A Spaniard in the Works - John Lennon (for the 1965 Club)

I'm not sure what I was expecting this book to be about, and having read it I have to admit I'm not a great deal clearer. It's a compendium of nonsense book - comparisons that occur are Searle cartoons (St Trinian's, Down With Skool), Monty Python, and possibly Edward Lear. Every single poem and short story has long strands of deliberate and completely inconsistent malapropisms, as if words are being thrown at the page. 

According to the preface that was exactly how Lennon claimed he wrote it. I'm not sure whether to believe that or not, because although the half the words are wrong, it is still possible to follow the short stories. 

And they are very short - two, three pages long. The poems have short verses too, the drawings seem dashed off. 

His use of parody makes it very hard to know if some of the bits that made me wince a bit - mostly around descriptions of said Spaniard and other non-Brits - are Lennon thinking there's nothing wrong there, or Lennon mocking others who think there's nothing wrong.  Similarly the use of taboo words - just scattered among the other malapropisms - makes them feel unloaded, but at the same time presumably they're chosen for a reason. Is it to shock? Or is it to say 'look, it's just a word'. 

Possibly I'm overthinking, but that's partly because it's a book that asks to be analysed. In the cartoons all the people are naked, and lumpish, some of them chained or missing limbs, others wielding clubs or burying others alive. The drawings are very basic - bodies are just an outline - but these distorted plasticine men have recognizable facial expressions, either blank or smiling while they go about their strange business. In a similar way the stories are short, the words scrambled, and terrible things happen but are reported in the same lets-play-with-language way as everything else. 

It is, I think, very much of it's time, and half the interest was, I'm sure, seeing inside the head of a Beatle. 

That is still the case. My copy is a reprint which includes Lennon's first book, In His Own Write and although I probably will flick through, if I didn't have it, I wouldn't seek it out. 

As always thanks to Karen and Simon for hosting these events.