# Talk:In His Own Write

A book infobox please? LuciferMorgan 23:23, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 13:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Kusma for your comments in the archived FAC. Particularly exciting is that of all the Beatles fans I've ever met, I don't remember ever speaking to one who was even aware that John had written books, let alone read them. That is part of my desire to get this to FA status, since I'd love more people to be aware of it. Anyway, regarding your comments, I had seen John Lennon: The Collected Artwork before but incorrectly thought that it only included John's illustrations and a foreword by Yoko. Once you brought it up again I realized that it includes commentary from Scott Gutterman, who writes about art and music for Vogue, The New Yorker and others. I've ordered a copy to help expand the commentary on John's illustrations, which Doggett will help with too. If the commentary proves useless, I'll at least get a nice coffee table book out of it.
Also, interesting stuff with the German translations. I'm sure there are interesting stories regarding other language versions, but I'm somewhat limited in only being able to read English. I've cleaned up the addition a little since three notes for one sentence seemed a little much to me. Cheers. Tkbrett (✉) 12:01, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

It's kind of strange that the book is so little known. I grew up in my father's extensive library and just came across it one day. It might have helped kickstart my interest in translations of untranslatable works. Anyway, back to the article: I hope the Lennon art book will be helpful, I haven't seen it myself. My little sentence about the German translation with the three footnotes was originally a whole paragraph that seemed excessive detail for the article, so I compromised on footnotes instead. Consolidating them is very sensible. The red {{ill}} interlanguage links might also be excessive, and some people object to the presence of even this kind of red links in FA-level articles so you might want to remove them. I put them in for now because I believe foreign language context that you can machine translate is better than no context :) I'll try to add a little footnote on the French translations if I find something (as a start: translators were Christiane Rochefort and Rachel Mizrahi [1]). —Kusma (talk) 14:13, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
There's at least two translations into Spanish: Por su propio cuento by Andy Ehrenhaus and "En su tinta" by Jaime Rest, which is in Buenos Aires dialect? (I can guess my way through Spanish if I have to) [2] [3] The last article also says that The Lives of John Lennon contains a Freudian interpretation of No Flies on Frank, and it indeed does (book can be borrowed on Internet Archive). So there's even more material out there :) —Kusma (talk) 21:30, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
Red links are good to me (and the MOS), especially inter-language links. The other translation info would be great! I've generally avoided ever using Goldman as a source because of his issues in interpretation, though his research is apparently not always bad (cf. Erin Torkelson Weber, The Beatles and the Historians, 140–141). I'll add it in. Tkbrett (✉) 14:11, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
I've been a bit busy with other things, but should get around to at least writing a sentence plus footnote each about French and Spanish within the next couple days. As for Goldman, I have no idea whether he's right, but given how much you discuss Sauceda, I think he should be mentioned. (Overall, Sauceda's and Goldman's interpretations probably tell us at least as much about them as they do about Lennon). —Kusma (talk) 13:40, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
I anticipate putting it back up as an FAC sometime in the next month before I'm too busy, but there's no rush – I appreciate your help! I added some more on the French translation from what I could find. Yes, you're right regarding Goldman, so I've added him in. Tkbrett (✉) 18:03, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
I re-read the intro and afterword of the German translation. First note: the two translators did not translate "together", but each of them translated some of the texts. Secondly, there is a note on what source material Lennon used (and some explanations of what source material is used in the translations instead). One of the things they point to is Wordsworth's I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, clearly used in "I Wandered". As you quote extensively, perhaps you should point to the connection. Does Sauceda talk about this? How aboutTreasure Island/Treasure Ivan?
While doing some general searching, I came across this, leading to some snippets like this: "At the Dennis" is apparently a more or less verbatim copy (or translation into "portmanteau-ese") of a scene from Carlo Barones "A Manual of Conversation English-Italian". I have not been able to find that book, but have seen some hints that Barone's book might be unintentionally funny in the way that English as She Is Spoke is. Looks like Goldman talks about this?
The Art and Music of John Lennon looks not totally useless to me, especially for some commentary about the Mersey Beat and other early writings and the note about I Remember Arnold that says "[...] what was essentially Lennon was the cruelty, the matter-of-fact attitude to death and destruction, and the quick descent from bathos into gibberish which brings the poem to a kind of conclusion."
Anyway, the literary and other source material used by Lennon is perhaps something that is not yet fully comprehensively covered, other than that Joyce wasn't a source.
Overall it is getting difficult to find things not yet covered in the article, which is a great sign :) Hope you find something useful here, —Kusma (talk) 21:44, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Kusma, this is awesome stuff. Would you mind adding the info from the intro and afterword of the German edition? Despite all of Sauceda's issues, he does indeed mention the Wordsworth and Stevenson parallels, so I'll add them in. I stumbled on the Italian manual before, but I found it somewhat confusing. In The Beatles Anthology book, John discusses the Italian book, but it's included in the section covering A Spaniard in the Works: I'd done most of it and they needed a bit more, so the publisher sent along a funny little dictionary of Italian. He said, "See if you get any ideas from this." I looked in, and it was just a howl on its own. So I changed a few words (which is what I used to do at school with Keats or anything; I'd write it out almost the same and change a few words) but then they put in the reviews: "He's pinched the whole book!" (The Beatles Anthology, p. 176).
John doesn't explicitly mention A Spaniard in the Works here, so perhaps the editors of the Anthology book accidentally put it in the wrong section and he was actually talking about In His Own Write. Given that Gwen Watkins seems to have actually compared A Manual of Conversation English-Italian and In His Own Write, I think it's worth mentioning. Lastly, I was a little confused when I saw that John Robertson and Peter Doggett both have a book titled The Art & Music of John Lennon. I was even more confused when I started reading through and noticed identical passages. Then I looked it up and realized what happened; Doggett published the book under a pseudonym in 1990, then under his actual name in 2005. The 2005 version is the one I've used in the article. I'll add some more from it. Thanks for all the help Kusma, I really appreciate it. Tkbrett (✉) 16:54, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
Looks like you have almost everything in your library already (thanks for the note about the duplicate-looking book under pseudonym, could have tripped me).  I've discovered that my source in German above has simply plagiarised what Goldman says, so it's not useful and you can just use Goldman to refer to the At the Dennis / Barone (which clearly puts it into In His Own Write). I also found this in the FT, with a morsel about Cape rewriting Paul's introduction but Paul having none of that. I'll condense what one can learn from the German translator's notes into something useful soonish. But now I'll get back to Motz (not very good at focusing today it seems). —Kusma (talk) 20:04, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
I'll just translate a bit for you; I think most of the source materials mentioned here are given in the article already, except the claim of an allusion to Dick Whittington and His Cat in the last line of Treasure Ivan.
Rogosky, Wolf D. (1965). "Nachwort". In seiner eigenen Schreibe. By Lennon, John (in German and English). Translated by Kossodo, Helmut; Rogosky, Wolf Dieter. Geneva: Kossodo. pp. 79–81. OCLC 164709025.
From p. 79: "Where does the material that John Lennon stitched into his verse and prose lines come from? The inventory is quickly done. Besides colloquial phrases and popular songs, the main sources to consider are school, radio and television. National treasures like the "Daffodils" of William Wordsworth (a poem that every English pupil has to memorise), Queen Victoria, socialism and Dick Whittington (whose cat Lennon lets wander back to Newcastle) appear in a form that has been alienated in many ways. In addition to the information about daily happenings from newspapers and television, further sources of education are steady-sellers like Enid Blyton's adventure books and R. L. Stevenson's Treasure Island."
On p. 81 we find the claim that "unobtrugell" from Treasure Ivan is an "unobtrusive"+"Tru-Gel" (Rogosky writes "Trugell") portmanteau, with Tru-Gel a hair gel popular in the 1950s (ad). The translator instead turned German "brüsk" (brusque) into "brisk", apparently using "brilliantine" and states that this way he keeps Lennon's level of association. Not sure I follow. There's a little more on processes of translation, but nothing I find worth adding to the article. —Kusma (talk) 22:56, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes Tkbrett, Beatles Bible is a fan site but written and maintained by Joe Goodden, a BBC journalist (https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wales/authors/f10f2d94-aa97-3683-b17d-8a73e7a7055b?page=3)... Not quite as unreliable as most. He is also writing about a BBC show ! JeanPaulGRingault (talk) 18:18, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi JeanPaulGRingault. If you feel strongly about this, it could be more valuable to hold this discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject The Beatles, since I doubt many other consistent Beatles-focused editors will see this post.
Anyway, I do not think Joe Goodden meets the requirements of WP:BLOGS. Unlike an author like Peter Doggett, Goodden's work has not published by reliable, independent publications. His first and to date only book, Riding So High, was published in 2018 by Pepper & Pearl, which is from AllMusicBooks. I'm unclear on the independence of that publisher. In fact, a far more experienced editor than I has even described Goodden's book as  simply self-published. Further to WP:BLOGS, Goodden's work is generally not original research but instead a collection of material from authors like Mark Lewisohn or Barry Miles, meaning it's better to cite them directly. The only original research that I have seen Goodden cited regarding is his 2010 interview with Raymond Jones, a person was previously thought to be a myth – that one shows up in the endnotes of Tune In. Tkbrett (✉) 18:53, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Tkbrett. I believe a notice for a better source could be a better alternative to erasing outright the info since it speaks of Lennon performing these writings (as seen in Anthology). If it's alright, I'll copy my contribution here. Hopefully I, or someone, can eventually find a better source. Regards JeanPaulGRingault (talk) 20:16, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
On 20 November 1964, Lennon was invited to the brand new British comedy show Not Only... But Also to read his text Deaf Ted, Danoota, (and me) with fellow guest Norman Rossington(ref>https://www.beatlesbible.com/1964/11/20/john-lennon-not-only-but-also/</ref). On the 29, he returned to present the texts About The Awful (reading alone his autobiographical text from the cover), Good Dog Nigel, The Wrestling Dog (with Rossington) and All Aboard Speeching (with Rossington and host Dudley Moore). Unhappy Frank was read solely by Rossington and Moore. These performances were broadcast on 9 January 1965 on the show's premiere.(ref>https://www.beatlesbible.com/1964/11/29/john-lennon-not-only-but-also-2/</ref) The Wrestling Dog sequence is included in episode three of The Beatles Anthology documentary. JeanPaulGRingault (talk) 20:16, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
The “Deaf Ted, Danoota & Me” segment was released on the DVD, “The Best of What’s Left of Not Only… But Also…”. 99.196.176.254 (talk) 16:57, 8 June 2025 (UTC)