Рассказы Джона Леннона

Цитаты Джона о второй книге (взято из "Антологии"):

JOHN: The second book was more disciplined because it was started from scratch. They said, ‘You’ve got so many months to write a book in.’

I wrote In His Own Write – at least some of it – while I was still at school, and it came spontaneously. But once it became: ‘We want another book from you, Mr Lennon,’ I could only loosen up to it with a bottle of Johnnie Walker, and I thought, ‘If it takes a bottle every night to get me to write…’ That’s why I didn’t write any more.

I’m not very keen on being disciplined. (It seems odd, being a Beatle; we’re disciplined but we don’t feel as though we are. I don’t mind being disciplined and not realising it.)

The longest thing I’ve written is in this book. It’s one about Sherlock Holmes and it seemed like a novel to me, but it turned out to be about six pages. Most of A Spaniard in the Works is longer than the bits in the first book. But my mind won’t stay on the same thing. I forget who I’ve brought in, I get lost and I get fed up and bored. That’s why I usually kill the lot off. I killed them off in the first book, but with the second book I tried not to; I tried to progress.

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!’

I hardly ever alter anything because I’m selfish about what I write, or big-headed about it. Once I’ve written it, I like it. And the publisher sometimes says, ‘Should we leave this out, or change that?’ and I fight like mad, because once I’ve done it I like to keep it. But I always write it straight off. I might add things when I go over it before it’s published, but I seldom take anything out. So it is spontaneous.

One of the reviews of In His Own Write tried to put me in this satire boom with Peter Cook and those people that came out of Cambridge, saying, ‘Well, he’s just satirising the normal things, like the Church and the State,’ which is what I did. Those are the things that keep you satirising, because they’re the only things.

I’m not a do-gooder about things: I won’t go around marching, I’m not that type.