Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
John Lennon in Heaven: Crossing the Borderlines of Being
Author: Linda Keen
Date: 1994
Publisher: Pan Publishing, Oregon
Discovered at: 2nd Chance Thrift, 63rd & Troost
The Cover Promises: Pink-clouded adventures in heaven with the guy who sang "Imagine there's no heaven."
Representative Quotes:
Author Linda Keen claims to gad barefoot through the dandelions with dead John Lennon. He's her afterlife BFF, her "personal spirit guide," and he can't stop telling her how she's very much like him, death and genius notwithstanding.
They'll talk on and on about how tragedies on earth are no big thing since our souls learn from them, and then he'll look at her with a Beatley twinkle and say "Well, dearie, you and I have a hell of a lot in common."
Or: "I haven't had a conversation like this since Huey Newton."
Together, they amble through meadows and past Mystic Oceans, having adventures, dishing the secrets of creation and Beatledom. John complains that Yoko keeps throwing memorials for him, boasts about his past lives in Arthurian times, and then, after some 200 pages of tedious bullshit, passes bravely through an underground chamber in which their own corpses lay decaying in coffins.
There John Lennon meets an ancient man in white named Pendragon -- as in "King Arthur" Pendragon.
Pendragon is so impressed by John and Linda's moxie that he bestows upon the peace-loving Beatle an invisible sword made of light, and I guess also advances him to level 8 and the Goblet of Fire.
The publishers tagged this edition of John Lennon in Heaven "Novel/Metaphysics," and the back cover copy cannily makes no claims to truthfulness: "You'll be so deeply engrossed with the world you see through John Lennon's eyes, you'll forget to ask the obvious question: 'Is this real?'"
There's no such ambiguity between the covers or on later editions. For Across the Universe With John Lennon, a more sensibly titled 1999 reprint, the word "novel" is stripped away entirely, and the back cover now exclaims "John Lennon lives! And not just in metaphor!"
Both editions make much of what must be least committed blurb in book jacket history:
"It doesn't matter whether you consider this book to be fact or fantasy -- those of us who love John Lennon will enjoy the story with the knowledge it was written with love."-- Louise Harrison, Beatle Sister
Anyway, it turns out that Arcadia -- the non-paradisaical Irish countryside of a heaven in which Lennon loiters -- is something of a giant school in which billions of souls from across the universe learn how to make the most of their next "Expression," or life. Since classroom size remains an issue even in the after the grave, the souls are grouped into "themes" and subdivisions, where they receive individual "theme evaluations."
A noted proponent of hierarchical structures, Lennon explains further: "There's about 500,000 in my Blue Ray theme, and 5,000 in my subdivision. My Green Wave topic has about 600, and my subdivision has seven."
Yes, the afterlife has breakout sessions.
In other news:
Shocking Detail:
Eventually, Keen is granted the rare opportunity to meet beneath a "Learning Tree" with John Lennon's afterlife support group. It's worth a roll call.
Their leader is a Greek philosopher named Archimedros. He returns papers they have written and insists on "a dash around the lake" before he leads their discussion of "the coming Eighth Cycle of Bloom." Then, in a sort of she said/Shehe said, Keen and the Andromedan hash over the meaning of gender in outer space.
Anyway, let's review.
Things John Lennon Believes In According to "God," by John Lennon:
John Lennon
Things John Lennon Believes In According to John Lennon in Heaven, by Exploitative Dingbat Linda Keen:
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If John were alive today he would be screaming and banging on the lid... or was he cremated? If so, even worse. "What are you doing?! No! STOP! AHHHHH!" *sizzle*
Actually, if he hadn't died this book wouldn't have been written. Or it would be centered around some other famous dead person. Steve Irwin or Billy Mays for example.
Hey, Alan Scherstuhl! Excuxe me, I liked this book very much! I found it earnest and compelling. Why don't you just go flip burgers instead of studying and writing about the "crap" of others? You would be a lot more useful to society this way because you might learn some humility. I find you empty, arrogant, and superficial, the very antithesis of what John Lennon stood for and wrote songs about. If John were alive today, he wouldn't think you were the slightest bit cool. Perhaps he would even say that you are laughing in the face of love and in the destruction of kinder and gentler people's dreams.
I'm not so sure this isn't all true. He foresaw all of this: "Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly ... A girl with kaleidoscope eyes." It all checks out. Look at that cover again and tell me those aren't marmalade skies.
I'm with Dave: Tub...ber, Tub...ber, Tub...ber!
Past Masters 1 and 2 weren't albums. That's totally cheating. Like saying the best Joyce book was "The Portable James Joyce."
Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's, Abbey Road
Another crap installment, another week made.
Alla y'all slagging on this book seem to have willfully ignored the fact that it got a rave in "Friend's Review."
Longtime subscribers know that praise from FR is hard to come by. They make Michiko Kakutani look like Peter Travers, over there.
Quick google search just turned up another review of this book:
"GIVE ME A DOLLAR!"
-- Guy on Bus Who Smells Like Pee's Review
Not to lend any credence to this book (I haven't read it anyway), but I've read interviews with John and Yoko where they had believed themselves to be Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning reincarnated. John's song "Grow Old Along With Me" on Milk and Honey is inspired by poems written by the Brownings.
How can you laugh, when you know I'm dead?
(Okay, that song was Paul's, but he died first, you know.)
Past Masters 1 is better than 2.
I look forward to the Crap Archivist every week, and this is even better than usual. I like the sex books as much as anyone but more beatle crap, please please me!
Paul that book sound hilarious, looking it up rigth now.
If you think that is bad, you should see the book "Nowhere Man" by Robert Rosen. Instead of inventing a world of insanity about his afterlife, Rosen invents a world of insanity about Lennon's not-particularly-well-documented final years. At least Lennon's afterlife is something one could reasonably speculate on, but his ACTUAL life should be pretty easily refutable. Look it up on Amazon (or click my name above). It remains the worst book I have ever read. Ever.
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