David Foenkinos makes John Lennon talk

Lennon
David Foenkinos

Plon

October 2010
Price: €18

Paris, January 3, 2011,

On December 8, 2010, I chose to mourn the death of a certain ” John Winston Ono Lennon”, through 18 fictional/fantasmatic sessions between the Beatles founder and his shrink.

This first-person book is a brilliant, erotic and vibrant tribute to one of the most one of the undisputed figures of the rock scene and – more generally – of this xx


^e


century.

< Extracts from confidences (in the style of a Foenkinos) >

First session :

“Without drugs, would I have gone from Love me do à I am the Walrus ? I don’t know. Maybe it was all there, inside me. And getting drunk on water would have done just as well. I just can’t know. Nobody can turn back the clock in their veins.”

Love Me Do – #1 Beatles Now

I Am the Walrus – Best of the Beatles Box Set Vol. 2

C
ith session :

“It’s physically impossible to be as well-known as I am and to be an adult.”

Sixth session:

“If I am what I am, it’s because Elvis was what he was… It’s all intimately linked to my mother. When I reconnected with her, we started going out a bit. She became my absolute heroine. She fascinated me. She was so beautiful, so free, so crazy. She was like a big sister to me. She spoke quite freely about her desires, which sometimes bothered me, but deep down I think I liked it when she shocked me.”

Don’t Be Cruel – Elvis Presley

“We did the Ed Sullivan Showthe most important show in the country. We broke the ratings record… Just before we started playing, Sullivan read a message from Elvis. He welcomed us, even though it pissed him off that we were showing up in his country… Years later, we learned that he had actually tried to harm us. He wrote to Nixon saying we were on drugs and that we were anti-American. But who cares, it was only fair. We had dethroned the king.”

“Mimi, it drove her crazy to see me like that… What drove her crazy was the guitar. She said it would get me nowhere, that I was wasting my time. Her famous line was: “The guitar’s all very well, but it’s not the way to make a living.

Seventh session :

“The violence of our disintegration reflects our success. A planetary disintegration. That’s exactly it: we had a love affair with the world. That’s bound to complicate things. Especially when you know that a two-person affair is already a lot of trouble.”

Session eight :

“That’s when Pete Best joined the band… We were real bastards with him too. Anyway, it’s the same in every rock band. There are corpses between the melodies.”

Twelfth session :

“Parents worried about their children’s hysteria were reassured to see us… I’m sure that’s where our success came from: we were like a controlled madness. A gentle revelation. We were both subversive and respectful. It was like breaking into a house, fucking the girl on the second floor, but before we did that, we would have made sure to wipe our feet on the doormat.”

Fifteenth session :

“Heroin has surely accentuated our need to be inseparable.”

“When you have all the women you want, when sensuality is a land traversed in all directions, then the terrain of desire shifts… To everything that’s not just another morning…”

Seventeenth session :

“When Yoko was around, the whole world could bleed that it didn’t affect me.”

Eighteenth session :

“There, I’ve told you my life story… For the first time, I’ve put all the events into words… I feel a thousand years old. And yet, I feel young today. I’m forty, and I’m a child.”

A Christmas present, terribly retroactive.

Elisa Palmer

Cette publication est également disponible en : Français (French)