Customer Reviews

With the Beatles

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Lapham's account of his time in India is a great read--and funny too. What seems most important about the book is that it contextualizes the '60s zeitgeist for all things Eastern within the period's real political significance. 1967 brought the summer of love, and it was in '68 that the Beatles went to India to search for transcendence within their own minds. Lapham shows that many of those who went to India were confused about the search, a confusion shared by the fab-four. The war in Vietnam is somehow always in the background here, and Lapham sensitively investigates the meaning of Transcendental Meditation--TM--in both the political and cultural contexts. The title of the book is quite playful, since Lapham was "With The Beatles" while never really getting one-on-one interviews with them. He does, however, speak with them often, and what he observes in India turns out to be both an intimate portrait of the band and the larger cultural moment.

I just finished the book...and I am extremely disappointed and somewhat angry with it.

The Maharishi and his followers come off as rather silly, which is perhaps very accurate. But the main portrayal of them is as sycophants - the Maharishi's followers and their vapid adoration for him, and the Maharishi's courting and over-praising of celebrities. There is an implication that celebrity-followers of the Maharishi meant a lot of money would come his way.

But I must question whether or not Lapham is engaged in exactly the same thing. All of the Beatles come off quite well, but hardly anyone else does. There is very little contact between Lapham and the Beatles, and virtually nothing of substance in the book about the Beatles and the meaning and consequences of their involvement with the Maharishi. There is very little about the Beatles themselves, but there is a lot of revealing table-setting.

However, the book is called "With the Beatles", and it features a rather extraordinary cover with each of the Beatles and the Maharishi in lotus position floating over flowers. And it is never clear in the book how Lapham sees or feels about the Beatles and their involvement with the Maharishi.

But the presentation and subject of the book clearly link Lapham to the Beatles and the Maharishi. It sheds very little light, and it is for sale. Is Lapham selling out his connection in the same way most of the characters in the story are doing?

It certainly seems that way to me. VERY DISAPPOINTING. I almost purchased the book, but got it from the library instead. I'm very glad I didn't spend money on it.

This book does a number of things with grace. To my taste, the most important thing it does is to capture the moral and cultural confusion, doomed innocence, and lively idealism of the cusp of the 1960's. Lapham's prose is lapidary: clear, precise, vivid, dryly witty. And his mind has the same qualities as his prose. He does not make snap judgments, or wild accusations. His fairness is a moral quality, and so he never calls the Maharishi Yogi a charlatan, because he was not. Lapham was present in Rishikesh at the moment when the forces of good, as exemplified in Eastern spiritual consciousness, attempted to convert the world to peace and sanity via a Western cultural and musical phenomenon called the Beatles. Lapham observes closely and judges charitably, and freely admits that he plumbed no mysteries. But the scrupulous care with which he reports the scene at Rishikesh and the personalities he became slightly acquainted with sheds more light on what happened there than three hundred hours of taped interviews would have. In a brief afterward, he says "The scene retains its force because I now know that it occurs at almost the precise moment, late in February 1968, at which the flood tide of generous thought and optimistic feeling that formed the promise of the 1960's turns on the ebb--toward the assassination on Martin Luther King in April, followed by the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in June, in July by the riots engulfing the Democratic National Convention in Chicago."

It's a small book, beautifully designed, with very good photographs which capture the sadness of Cynthia Lennon, the increasingly absent presence of her husband, the gayety of the Maharishi, the good cheer of Paul McCartney, the sanity of Ringo Starr, and the dignity and humor of George Harrison. Every important personality reported on in the book retains his or her separateness and complexity and individuality. Lapham is a grown up reporting on grown ups, even when they behave like exotic species of animals, as a few of them do.

This book is highly recommended for students of the 1960's, or of the Beatles, or of life in general.

Ever since last summer's scandal involving the London defamation trial of Roman Polanski vs. Vanity Fair magazine, I'd been curious to find out more about Lewis Lapham, who was quoted in Vaniity Fair as saying that Polanski had propositioned a Swedish model at Elaine's in New York on his way to Sharon Tate's funeral. Polanski's lawyers had made mincemeat out of Lapham, and what was left got kicked to the curb by Mia Farrow, who had accompanied Polanski to Elaine's that evening and said that Polanski had done nothing of the sort.

Mia Farrow appears in Lapham's new book, WITH THE BEATLES, and she comes across like a nitwit! Revenge for the London testimony? I'm sure Lapham, a principled journalist, had heavy misgivings before painting Mia Farrow's portrait in this book, and yet Mia, when you joined the Beatles and the Mahharishi in Rishikesh, Lapham makes you look like a nut.

He remembers things verbatim that occurred more than 40 years ago, and whole conversations too. Of course he was there as a journalist, and wrote the whole thing up for the once popular magazine SATURDAY EVENING POST. The Beatles aren't in the book very much, more's the pity, and the social satire that Lapham offers seems curiously out of date. The person Lapham finds most articulate and intelligent is Candice Bergen--that's saying a lot! If you are a Candice Bergen fan, and to a lesser extent a White Album period Beatles fan, you'll find much to amuse you here. I know I'm both!

This book effortlessly demystifies several of the largest icons of the period. How important it is, too, in an era of plastic transfigurations of art and music, to see the Beatles as skeptics of their own idolaters. Not to mention the book is beautifully designed and a pleasure to hold. Lapham is as modest an author as he must have been an observer when he reports the habits and considerations of the Beatles, yet leaves the iconoclasm, if cleverly critiqued, still quite intact. The culture of TM, Timothy Leary and other 1960s superstition-bound followings only magnify the true savvy of the band, and what it managed to accomplish politically, by refusing to 'drop out' even in the midst of feverish popularity and spiritual support, manifested in the figure of the Maharishi himself. This story quietly invokes the slant and movement of young religious seekers in India without the use of historical accounts or an artificial lens. It is a great piece of cultural reportage.

I think Laham's magazine, Harper's, is truly excellent, so I was surprised and disappointed by this book. This is an extremely slight book that offers no real insight and says nothing new about any of its subjects -- Transcendental Meditation, the Maharishi, or the Beatles (who appear very little). We learn that practicing TM has benefits but is not a panacea; the Maharishi was not all he was cracked up to be; and celebrities are treated differently than other people (and bigger celebrities more differently still) yet they are human beings too. Stop the presses!
The best thing about this book is the photographs, many of which and others can be seen online at www.thebeatlesinindia.com. The fourth photo, of John Lennon, is the softest I've ever seen of him. Save your money: skip the book and see the pictures.

Disingenuous title as there ain't much on the Beatles in this book. I expected an insight or two but was disappointed.