JOHN LENNON, AUTHOR
Fascinating . . . it goes down like pure whimsy and then back-kicks like a sick mule.
– The Sunday Times on In His Own Write
From boyhood, John liked to write and draw. He designed his own comic called The Daily Howl in which he would lampoon teachers, draw pictures and write nonsense poems and stories influenced by his love for Lewis Carroll, James Thurber and Ronald Searle.
In 1964, up-and-coming editorial director at Jonathan Cape, Tom Maschler, approached John to put together a collection of his work, which Maschler agreed to call In His Own Write. (Other titles that fell by the wayside included The Transistor Negro, Left Hand, Left Hand and Stop One and Buy Me.) The collection, with an introduction by Paul, contained thirty-one stories, poems and skits such as ‘No Flies on Frank’, ‘Sad Michael’ and ‘The Wrestling Dog’, all shot through with clever wordplay and grotesque imagery. It was released in March 1964 and shot to the top of the bestseller chart, outselling Ian Fleming’s latest Bond novel, You Only Live Twice.
He was honoured with a Foyles Literary Lunch on 23 April, with demand for tickets the highest the bookshop had known. He attended with his wife, Cynthia, and Epstein, and was unaware that he was expected to make a speech. He stood up and mumbled, ‘Thank you. You’ve got a lucky face,’ before Epstein took over and said a few words to the puzzled audience.
That experience didn’t put him off, and he was contracted to deliver another book, so he carried on, writing most of what became his second book, A Spaniard in the Works, while on holiday in Tahiti with Cynthia, George and his new girlfriend, Pattie Boyd. (George and Pattie met while filming A Hard Day’s Night. She was playing a schoolgirl and had one line: ‘Prisoners.’) The stories in John’s second book were longer, more ambitious and showcased his literary influences, including a Sherlock Holmes parody ‘The Singularge Experience of Miss Anne Duffield’.
John Lennon arrives at the Foyles Literary Lunch in honour of his first book In His Own Write. Alamy