How the Beatles became a touchstone of our culture, as told by 70 voices. Since uttering their first "yeah yeah yeah", the Fab Four have been part of our consciousness. IN MY LIFE brings together fiction, recollections, and poetry in which the Beatles and their songs play a pivotal role, showing how the Beatles have affected us all through their incredible music, astonishing inventiveness, and infectious sense of humor.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
"I have never met any of them. Perhaps that's best," writes composer James Russell Smith of the Fab Four?and, where this book's diverse, refreshingly outsider takes on the band and their music are concerned, Smith hits the mark. These 56 essays, excerpts, short stories and poems, collected and reprinted by the three poet-editors from diverse sources, reflect how their authors?music critic Greil Marcus, poets David Wojan and Donald Hall, early Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe and many others?have loved and internalized the Beatles and their music. Robert Sullivan, for example, discusses his anxieties resulting from his son's selection of a favorite Beatle different from his own; in his poem "Portland Coliseum," Allen Ginsburg exultantly recounts attending an early Beatles concert. Indeed, the Beatles' very public February 9, 1964, appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show comes up again and again in these pages as a sort of mantra for a generation's coming of age (though Leonard Bernstein writes of how the four moptops overwhelmed a 46-year-old conductor on that winter night). Not all of the writers flatter the band?witness Larry Neal's attempt to explain the Beatles' failure to capture the hearts of some African Americans, or Eric Gamalinda's wonderful yarn about the band's disastrous trip to the Philippines. For sheer fun and creativity, however, Timothy Leary's essay "Thank God for the Beatles" alone justifies the price of admission: "John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr are mutants.... Evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with mysterious power to create a new human species." Yeah, yeah, yeah!
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This diary, which reads like a novel, begins in October 1974 and records the process of writing and rehearsing Shylock and opening the play in New York in 1977, with final entries in 1985. Wesker is a major British playwright whose play attracted international talent: director John Dexter, Zero Mostel, John Clements, Marian Seldes, and others. Getting a play to performance is a form of warfare, in which the combatants are committed artists in a collaborative art form. This is the record of a long, sustained struggle, usually cordial, often loving, occasionally rancorousAand one that survived the disaster of a star's death. Wesker is insightful about the process, capturing the exhilaration and risk of creativity and making the participants vivid characters. The Broadway system gives the director, designer, and producer final decision authority, and with great eloquence, Wesker cries out for the primacy of the writer. His passion is persuasive. Required reading.AThomas E. Luddy, Salem State Coll., MA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is a great book with many graet moments,
By A Customer
This review is from: In My Life: Encounters With the Beatles (Hardcover)
This ia a book of many poems, short stories, essays and more. It is solely about how the fab-four affected many peoples lives. It was done very well and has many great authors, such as marcus allen in it. When I read this book it really made me think of when I was a teenager and how I felt about the beatles. This editors in this book did a wonderful job with it. Many of these great clips of writing are about how children were alowed to stay up that memorable night, when the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show. Others tell about how they actually got to meet and talk to their favorite Beatle. One Story tells of a young girl who goes to John's house and meets him. All she does is say hi to him but he answers rudely and she is embarrased. If you can read this wonderful book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Only fitfully interesting,
By A Customer
This review is from: In My Life: Encounters With the Beatles (Hardcover)
This book was edited by editors with VERY literary credentials. And that is one of the things that is wrong with this book. It has a bunch of poems about the Beatles, a bunch of short stories about the Beatles (actually, the Beatles are only peripherally a part of most of the fiction), so there is too much that is dryly academic in this book. And then the first-person pieces are mostly fans' memoirs, that any Beatles fan could write. Having said that, I gave the book three stars instead of one or two, mainly because of a fascinating piece "The Beatles in Tonypandy." That what happens in this piece seems rather improbable, is what makes it so entertaining. The Beatles in the mid-sixties went and stayed with a pigeon expert in the South of Wales for about six days. This town of Tonypandy was so remote, no one recognized the Beatles, and they could go about as they wanted. I don't want to tell the rather odd things that happened during these six days, because I think it will spoil it for you. But it is a fascinating piece. Whether it's worth the price of the book, I don't know, because I checked mine out of the library. But it is great piece to read for any Beatles fan. The other piece that is interesting in parts is "Sod Manila!" which includes the article's author witnessing a conversation between the Beatles in their hotel room in the Phillipines, when the country was ready to tear them apart for snubbing the Marcoses. The other pieces (except for a few so-so ones) are ones a flipped quickly through. So, except for the two gems, this is a dry affair.
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