Book

Author:	Robert Rosen
Title:	Nowhere Man
Subtitle:	The Final Days Of John Lennon
Publisher:	Soft Skull Press
Country:	USA
Date:	Jun 2000
Format:	Hardcover
Genre:	Non-Fiction, Music
ISBN-13:	9781887128469
Total Editions:	4
Rating:	Rate
Collection:	I Own It I Want It
Community:	1 Owns
Price Guide:	Valuation Page
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Notes

231 pages. Book dimensions: 13.2 cms x 1.7 cms x 20.9 cms.

From the inner left flap of the dust jacket:

John Lennon was the symbol of his generation's expansive conscience. But the last five years of his life were lived in isolation, in a hazy series of lazy days in his sprawling apartment in New York City's legendary Dakota. Lennon was torn between twin poles of fame and reclusiveness, indulging in pseudo-religious belief one day, and the next declaring himself a "working-class hero".

Lennon was haunted by his fame with the Beatles, his jagged past and unfinished business with Paul McCartney, a tumultuous marriage to Yoko Ono, and the burden of being looked up to by so many, when inside he felt confusion and uncertainty.

In 1981, five months after John Lennon's murder, New York journalist Robert Rosen was temporarily given the ex-Beatle's diaries. Nowhere Man is based on over two decades of original research, including Rosen's intimate conversations with the key figures of these last days. Nowhere Man is a loving but hard look at Lennon's final years.

Cover price:

USA: $22.50.
Canada: $33.00.
UK: £14.99.

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Comments and Reviews


JPGR&B SUBS 25th Jul 2023		No. 1 in the Top 50 books viewed yesterday, Monday 24 July 2023.



JPGR&B SUBS 24th Jul 2023		Review Annotation: This text is almost recommended for its utter dreadfulness. It is probably even worse than Geoffrey Ellis's I Should Have Known Better, which is saying something. Robert Rosen was a 28 year-old New York cabbie and graduate of journalism school when John Lennon's personal assistant, Fred Seaman (later fired by Yoko and prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to five years’ probation for theft), approached him to collaborate on a book about Lennon. Seaman and Rosen briefly had in their possession the personal diaries of Lennon, but Rosen's notes were stolen (and the diaries returned). Hence, Rosen does not base his account on anything more than his memory of the journals he claims to have read, hearsay, and imagination. Nowhere Man is certainly a work of the imagination (much more so than Rosen is willing to admit in the opening pages) although he does concede that 'I have used no material from the diaries'. What he writes therefore should not be taken as factual in any sense. Rosen tells us of his attempt to get inside Lennon's mind and lifestyle, which turns out to be unintentionally funny: 'I ate the foods that he ate. I fasted. [ ... ] I lived as he would have lived, but without Yoko, without Sean, without a staff of maids, cooks, governesses, chauffeurs, and their assorted servant seers and personal assistants. I lived as he would have lived, but without his Beatle past, without his superstar present, without his $150,000,000'. The deluded Rosen was not living remotely like Lennon. Rosen also presents Sean Lennon as a junk-food scoffing cry-baby and Lennon himself is portrayed as spontaneously aggressive, 'forever complaining about the disobedience of [housemaid] Uda-San and their servants'. For Rosen, Lennon's existence in the Dakota was a 'living death'; he wanted to get away from Yoko, but 'there really was no choice'. The book ends with a distasteful invitation to get inside the mind of the man who murdered Lennon: 'Imagine Mark David Chapman in Honolulu, Hawaii'. This text is utterly puerile from start to finish. It should be stressed that the author had apparently colluded with Lennon aide, Frederick Seaman, resulting in his prosecution and conviction for receiving stolen property by Seaman as part of an elaborate scheme to defraud Ono; in other words, 'Reader beware.' See also Seaman, Frederick. Melissa Davis Source: The Beatles Bibliography: A New Guide To The Literature - Michael Brocken and Melissa Davis (The Beatle Works Ltd., 2012), with acknowledgement, and used here with permission from the authors for educational and historical purposes only. ✔︎ Helpful Review?

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Other Editions

Book

Robert Rosen - Nowhere Man - Fusion Press - Paperback - UK - 1901250431 (2000)

Book

Robert Rosen - Nowhere Man - Quick American Archives - Paperback - USA - 0932551513 (2002)

Book

Robert Rosen - Nowhere Man - South Village Press - Paperback - USA - 9798218038946 (2022)