Lennon by Norman

Purely because it was in the library when I was in a John Lennon mood, I took home the Philip Norman biography of 2008. Its arrogance was nearly enough to leave it on the shelf, but I wanted to be able to slate it properly.

Biography is a dull genre when told by a stranger. It is incredibly conventional. One tells the chronology of the subject's life in an unlively third person tone, starting with at least one generation before, and putting in lots of future tense statements: '...which would be their home for 20 years". Like history, arrogant presumptions are slipped in regularly under the objective dry tone, and no or few references are given.

Philip Norman is particularly bad as his doesn't even have an introduction or preface. So I am thinking, with my academic training - who are you and where are your sources? At the back, he slips in a few with his acknowledgements. He claims he is 'well qualified' to write on John as he says his Beatles work is considered 'definitive'. If there is ever a term to switch me off a tome, 'definitive' is it, particularly when applied to your own work. If 'definitive' means fat, then perhaps this is. Norman slates the two existing biographies and dismisses them in an unsubstantiated sentence - which only cries out to have the same done to him.

Norman then confesses he only met John twice - as a journalist - not the best guise to get to know someone. He also upset Yoko who refused to endorse his book, which he went ahead and published anyway.

Norman's style is typical of a journalist who considers his prowess is best shown in future tense, listing financial figures and sexual details that are really none of or business; and in showing off his skills of analysis of musical history, and dismissing people's careers and marriages - and even the general opinion on the last world war - in a swift stroke of his arrogant pen.

His 800 pages tome requires lots of skimming. It was the subject not the writing that kept me going. Much of what he says that is of interest comes from the more personable biographies of Cynthia and Julia, whom he often patronises, and on offering some information on Yoko I had not read before. He makes repeated less than complementary comments about the physical appearance of characters in John's life, but does not offer up his own likeness/photo.

I note the absence of Julian, Cynthia and Julia Baird in the acknowledgements..

He ends abruptly, at the moment of John's death, letting his son Sean offer the only afterword. He is less informed than the film The Killing of John Lennon and the lack of continuation into the legacy, to anyone's reaction to John's death, sliced off my interest with his last page. Certainly not the monumental work claimed and one I shall not waste any further resources on.