1962, adding a reference to the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", a hit in early 1962. Among the book's literary references are "I Wandered", which includes several plays on the title of the poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by English poet William Wordsworth; "Treasure Ivan", which is a variation on the plot of ''Treasure Island'' by Robert Louis Stevenson; and "At the Denis", which paraphrases a scene at a dentist's office from Carlo Barone's English-teaching book, ''A Manual of Conversation English-Italian''.

''In His Own Write'' was published in the UK on 23 March 1964, retailing for 9 s 6 d ()., quoted in . Lennon attended a launch party at Jonathan Cape's London offices the day before. Maschler refused a request from his superiors at Jonathan Cape that the cover depict Lennon holding a guitar, instead opting for a simple head shot. Photographer Robert Freeman designed the first edition of the book, a black-and-white photograph he took of Lennon also adorning the cover. The back cover includes a humorous autobiography of Lennon, "About the Awful", again written in his unorthodox style. The book became an immediate best-seller, selling out on its first day. Only 25,000 copies of the first edition were printed, necessitating several reprints, including two in the last week of March 1964 and five more by January 1965. In its first ten months, the book sold almost 200,000 copies, eventually reaching around 300,000 copies bought in Britain. Simon & Schuster published ''In His Own Write'' in the US on 27 April 1964, retailing for US$2.50 (). The American edition was identical to the British, except that publishers added the caption "''The Writing Beatle!''" to the cover. The book was a best-seller in the US, where its publication took place around two months after the Beatles' first visit to the country and amid Beatlemania, the hysteria that surrounded the group.

Contributions by the other Beatles

McCartney contributed an introduction to ''In His Own Write'', writing that its content was nonsensical yet funny. In 1964 interviews, Lennon said that two pieces were co-authored with McCartney. Due to a publishing error only "On Safairy with Whide Hunter" was marked as such – being " itten in conjugal with Paul" – the other piece remaining unidentified.

Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, prone to incorrect wordings and malapropisms – dubbed "Ringoisms" by his bandmates – may have contributed a line to the book. Finishing up after a long day, perhaps 19 March 1964, he commented "it's been a hard day", and, on noticing it was dark, added s night" ("it's been a hard day's night"). While both Lennon and Starr later identified the phrase as Starr's, Lewisohn raises doubts that the phrase originated with him. He writes that if the 19 March dating is correct, that places it after Lennon had already included it in the story "Sad Michael", with the line "He'd had a hard days night that day". By 19 March, copies of ''In His Own Write'' had already been printed. Lewisohn suggests that Starr may have previously read or heard it in Lennon's story, while journalist Nicholas Schaffner simply writes the phrase originated with Lennon's poem. Beatles biographer Alan Clayson suggests the phrase's inspiration was Eartha Kitt's 1963 song "I Had a Hard Day Last Night", the B-side of her single "Lola Lola". After director Dick Lester suggested ''A Hard Day's Night'' as the title of the Beatles' 1964 film,, quoted in . Lennon used it again in the song of the same name.

Reception

''In His Own Write'' received critical acclaim, with favourable reviews in London's ''The Sunday Times'' and ''The Observer''. Among the most popular poems in the collection are "No Flies on Frank", "Good Dog Nigel", "The Wrestling Dog", "I Sat Belonely" and "Deaf Ted, Danoota, (and me)". ''The Times Literary Supplement'' reviewer wrote that the book "is worth the attention of anyone who fears for the impoverishment of the English language and British imagination". In ''The New York Times'', Harry Gilroy admired the writing style, describing it as "like a Beatle possessed", while George Melly for ''The Sunday Times'' wrote: "It is fascinating of course to climb inside a Beatle's head to see what's going on there, but what really counts is that what's going on there really is fascinating." The '' Virginia Quarterly Review'' called the book "a true delight" that finally gave "those intellectuals who have become stuck with Beatlemania... a serious literary excuse for their visceral pleasures". Gloria Steinem opined in a December 1964 profile of Lennon for ''Cosmopolitan'' that the book showed him to be the only one of the band who had "signs of a talent outside the hothouse world of musical fadism and teenage worship".

Though Lennon had never read him, comparisons to Irish writer James Joyce were common. In his review of the book, author Tom Wolfe mentions Spike Milligan as an influence, but writes that the "imitations of Joyce" were what "most intrigued the literati" in America and England: "the mimicry of prayers, liturgies, manuals and grammars, the mad homonyms, especially biting ones such as 'Loud' for 'Lord', which both oyce and Lennonuse". In a favourable review for ''The Nation'', Peter Schickele drew comparison to Edward Lear, Carroll, Thurber and Joyce, adding that even those "with a predisposition toward the Beatles" will be "pleasantly shocked" when reading it. ''Time'' cited the same influences before admiring the book's typography, written "as if pages had been set by a drunken linotypist". ''Newsweek'' called Lennon "an heir to the Anglo-American tradition of nonsense", but found that the constant Carroll and Joyce comparisons were faulty, emphasising instead Lennon's uniqueness and " spontaneity". Bill Harry published a review in the 26 March 1964 issue of ''Mersey Beat'', written as a parody of Lennon's style. In an accompanying "translation" of his review, he predicted that while it would " most certaintly... be a best seller", it could lend itself to controversy, with newer Beatles fans likely to be "puzzled by its way-out, off beat and sometimes sick humour".

One of the few negative responses to the book came from the Conservative Member of Parliament Charles Curran. On 19 June 1964, during a House of Commons debate on automation, he quoted the poem "Deaf Ted, Danoota, (and me)", then spoke derisively about the book, arguing that Lennon's verse was a symptom of a poor education system. He suggested that Lennon was "in a pathetic state of near-literacy", adding that " seems to have picked up bits of Tennyson, Browning, and Robert Louis Stevenson while listening with one ear to the football results on the wireless." The most unfavourable review of the book came from critic Christopher Ricks, who wrote in ''New Statesman'' that anyone unaware of the Beatles would be unlikely to draw pleasure from the book.

Reactions of Lennon and the Beatles

While the success of ''In His Own Write'' pleased Lennon, he was surprised by both the attention it received and its positive reception. In a 1965 interview, he admitted to purchasing all the books that critics compared to his, including one by Lear, one by Geoffrey Chaucer and ''Finnegans Wake'' by Joyce. He further stated that he did not see the similarities, except " erhapsa little bit of ''Finnegans Wake''... but anybody who changes words is going to be compared". In a 1968 interview, he said that reading ''Finnegans Wake'' "was great, and I dug it and felt as though oycewas an old friend", though he found the book difficult to read in its entirety.

Among Lennon's bandmates, Starr did not read the book, but Harrison and McCartney enjoyed it. Harrison stated in February 1964 that the book included "some great ags, and Lennon recalled McCartney was especially fond of the book, being "dead keen" about it. In Beatles manager Brian Epstein's 1964 autobiography ''A Cellarful of Noise'', he commented: "I was deeply gratified that a Beatle could detach himself from Beatleism and create such impact as an author". Beatles producer George Martin – a fan of ''The Goon Show'' – and his wife Judy Lockhart-Smith similarly enjoyed Lennon's writings, with Martin calling them "terribly funny". In an August 1964 interview, Lennon identified "Scene three Act one" as his favourite piece in the book.

Foyle's Literary Luncheon

Following the book's publication, Christina Foyle, the founder of Foyles bookshop, honoured Lennon at one of Foyle's Literary Luncheons. Osbert Lancaster chaired the event on 23 April 1964 at the Dorchester hotel in London. Among around six hundred attendees were several eminent guests, including Helen Shapiro, Yehudi Menuhin and Wilfrid Brambell. Hungover from a night spent at the Ad Lib Club, Lennon admitted to a journalist at the event that he was "scared stiff". He was reluctant to perform the expected speech, getting Epstein to advise luncheon organisers Foyle and Ben Perrick the day before the event that he would not be speaking. The two were taken aback, but assumed that Lennon meant he would only provide a short speech.

At the event, after Lancaster introduced him, Lennon stood and only said: "Uh, thank you very much, and God bless you. You've got a lucky face." Foyle was irritated, while Perrick recalls there was "some slight feeling of bewilderment" among attendees. Epstein gave a speech to avoid further disappointing any diners that had hoped to hear from Lennon. In ''A Cellarful of Noise'', Epstein expressed of Lennon's lack of a speech: "He was not prepared to do something which was not only unnatural to him, but also something he might have done badly. He was not going to fail." Perrick reflects that Lennon retained the affection of his audience due to his "charm and charisma", with attendees still happily queuing afterwards for signed copies.

Analysis

Against Lennon's songwriting

Later commentators have discussed the book's prose in relation to Lennon's songwriting, both in how it differed from his contemporary writing and in how it anticipates his later work. Writer Chris Ingham describes the book as " surreal poetry", displaying "a darkness and bite... that was light years away from 'I Want to Hold Your Hand. Professor of English Ian Marshall describes Lennon's prose as "mad wordplay", noting the Lewis Carroll influence and suggesting it anticipates the lyrics of later songs like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "I Am the Walrus". Critic Tim Riley compares the short story "Unhappy Frank" to "I Am the Walrus", though he calls the former "a good deal more oblique and less cunning".

Walter Everett describes the book as including "Joycean dialect substitutions, Carrollian portmanteau

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