All My Own Work

IN HIS OWN WRITE by John Lennon. 78 pages. Simon & Schuster. $2.50.

Puffing and globbering they drugged theyselves rampling or dancing with wild abdomen, stubbing in wild postumes amongst themselves. It was not the Jumblies setting to sea in a sieve, nor was it the mimsy borogoves. John Lennon, the writing Beatle ("He's the arty one"), is--in his own way--describing the members of the Neville Club as they sit in hubbered lumps smoking Hernia and taking Odeon. In this startling collection of verse and prosery, Lennon has rolled Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and James Thurber into one great post-Joycean spitball. All those jellybean-lobbing, caterwauling Beatle fans are not going to understand it at all.

Well, not at first. The danger is that Lennon's unorthodox orthography may set off a whole new adolescent epidemic of something far more virulent than Beatlemania. The day could come when fans will talk like this, from beneath their beehive hairdos: Madam: I have a hallowed tooth that suffer me grately.

Sir: Sly down in that legchair Madam and open your gorble wide--your mouse is all but toothless.

Madam: Alad! I have but eight tooth remaining.

The passage is from a playlet called At the Denis. It indicates, however, that Lennon may be capable of putting some sense into the gorbles of his readers; certainly it is logical to assume that if a Sir says "alas," a Madam might say "alad."

Besides playlets, Lennon provides teasingly evocative dramatic fragments. Sample: "Roger could visualise Anne in her flowing weddy drag, being wheeled up the aisle, smiling a blessing. He had butterfield in his stomarce as he fastened his bough tie and brushed his hairs. 'I hope I'm doing the right thing,' he thought looking in the mirror. 'Am I good enough for her?' Roger need not have worried because he was. 'Should I have flowers all round the spokes?' said Anne polishing her foot rest. 'Or should I keep it syble?' she continued looking down on her grain haired Mother. 'Does it really matter?' repaid her Mother wearily wiping her sign. 'He won't be looking at your spokes anyway.' Anne smiled the smile of someone who's seen a few laughs."

Much of the book's charm is typographical, as if the pages had been set by a drunken Linotypist, and often defies being read aloud. In His Own Write is a hit in England, where it is quoted at tea tables and praised in the Times Literary Supplement ("worth the attention of anyone who fears for the impoverishment of the English language"). Lennon simply says that he enjoys writing and admits only to a small debt to Lewis Carroll: "It just comes out. I sit down and write and this is what happens." The T.L.S. glurbles: "He must write a great deal more." If Lennon does have the stomarce for more writing, perhaps he will return to the fascillating histamine of Roger and Anne, those spoke-crossed lovers, and how they got that way. They should be good for a whole book if he keeps it syble.

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