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The Weekly Blague

Conspiracy Theories and A.I.

The Dakota archway, where John Lennon was murdered. Photo by Mary Lyn Maiscott.

Conspiracy theories about the Epstein Files and incessant talk of artificial intelligence and Elon Musk's Hitler-loving Grok machine are in the air, and they got me thinking: What might A.I. say about the well-worn conspiracy theories having to do with me?

 

If you're unfamiliar with my conspiracy theories, which like all conspiracy theories, no matter how absurd, refuse to die, I'll summarize: It came to my attention 25 years ago that a conspiracy theorist had claimed I was involved in a CIA plot to eliminate John Lennon. This theory soon metastasized into: I was the Zionist-backed CIA spymaster who ordered the killing. 

 

So I asked my favorite A.I. search engine, Perplexity: Is there any truth in the conspiracy theories linking Robert Rosen to John Lennon's murder? 

 

Perplexity wasted no words: "There is no credible evidence linking Robert Rosen to John Lennon's murder. The conspiracy theories that attempt to connect Rosen to the assassination are entirely baseless and originate from fringe sources."

 

Okay, good start. Anything else, Perplexity? 

 

Yes: "Some conspiracy theorists, notably Salvador Astucia (a pseudonym for a Holocaust-denying writer), have accused Rosen of being a 'Zionist-funded CIA spymaster' who ordered Lennon's murder and was later paid by the CIA to write Nowhere Man to disgrace Lennon's memory. These claims are absurd and unsupported by any factual evidence.... Rosen himself has publicly addressed these accusations, describing them as outlandish and fabricated."

 

You got that right, Perplexity. Now please summarize.

 

"In summary, the conspiracy theories linking Robert Rosen to John Lennon's murder are entirely without merit and are propagated only by fringe, discredited sources. There is no factual basis for these claims, and Rosen's only connection to Lennon is as an author who wrote about the musician's final years.... The mainstream discussion of conspiracy theories around Lennon's murder generally focuses on Mark David Chapman, possible U.S. intelligence involvement, and other figures—not Robert Rosen."

 

Thank you for sorting that out, Perplexity. 

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Taxi Story

 

On Independence Day I received a text from a friend in Spain, Martín León Soto: "Congratulations for the 4th of July. That day signaled the start point on the long journey of getting free from the European autocrats so that you can have autocrats of your own." 

 

My response: "But the good news is when Trump's policies drive me into poverty in my old age I won't be taxed on tips when I go back to driving a cab."

 

"Did you really drive a cab?" Martín's wife, Aida Vílchez, asked.

 

Yes, I did, a long time ago... a lifetime ago. I began doing it in college. It was a good way to pick up some extra money. And then I did it to make a living for a few years in the late 70s and early 80s. It was a perfect part-time gig for a freelance writer. I could work three nights a week and make enough money to pay my bills. (My rent at the time was $200 a month.)

 

All this taxi texting reminded me of a cab-driving story that I've told many times but have never written down—until now. 

 

In 1976 a local newspaper, The Villager, asked me to review the movie Taxi Driver, the story of a deranged New York cabbie, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), who accumulates a lot of guns, goes on a shooting rampage, and wants to assassinate a politician. At the press screening, one of the PR people asked if anybody had ever driven a cab. I raised my hand. The woman invited me to go on TV with Martin Scorsese, the director, and Paul Schrader, the screenwriter, to talk about how realistic the film is.

 

I went on the show, Midday With Bill Boggs, and told the story of my friend, I'll call him "Sam," a taxi driver who'd gotten me into cab driving. Sam, a writer, was also on the rifle team at a local college, and he often talked about how he wanted to shoot the president, Richard Nixon, and then grant me an exclusive jailhouse interview. Schrader liked the story so much, when the show was over he invited me to go back to the hotel with him and Scorsese. So I got into the limo with the two of them and went back to the hotel. Scorsese didn't say a word the whole time. But Schrader was super-friendly. I sat in his hotel room for the better part of an hour interviewing him, and the story ran in The Villager as a combination review/interview.

 

Epilogue: Sam did not assassinate Nixon (as you may have guessed). But he did shove a chocolate cream pie into the face of born-again Watergate conspirator Charles Colson in a hotel elevator in San Francisco.

 

"Jesus told me to hit you with a pie because you're a fraud," Sam told him.

 

"Jesus forgives you," Colson replied.

 

You can read about the pie incident in the New York Times of Feb. 11, 1978. It's the last item in the "Notes on People" column.

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One Street

Nelson Algren, best known for his novels The Man With the Golden Arm and A Walk on the Wild Side, is also remembered for a couple of pithy quotes. One that I've long been familiar with is Algren's three rules of life: "Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own."

 

I recently came across another Algren quote that reminded me of my most recent book, A Brooklyn Memoir, set in Flatbush in the 1950s and 60s: "A writer does well if in his whole life he can tell the story of one street." That's a good description of what I attempted to accomplish with East 17th Street.

 

Here's a paragraph that tells part of the story of that one street:

 

That was life on East 17th Street—a street I'd lived on for so long, I couldn't imagine not living on it; a street on which I got to know, in an intimate, visceral way, not just the people I fought with every day, but every tangible thing that made up the block: the alleyways, the buildings, their cellars—some of them converted into fallout shelters and stocked with giant khaki-colored cans filled with soda crackers and Kotex. With the building I lived in (and played Chinese handball in front of), I knew every crack in the sidewalk cement, I knew every brick that comprised the street-level masonry, I knew the mortar in between the bricks, and I knew especially well those two Doric columns in front, which it was my joy to climb upon, to cling to, and to press my cheek against and feel the coolness of the fluted gray stone.

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Pissing People Off Since 1971

If my business—if you can call what I do a business rather than a grand delusion that I've been pursuing for more than 50 years—needed a slogan, something like, "Just Do It" or "Finger Lickin' Good," it would be: "Pissing People Off Since 1971." This occurred to me the other day when I was thinking about all the people whom my writing has enraged or who have been infuriated by cartoons that other people have created and that I published in newspapers and magazines I once edited.

 

It's true that in the 1970s I did publish things to intentionally piss people off. In those days of emerging punk and outrage for the sake of outrage, it was a generational response to coming of age in a society run by criminals and hypocrites and seeing no path forward into a bleak-looking future. The Sex Pistols had good reason to sing, "No future for you." 

 

The best-known episode of this protopunk era was the publication, in 1974, in Observation Post (OP), a radical college newspaper I edited, of a cartoon of a "nun using a cross as a sexual object" (as The New York Times put it), drawn by the late artist and filmmaker Robert Attanasio.

 

The drawing was Attanasio's statement on his childhood abuse at the hands of the Catholic clergy, which left him with what I now think was a case of PTSD. And the public reaction to the cartoon, which I touched on in Beaver Street, and which I'm exploring in detail in the book I'm currently working on, was so extreme, I'm still trying to make sense of it.

 

A very pissed off ultra-conservative New York Senator, James Buckley, led the charge against OP, calling for a federal investigation and the expulsion of the editors responsible for the cartoon. But nothing of the sort happened. Student newspapers, the courts declared, have a constitutional right to criticize religion in any manner they see fit, and the Catholic Church is not above criticism—which I'd think is especially true for those who've been subjected to the Church's abuse.

 

The people who became enraged at my John Lennon bio, Nowhere Man, were Yoko Ono's media flacks as well as Lennon fans who didn't like the inherent truth I communicated in the book. The media flacks were just doing what they were told to do. But fans of the man who sang "Just give me some truth," yet are opposed to learning the truth of who Lennon was in real life, have always puzzled me. It wasn't my intention to piss anybody off with Nowhere Man. It just happened naturally.

 

Beaver Street, my history of the adult entertainment industry, pissed off a lot of people, too. Some of them were enraged that I treated certain characters with what they thought was too much sympathy. Others were angry for the opposite reason. But nobody was more pissed off than the late Gloria Leonard, a former porn star and figurehead publisher of High Society magazine. Leonard demanded I make clear that she was the real publisher, not a figurehead. I refused. The barrage of junior-high-school-level insults she lobbed at me were reminiscent of the wit and wisdom of Donald Trump. The episode saddened me. I'd met Leonard several times and I liked her. But she was not the publisher of High Society. That would be Carl Ruderman, who hid behind Leonard's skirt.

 

I've run into only one person whom my latest book, A Brooklyn Memoir, pissed off. It happened at an event where I read from the book and then took questions from the audience. A woman, making no effort to hide her rage, said that she grew up in Flatbush, only a few blocks from where I did, and what I described in the book was nothing like what she experienced. She implied that I was lying. My response: "Each block was like a mini-neighborhood and everybody had their own experiences." And I moved on.

 

There are more recent examples that I prefer not to get into here. Because there's no need to re-infuriate people whose wounds are still raw. But it does remind me of an old adage: If your stories don't piss anybody off, what you're writing is public relations, not journalism.  

 

And, of course, there are the immortal words of Joan Didion: "Writers are always selling somebody out."

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Marcia

Marcia Resnick and me, December 12, 2024, at The-Hoax Studio.

Photo by Mary Lyn Maiscott

 

The last time I saw Marcia Resnick was December 12, 2024, at The-Hoax Studio, on Greene Street in Soho. A group show there included a handful of her photos. Marcia, friendly, happy, and dressed in a super-cool way was, as always, amazingly down-to-earth for a photographer of her stature, which is nothing short of legendary. Her subjects included John Belushi, Debbie Harry, David Byrne, Iggy Pop, John Lydon, Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, Johnny Thunders, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg—and me. She shot me for the author photo of my book Beaver Street. That day we spent hours wandering around Greenwich Village, near where we both lived, shooting in different locations until we were satisfied with the results.

 

P1000428.jpg

Marcia Resnick's photo of me, taken on Commerce Street in Greenwich Village, in 2010, for the Beaver Street author photo. 

 

Marcia was a friend and neighbor. I'd often run into her on the street and we'd always stop and talk. If she wasn't busy we might go back to her place, and she'd show me what she was working on, like the photos she planned to use for Punks, Poets, and Provocateurs: New York City Bad Boys, 1977-1982, or more recently, a roomful of dolls she was shooting. That was the day she gave me a signed copy of her book As It Is or Could Be, just because she wanted me to have it. It was also the day she told me she was battling lung cancer but the treatments were going well. 

 

We talked about the possibility of me interviewing her for the Village Voice, but I got sidetracked and didn't follow up on it. Then, last week, I heard that Marcia, 74, had died. Of course it was shocking, and I was angry at myself for not having made more of an effort to stay in touch and to get together with her for coffee, as we'd discussed.

 

As if I needed one, it was another reminder of the fragility of life, that people aren't going to be around forever, and if you want to spend more time with someone, today is the day to do it.

***

Click here to read Marcia's New York Times obituary.

 

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No Kings: Prescott, Arizona

Some of the crowd in deep-red Prescott, Arizona, assembled in Courthouse Plaza for the No Kings protest. 

 

I was visiting family in Prescott, Arizona, a small town two hours north of Phoenix, in Yavapai County. The Saturday of the No Kings protest I went to the main square to participate. It was encouraging to see 3,000 anti-Trump demonstrators turn out in a city where two thirds of the people voted for the TACO King. And the cops were mellow. Here are a couple of photos I took.

 

Prescott-1.JPEG

This woman's sign covered all the bases.

 

 

Prescott-2.JPEG

I liked this guy's expression and his cowboy hat. His sign was pretty good, too.

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Greetings From Arizona

 

I've taken a week off from my struggle with words and find myself on the Rosen Horse Ranch in Prescott, Arizona, where I intend to do little beyond hike in the mountains, soak in the hot tub, and enjoy my sister-in-law's cooking and my brother's skill at margarita making. Let's see if I remember how to kick back and relax. There are enough horses and scenery here to shoot a Western if I feel ambitious. Here's a shot from the front porch at sunset last night.

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Let Them Eat Tacos

A sudden urge for tacos came upon us, so we called Lupe's East LA Kitchen and they delivered two chicken tacos and two fish tacos with salad, rice, and beans.

 

I'm not in the habit of making political predictions, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and make one: TACO will do more damage to Trump than Robert Mueller and Jack Smith combined.

 

I think it's wonderful that a common food, found virtually everywhere in Trump's home town, New York City, is about to become the symbol of the resistance and will soon be displayed on hats and T-shirts throughout the world. (Just don't wear one when passing through customs.) New York should change its nickname from the Big Apple to the Big Taco. (Taco Town works, too.) It would drive Trump more berserk than he already is.

 

Before they remove the Southwest Taco Bowl and fish tacos from the menu at Trump Grill in Trump Tower, may I suggest that you call them at (212) 836-3249 and have a taco bowl sent to the MAGA official of your choice. (Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. rents a home in Katonah, NY. The address pops up in a Google search.)

 

If you've fallen behind on the news, TACO stands for "Trump Always Chickens Out." A reporter at the Financial Times came up with the acronym to explain how investors should handle Trump's on-again-off-again tariff threats (though it can apply to his other policies as well). When Trump threatens a huge tariff, markets crash. When he chickens out and calls off the tariff, markets soar. So investors should buy on the dip.

 

When a reporter asked Trump about TACO at a recent press conference, he didn't like it. "I chicken out?" Trump said. "I've never heard that.... Don't ever say what you said.... That's a nasty question. To me, that's the nastiest question."

 

A simple inquiry about his economic policies was all it took to humiliate Trump and strike at the core of his faux-machismo.

 

And now that TACO is catching on, Trump will be seeing tacos everywhere. It will be forbidden food in the White House, and it's only a matter of time before he signs an executive order banning the sale and consumption of tacos.

 

In the meantime, the very thought of tacos makes me hungry. Which is why we ordered chicken and fish tacos from Lupe's East LA Kitchen last night. Boy, were they good.

 

If they ban tacos here we'll move to Mexico.

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Kill Your Darlings II

 

A couple of months ago I posted about "Kill your darlings," a saying writers live and die by. It means that no matter how much you love a sentence, character, or plot line, if it interferes with the story's coherence or pace, cut it. I presented 10 randomly killed darlings from the book I've been working on about Observation Post, a radical student newspaper at the City College of New York in the 1970s. You can see those 10 murdered darlings here.

 

As I continue to revise the book I've been slaughtering darlings like a homicidal maniac. Here are six more that I thought deserved to be resurrected, if only on this blog. They come from two chapters, one about New York City in the summer of 1969, and the other about hitchhiking through Europe and Israel in 1972.

 

St. Marks Place is the "sordid strip" I refer to in the first killed darling. The above video is St. Marks Place in 1969, though it doesn't look as sordid as I remember it:

 

He strode down that sordid strip of head shops, record stores, and dive bars like the mayor of Freak Central, giving a clenched-fist salute and an enthusiastic "Right on, brother! Power to the people!" to the ragged hippies lurking in every doorway hawking "Weed… speed… acid… hashish."

 

He understood in his feral way that persistence was the key to not only picking up women, but to success with everything. Never stop demanding what you want may as well have been his credo, and it goes a long way towards explaining why he'd end up a multimillionaire, a titan of the debt-collection business.

 

How you gonna keep 'em down on the kibbutz once we've seen Tel Aviv?

 

I watch two kibbutz kidz play on a combination basketball–soccer court—a basketball hoop extends over a soccer goal at each end. One of the kids picks up a soccer ball at midcourt, dribbles to the basket at the far end like Walt Frazier, doing all kinds of behind-the-back stuff, then lays it in. (Has he been watching the Knicks on TV?) Then he kicks the ball the other way, soccer style, and puts it in the net, past his friend, who's playing goalie. He goes back and forth, again and again, a Frazier-to-Pele transformation.

 

At the hotel we attend a mandatory lecture on hash smuggling: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO SMUGGLE HASH. That's it.

 

Am I just another one of those stereotypical American hippies who've overrun (some might say "infested") Europe, and that's his charming way of telling me that he's sick of seeing us around?

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Uvalde Odyssey

 

A guest post by Mary Lyn Maiscott, published for the third anniversary of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas

 

"Welcome to Uvalde." I noticed the sign as my husband and I approached the small city in our grey rental Prius. U-vaul-dee. Three little unified syllables—until recently unknown to most the world, myself included—now heavy with loss, pain, and death. It felt as though Bob and I had driven, taking Highway 90 from San Antonio, into a tragedy. 


I pulled into the Motel 6 on East Main Street, where a "Fox News—Austin" van sat in the parking lot. This was the only place I could find that hadn't been fully booked by media people in town to cover the one-year anniversary of the massacre at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022. That day an 18-year-old killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers with a military-style weapon as police—stunningly, inexplicably—waited in the hallway.

 

Alithia-s-Flowers.jpg 

The song's cover art features a drawing by Alithia Ramirez.

 

I had traveled from New York City to Uvalde, Texas—beloved home state of my mother, where I'd last set foot long ago, as a teenager—not to write a story but to sing a song, "Alithia's Flowers (Children of Uvalde)," inspired by a drawing created by 10-year-old Alithia Ramirez, one of the victims at the school. In it, red tulips with undulating stems reach with a kind of giddy joy toward a dripping sky with a message only enhanced by its endearing errors: "Happniss come's first!" (Nevertheless, because of what happened to Alithia, it always feels to me as though that sky is weeping.) I'd been invited to perform my song for a commemorative event that was subsequently canceled. But here I was in Uvalde anyway, to meet Alithia's family and sing the song for them—we would meet up at the town square on the anniversary, the next day.

 

Shortly after recording "Alithia's Flowers," about a week after the shooting, I'd contacted Alithia's parents, Jessica Hernandez and Ryan Ramirez, through social media. In my first message exchange with Jess, she told me about Alithia's dreams of studying art and her just-discovered TikTok page (under the handle "evilartist"). Every time Jess responded to me, her profile picture, a thumbnail photo of Alithia in a rainbow-colored tee augmented with angel wings, popped up. I was glad Jess couldn't see me because it became impossible to hold back tears.

 

In the correspondence that followed, Jess would often write, in her understated way, "It's just hard for me." I took that to mean she felt blown apart psychically. The immensity of her pain was difficult to grasp. Once, at a total loss for an appropriate response, I asked if she might want me to send some NYC bagels (she did). And I hoped the recording of "Alithia's Flowers" had brought her and Ryan comfort, however slight—Ryan told a podcaster that he "just couldn't believe it" when they found out, on New Year's Eve 2022, that DJ Michael J. Mand had named it song of the year on OWWR, a Long Island radio station.

 

After our arrival in Uvalde, Bob and I set out to explore the city, one with deep Mexican roots, located on the southern edge of Texas Hill Country. Our motel was only about a mile from downtown, so we walked there along the highway, traffic thrumming past us. We stopped at a Walgreens to get toothpaste, and right inside was a shrine of sorts: a table with 21 cards, each illustrated with steps leading to a shining cross and the name of one of the victims. Soon we would see this kind of tribute repeated in store windows—21 candles at Vapor Way, 21 rainbows at Doll Haus Boutique, a cross at Southwest Uniforms with all the names (Xavier, Maranda, Nevaeh, Jayce…).

 

But the most impressive tribute was still to come, because to take a walk around downtown Uvalde, with its weathered buildings evoking the film The Last Picture Show, is to be under the gaze of children frozen in time. Gigantic murals of the victims adorn the exteriors of various structures. When we stopped to eat at a luncheonette that retains its vintage Rexall Drugs sign, I could see through the glass sweet-faced Makenna Elrod, surrounded by her animals, depicted on the side of a gift shop across North Getty Street. Around the corner, on what's now called Alithia's Art Alley, we found Alithia's portrait: above us beamed the shy smile that had become so familiar to me through the photos and videos of Jess's posts (which also showed a spirited girl into her dance moves).

 

Reminiscent of outsider art, the memorials had sprung up shortly after the horrific event and now surrounded a shallow pool with a three-tiered fountain.

 

In the town square, a green with feathery-leaved pecan trees, we discovered Alithia's handmade memorial, along with those of all the other "angels" (as they're sometimes called). Reminiscent of outsider art, the memorials had sprung up shortly after the horrific event and now surrounded a shallow pool with a three-tiered fountain. Most of them overflowed not only with flowers but with such items as stuffed animals, silver star balloons, action heroes, teddy bears, pinwheels—in one case a purple wooden cabinet had been transported, probably from a child's bedroom, to hold toys, photos, and a sign that said, "You are meant for big things."

 

On the anniversary the next day, after bells rang at 12:39 p.m.—to mark the beginning of the rescue at the school—Bob and I returned to the square. Amid the mourners visiting the memorials, the media with their camera setups, and a few police officers, mariachis, resplendent in their black, silver-trimmed uniforms, filled the square with their passionate music. 

 

I was chatting with an amiable Billy Graham chaplain when I spotted Jess, Ryan, and their children Akeelah, then six, and Jonah, then four, moving toward me as a unit, a vision in purple. They were showered in Alithia—wearing her favorite color, pins with her image, Jess's necklace with a tiny black-and-white photo of her and Alithia's faces and another with Alithia's fingerprint. As I hugged Jess, she felt insubstantial, a small body holding so much devastation, her freckled face giving none of it away. When I crouched down to say hello to Akeelah, she sweetly pressed her cheek against mine. Ryan, who has his older daughter's name tattooed on his forearm, told me that they had just been to Alithia's "resting place" (Hillcrest Memorial Cemetery, Crepe Myrtle Section).

 

I performed the song for the family and some passersby there in the square. The roaring trucks on the nearby highways nearly drowned me out, but when I glanced up from my guitar, I could see the rapt faces of Jess and Ryan. The Graham chaplain and his wife, also a chaplain, then asked the couple if they wanted to pray, and they all, children too, formed a circle under a tree, praying with their heads down.

 

Often on social media, Jess had revealed her distress ("I miss my baby girl!"), but today—of all days—she was very composed. She began to tell Bob and me about an amphibian Alithia had liked, the axolotl, which I'd never heard of. "It's cute!" Akeelah chimed in. Later I would read that the axolotl remains larval rather than metamorphosing into an adult form, and this made me think of a hashtag Jess sometimes uses when she writes (as she always writes) about Alithia: #forever10. 

 

The family left to go to a city-sponsored prayer service at the Civic Center but said they'd see us later at the public candlelight vigil near the center. (As it turned out, they left the vigil early and we wouldn't see them again; they'd moved about an hour away from Uvalde.)

 

At the vigil Bob and I sat at the top of a small hill, surrounded by people in T-shirts with images of the children they had lost, or angel wings framing the term "the 21," or just the words "Uvalde Strong." On the stage of the amphitheater below us, a preacher, a young woman, intoned: "Father God, you are the mender of broken hearts and there are so many broken hearts here tonight." Later an announcer called for people to "take out your boxes" and release the butterflies inside, but when the boy next to us unfolded his, a monarch practically stumbled out of it and stayed in the grass; others did the same, and Bob worried they would all be crushed when we left. Everywhere we looked we saw sadness, but when the evening darkened, someone came along with candles. People lit each other's in turn with their own candle flame until the night was studded with uncountable tiny lights, like little stars that had found their way to us.

 

There are invisible waves of grief in this town; they can suddenly break in your direction.

 

I did my song in the square one more time, the next night. We walked the few blocks there from the historic Benson Guest House, where we were now staying, to make a video, figuring the traffic would be quieter. Near the fountain I noticed a grizzled-looking man in a denim shirt, staring off toward the street. I went up to him and explained about the video, saying I hoped we wouldn't disturb him. He told me he was the grandfather of one of the victims. There are invisible waves of grief in this town; they can suddenly break in your direction. I asked him the name of the child. Layla, he answered. I knew the name but didn't remember anything specific. He graciously added, "Thank you for your kindness in remembering the children."

 

The next morning I took my coffee out onto the guest house patio and sat down at the wooden table, honeysuckle vines gently waving above me on the latticed canopy. Then I noticed the mural on a building across the alley: "Layla Salazar" was written in big loopy letters. I looked at the image of her jumping hurdles and remembered: the petite girl who could run like the wind. "Sweet child o' mine," the mural proclaimed. Later I would learn that she'd traced her name, along with a heart, in the dust on her grandfather's truck and that it was still visible a year later.  

 

Layla had been Alithia's classmate at Robb Elementary, located in a leafy neighborhood within walking distance of downtown. To get there, Bob and I took Geraldine Street to Old Carrizo Road. On the way, an older man putting out his trash asked if we were going to the school. When we said yes, he responded in an ominous tone, "Be careful." This was puzzling—maybe he thought we were with the media, who were not totally welcome. We'd seen "No media past this point" signs around town.

 

The school reminded me of my own grade school in rural Missouri—long, low-slung, many-windowed. Not long ago a place of mayhem and chaos, it was empty and quiet now, slated for destruction; a ghost school that had housed children, in all their messiness and sweetness, had even kept them safe—once. It was now surrounded by a fence that was partially draped in a funereal black cloth. On the fence hung a couple of signs that had taken on a cruel irony: "All visitors must get pass at office," with a bouquet of flowers pressed against it through the chain link, and "Open carry prohibited," with a gun graphic slashed with a red line. 

 

And again we saw the 21 names—on crosses adorned with rosary beads; paper bags holding battery-powered candles; a sign that included Franklin Roosevelt's famous WWII line, "A date that will live in infamy." For the "hero teachers" Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia, who were killed while trying to protect their students, metal apples popping up from the ground conveyed messages like "Thank you for caring." (Garcia's husband died of a heart attack two days after her murder.)

 

Undoubtedly along with the other people who'd gathered nearby, I stared at the school and thought of all that had transpired here, all we'd heard on the news: the teenager with his AR-15 (having first driven into a nearby ditch), the frantic parents, the hesitant police, the children inside hiding as best they could and calling 911. Across the street, startlingly, was a funeral parlor, Hillcrest Memorial; I soon learned that some of the kids escaped when the shooting began and ran there for refuge. 

 

Adam Martinez's son Zayon had been in second grade at Robb, but in a wing away from the shooting—he now had trouble sleeping and was being home-schooled. Adam, the founder of Keep All Righteous Minds Aware (KARMA), a Uvalde activist group focusing on school safety, invited me to sing "Alithia's Flowers" for a video for the group's social media. In the game room of his home, I performed the song with Adam joining me on second guitar. (Like many other polite denizens of Texas, he called me "ma'am.") His wife, Raquel, made a video recording from across the pool table as their 12-year-old daughter, Analiya, holding their baby, Amora, watched. 

 

While talking with him afterward, I discovered I'd read about Adam, identified only as a Robb father, in The New York Times just a few days before. He was accused of disrupting a local school-district meeting when he quietly but persistently asked the police chief, standing against a wall, about a new police hire (he showed me a video someone had taken of this); he'd subsequently been banned from all Uvalde school property for two years. This was rescinded after Adam, with the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), threatened a lawsuit.

 

All of this, taking place so close to the memorials, seemed incongruous, but it was just life going on after death.

 

Our last night in Uvalde, a Friday, as Bob and I walked back from Vasquez, a Tex-Mex restaurant a distance from downtown, we suddenly found ourselves at the square, where the "Party in the Plaza," as a banner announced, was going full-blast, hosted by a radio station playing "Don't Stop Believin'" from a tent-like booth. Kids hopped along in a potato-sack race, and vendors sold eye-catching trinkets. All of this, taking place so close to the memorials, seemed incongruous, but it was just life going on after death. 

 

After a while, Bob went back to the guest house, but I wasn't ready. I sat down on a bench—decorated with a long, winding, diaphanous white ribbon—near the fountain. I looked at the shimmering pool, the highway headlights, the streetlamps, a twinkling memorial cross. The moon was gauzy, as though covered with that same diaphanous ribbon. It is strange, I thought, the Uvalde experience: sometimes I feel I could cry enough tears to feed this fountain (and still would not match the tears of this town), but at other times I feel expansive, as though I've tapped into something that goes beyond all this, even all the suffering—something that perhaps Alithia tapped into with her swaying tulips, her invocation of happiness. I decided to walk around the fountain pool to take in the memorials again and perhaps see Layla's grandfather.

 

I stood in front of Alithia's memorial, topped with a "Be kind" sign, one last time. Then I took out my notebook and wrote a message to her, thanking Alithia for touching my life with her exuberant flowers, which sprouted from the cracked dry soil of Uvalde.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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He Gave Me Some Truth

I don't know why it didn't occur to me to look at John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs, by British author Ian Leslie. Last month, in a post about David Sheff's Yoko Ono biography, I said that anytime a new Beatles or Beatles-related book appears, I always check to see if I'm in it, and if I am, what the author said about me—it's a good litmus test for the book's overall truthfulness.

 

Maybe it didn't occur to me because I'd never crossed paths with Leslie and didn't think a high-profile book that's been portrayed as scholarly would include any information from Nowhere Man, a work of investigative journalism and imagination—a combination that's been known to short-circuit the brains of certain writers and critics.

 

I was surprised to see my name listed in the index and even more surprised by what Leslie wrote:

 

The author Robert Rosen is one of the few people to have read the journal that Lennon kept at the Dakota (after John's death, the diaries were stolen by Fred Seaman, who showed them to Rosen in 1981). Rosen says that Lennon wrote about Paul a lot—almost every day. When he was asked, in 2010, what the most disturbing elements of the diaries were, Rosen cited John's jealousy of Paul ("pretty shocking"), his love of money, and his obsession with the occult.

 

This is surprising because it's simple, straightforward, and true. And it's unusual for writers to present my point of view without embellishments, qualifiers, or footnotes that have called me unreliable, dishonest, a criminal, a sociopath, or a fabulist, or have said that John's diaries contain nothing of interest or don't exist.

 

So Leslie wrote three true sentences about me, and (to the best of my knowledge) nobody has threatened him, canceled him, arrested him, sued him, slandered him, or libeled him for doing so.

 

Going by my litmus test, John & Paul is an honest book. So I'm going to have to read this one. I might even learn something.

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The Resistance

The scene in New York City's Foley Square on May Day. The Trump administration has turned the words carved in stone on the New York Supreme Court into an American fiction. The sign in the foreground tells us how we need to respond.

All photos © Robert Rosen.

 

I went to the May Day rally in New York City's Foley Square to express my outrage at everything Trump, Musk, and their collection of authoritarians and incompetent sycophants are doing. I went because my rights and my way of life are under assault. I was one more body among a multitude of bodies that filled the plaza. As has become clearer with each passing week, Americans are resisting.

 

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Vulgar and demeaning anti-Trump signs are a common sight.

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Members of the Resistance Revival Chorus, a collective of women and nonbinary vocalists, perform a capella from the back of a truck, singing of humanity and dignity.

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The Fall of Saigon 50 Years On

 

In the course of working on my latest book, about Observation Post, a radical student newspaper at City College in the 1970s, I needed to get permission to quote a poem that ran in a post–election day issue in 1972. That was the election in which Richard Nixon defeated antiwar candidate George McGovern in a landslide, carrying 49 out of 50 states. The despair among those who wanted to see an end to the endless slaughter in Southeast Asia was palpable.

 

The poem, "S.O.P." (Standard Operating Procedure), is from an anthology, Winning Hearts and Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans, and as I say in my book, it communicated "the obscenity of what four more years of Nixon means." I reached out to the poet, Larry Rottmann, having no idea if, after 53 years, he was still alive.

 

Rottmann is alive and living in Springfield, Missouri, and he gave me permission to quote his poem in full. He also reminded me that tomorrow, April 30, is the 50th anniversary of the day Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was captured by North Vietnamese troops, marking the end of a war that began in 1955.

 

Rottmann and other Vietnam veterans will be commemorating the anniversary, April 30 and May 1, at the State Historical Society of Missouri, in Columbia. The event will feature the screening of a documentary, Voices From Vietnam, written, narrated, and produced by Rottmann, and a live presentation, A Different Vietnam War, by Rottmann and the other vets.

 

For more information about the Fall of Saigon 50th Anniversary: "Voices From Vietnam," please click here).

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The Art of the Car

A customized 1951 Mercury "Lead Sled," known as "Christine," as seen at the New York International Auto Show. Note the window tray with fries, Coke, ice cream soda, and ketchup. This is the car you take to a drive-in where a teenage waitress serves you on roller skates.

All photos © Robert Rosen.

 

The 125th New York International Auto Show runs at the Javits Center through April 27. Automobiles have come a long way since 1900, but the cars of 2025, with their computerized systems, electric engines, and aerodynamic styling all have a similar look. With few exceptions, the cars at the auto show that caught my eye were the classic ones. Here's a sampling of what I saw.

 

1909-Cadillac---Copy.jpg

Long before Paulie Walnuts was cruising around New Jersey in a Caddy, the car was a horseless carriage. Cadillac had been around for six years when the 1909 Model 30 was introduced. Its 4-cylinder engine produced 33 horsepower, could reach a top speed of 30 mph, and sold for $1,795.

 

1933-Pierce-Arrow---Copy.jpg

The 1933 Pierce-Arrow 1240 2/4 Coupe looks like the kind of car that Woody Allen, in Midnight in Paris, would have his character Gil step into to be carried back to a more elegant time. (That car was a 1920 Peugeot Landaulet.) They don't make them like this anymore, and it's probably not a car you'd want to be seen in joyriding through the depths of the Great Depression. It sold for $3,500 fully loaded (about $86,000 in today's dollars), a reflection of Pierce-Arrow's reputation for luxury and quality.

 

Fiat-Topolino---Copy.jpg

The Fiat Topolino ("little mouse" in Italian) is a 2025 model that caught my eye. It gets the prize for Most Adorable Car. This "quadricycle" is a modern interpretation of the Fiat 500 "Topolino," which was produced from 1936 to 1955. The new Topolino can reach a top speed of 28 mph (not quite as fast as the 1909 Cadillac), and is perfect for parking on and zipping around traffic-clogged urban streets. You can buy an electric mouse in Europe for around $10,000, but Fiat has not yet announced plans to bring the Topolino to the US.

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Make America Think Again

 

I was among the tens of thousands of people who marched in the April 5 New York City Hands Off protest against the policies of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Since then I've seen many pictures of the many signs people carried to express their rage and disgust with the administration's lawlessness, cruelty, and stupidity. But the sign in this photo, which I took on the corner of 40th Street and 5th Avenue, is the only one of its kind that I've seen. It says so much in so few words.

 

Make Lying Wrong Again

Make America Think Again

Make Humans Matter Again

Make People Care Again

 

Which seems to sum up everything Trump and Musk are not doing, have no desire to do, and are incapable of doing even if they wanted to.

 

Another nationwide protest is planned for April 19 in all 50 states. I will be marching in New York.

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Project Third-Eye Opened

Tony El, host of the podcast Project Third-Eye Opened, invited me to come on his show and talk about my life and my books. Our conversation started out with John Lennon. But it evolved into a discussion of racism, Donald Trump, and the effects of being exposed to virulent bigotry as a child living in Flatbush in the aftermath of World War II.

 

This is Tony's synopsis of the show: What really happened in John Lennon's final days? How does growing up in Brooklyn shape a writer's journey? In this deep-dive and light-hearted interview, Robert Rosen shares insights from his bestselling book Nowhere Man and his most recent book, A Brooklyn Memoir. Check out this very intriguing and fascinating conversation about music, memory, and the power of storytelling.

 

You can listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or YouTube.

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He Was Only Following Orders

Anytime a new Beatles or Beatles-related book appears, the first thing I do, assuming I'm in the book, is check out what the author wrote about me. It's a good litmus test for the book's overall truthfulness. A recent example is Elliot Mintz's memoir, We All Shine On. Mintz, a former celebrity journalist who fell into John Lennon and Yoko Ono's orbit, stayed true to form and produced an entertaining work of utter bullshit. (You can read my review here o puedes leerlo en español aquí.) But every writer has an agenda.

 

Yoko, by David Sheff, is the latest Beatles-related biography to come along. Unlike Mintz's book, there's nothing fundamentally false about me in Yoko. This hasn't always been the case with Sheff. He's credited as one of the writers responsible for "The Betrayal of John Lennon," a story that ran in Playboy more than 40 years ago. I don't entirely blame Sheff for the unauthorized use of excerpts from my diaries that appeared in the article—200 words cherry-picked from 500,000 I'd written in the heat of the moment, which he then grossly distorted to make it sound as if I were a greedy ghoul drooling over Lennon's corpse. And I don't think it's entirely his fault that he used only 22 words from a two-hour interview with me because they were the only 22 words that fit the predetermined Playboy storyline. I think Sheff was a tool of his editor, G. Barry Golson—he was only following orders. And Golson's orders were to portray Ono as a saintly widow exploited by the vicious people surrounding her. A chapter in my book Nowhere Man, "An Open Letter to G. Barry Golson," describes in detail what happened with the Playboy story.

 

With Yoko, I think Sheff is still following orders—from Ono herself, probably through her attorneys, and from the Lennon family. (A New York Times review describes the book as "predictably sympathetic, but not fawning.") But perhaps Sheff has gained a bit of wisdom in the past 40 years or possibly stumbled across a few journalistic ethics along the way. This time he treaded very carefully over what he said about me. He did not distort anything I've written about Ono and even included a link to this website in the endnotes. I think he understood that to lie about me as he did in the Playboy story would have invited my further scrutiny of the book, in search of additional Mintz-style falsehoods. Which saves me the trouble of having to read and review a 384-page Yoko Ono biography.

 

It's literary style that interests me, and as far as I can see, Sheff has none, beyond an ability to compose grammatically correct sentences.

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10 Murdered Darlings

Killer of darlings, City College, 1973.

Writers know "Kill your darlings." It means no matter how much you love a sentence, character, or plotline, if it interferes with a story's coherence or pace, cut it.

 

I've been keeping a file of murdered darlings that I've cut from a book I've been working on about Observation Post, a radical student newspaper at the City College of New York in the 1970s. Here are 10, chosen at random (some of which ended up in a different form in a different part of the book):

 

His cousin was Dylanologist A.J. Weberman.

 

"Reviews are the easiest thing to write," he said. "It's always easier to criticize somebody's else's work than to write your own."

 

The great basketball scandal of 1950, when CCNY won both the NCAA and NIT tournaments, and was then accused of fixing games for the Mob, was the only story I'd heard about the college.

 

He seemed to have a passing familiarity with what others perceived as reality and aspired to place his artwork in Screw.

 

Almost as amusing was a story about the college hiring Dr. Martin Bormann to fill the newly created post of Deputy Assistant Under Dean for Student Development and Enlightenment.

 

The "experimental college" within City College was offering a class in how to roll joints.

 

Fuck the Government and Fuck Nixon were our unifying themes.

 

"The first guy to pick up The Paper* each week is an agent for the CIA and FBI," he said. "They got a file on every member of The Paper."

 

He broke open hydrometers, drained the mercury, and stored it in little glass vials. "I love liquid metal," he said, pouring a few drops into the palm of his hand and watching the tiny silver blobs squirt around as if they were alive.

 

His room looked like an ammo dump—one so aesthetically flawless it could have been featured in Martha Stewart Living.

_

*The Paper was the Black and Puerto Rican student newspaper.

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Academic Smut

One of the many academic

books that cite Beaver Street.

In the years since my book Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography was published, academia has become a sizzling hotbed of pornographic studies. Beaver Street, in fact, has been referenced in more than a dozen academic books and has become required reading in a number of college courses, mostly in the UK, but also in Italy. If you look up Beaver Street on Perplexity, an AI search engine, you'll find this surprisingly accurate information:

 

Robert Rosen's book Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography has gained recognition in academic circles and has been included on college reading lists. The book has been embraced by academia for its unique perspective on the pornography industry.

 
A review of Beaver Street appeared on H-Net, a site for humanities and social sciences, comparing it to academic works on pornography.

Peter Kenneth Alilunas, a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, placed Beaver Street at the top of his "Essential Reading" list.

Alilunas's PhD dissertation, Smutty Little Movies: The Creation and Regulation of Adult Video, 1976-1986, contains numerous references to the book.
 
The Ethics and Politics of Pornography by David Edward Rose, a lecturer in philosophy at Newcastle University, references Beaver Street in its sixth chapter. This inclusion in a textbook published by Palgrave Macmillan further solidifies the book's academic relevance.

 
Rosen's book stands out for its approach to the subject matter: It provides a serious history that reads like a comic novel.

The book is neither pro-porn nor anti-porn, offering a balanced view.

It covers significant events in the porn industry, such as the advent of phone sex and the Tracy Lords scandal.

This combination of insider knowledge, historical context, and engaging writing style has made Beaver Street a valuable resource for academic study in fields such as sociology, history, and gender studies.


Meanwhile, a trickle of dissertations about porn has become a flood. Check out Academia.edu, a site that classifies these dissertations as "social and cultural anthropology." Here's a list of some of the papers that have popped up in the past few weeks:

 

The Hardest of Hardcore: Locating Feminist Possibilities in Women's Extreme Pornography, by Jennifer Moorman

Does the Porn-Star Blush?: Performing the Real in Post-Transgressive Cinema, by Charlie Blake with Beth Johnson

Sex, Erotic Art, and the Repression of Alternative Movements: The Strange Case of an Esoteric Movie Director, by Massimo Introvigne

Sex on Camera: A Postmodern Feminist Critique on Pornography, by Joe Carl Castillo

The Queer Porn Mafia: Redefining identity, sex and feminism through commodified sexuality, by Laurenn McCubbin

Exploitation, Empowerment, and Ethical Portrayals of the Pornography Industry, by Julie Davin

The Porn Wars [from draft chapter of manuscript, Feminism: an introduction], by Lorna Finlayson

Digital gender-sexual violations and social marketing campaigns, by Matthew Hall

Upskirting, homosociality, and craftmanship: A thematic analysis of perpetrator and viewer interactions, by Matthew Hall

 

It has been my privilege to contribute to this growing body of knowledge.

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"You Look Like a Monk"

Photo by Mary Lyn Maiscott.

 

Last week, at an Authors Guild reception, a woman approached me and asked what kind of books I write. I told her that my best-known book is Nowhere Man, a John Lennon biography. She said her name was Suzaan Boettger, she was an art historian, and she'd written a biography of the artist Robert Smithson—Inside the Spiral. Since we had something in common, our conversation continued and she said, "You look like a monk."

 

"That's not the first time I've heard something like that," I said. And I told her about an encounter that occurred 40 years ago. I was in the Poconos, in Pennsylvania, and I met a man and a woman who said they were psychic potters and past-lives therapists.

 

"You mean you could tell me what I was in a past life?" I asked.

 

"Yes," the man said.

 

"What was I?"

 

He looked into my eyes and said, "You were an honest priest in a small French village."

 

"Maybe he sensed your purity," Suzaan Boettger said.

 

I don't know if I look like a monk, spent a past life in France, or radiate purity to unsuspecting strangers. I'm merely reporting things of religious significance that people have told me.

 

Above is a photo taken in my workspace the day after the reception. I'll leave it to you to decide what kind of religious figure I look like and how much purity (or lack of purity) I radiate.

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The Best Memoir I've Ever Read

Black Boy, by Richard Wright, was published 80 years ago. The edition I finally got around to reading (and came across by happenstance) contained only the first part, "Southern Night." I didn't know there was a second part, "The Horror and the Glory," until I started writing this. There's no point in reviewing a book I've only half read. Anybody interested in a detailed review can find one elsewhere.

 

But there are a few things I want to say about the first half of Black Boy. For starters, it's the best memoir I've ever read. I can't think of any other autobiographical work that comes close to this book's raw emotional power. It gives you a visceral sense of what it was like to grow up Black in the Jim Crow South of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee in the first half of the 20th century. (Wright was born in 1908.) Yes, I understood what Jim Crow meant: lynching, segregated schools, Black-and-white water fountains, back of the bus, etc. But I didn't fully understand the everyday fear, humiliation, intimidation, and hopelessness of every ordinary interaction with both white people and Black. There's a disturbing scene on virtually every page.

 

One more thing: When Donald Trump says, "Make America Great Again," the America of Black Boy is what he's talking about.

 

Now I've got to read the second half of the book, which solves the problem of what to read next. The first half of Black Boy is a tough act to follow.

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Something in the Air

 

I've been around for a long time and I thought I'd never live to see anything as malevolent as what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are inflicting daily on America. Not even Nixon comes close. That's why I attended the February 17 Presidents Day protest against the Trump-Musk regime in New York's Washington Square Park. I was part of a vocal crowd that raised their placards high in the air to express their fury at a rogue administration attempting to destroy the foundations of democracy and replace it with an autocratic oligarchy that only a billionaire would want. 

 

I don't know if such demonstrations will do any good, though if they continue to grow in size and frequency they just might. There are positive signs: a February 22 demonstration in the park urging the corrupt and compromised mayor, Eric Adams, to resign, and a pro–transgender rights demonstration the following day.

 

I do know that these protests brought to mind the Thunderclap Newman song, from 1969, "Something in the Air," whose lyrics have taken on renewed relevance. The song, written by Speedy Keen and produced by Peter Townshend, begins:

 

Call out the instigators
Because there's something in the air
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here
And you know it's right

 

The third verse, however, says this:

 

Hand out the arms and ammo
We're gonna blast our way through here

 

Let's hope it doesn't get to that point. But when you threaten people's jobs, healthcare, and retirement—their very way of life, there's no telling what might happen.

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Give Your Brain the Day Off

Photo by Mary Lyn Maiscott

 

Perhaps you've been attending a demonstration or two, reading more news than is healthy, and every now and then tuning in to the chatterboxes on cable TV. That's how I've been navigating yet another week of daily American trauma. So I'm giving my brain a day off. Okay, maybe not the whole day. Maybe just an hour or so. And I've been looking at the above photo—a snow-frosted Montauk sand dune, the Atlantic Ocean in the background. It relaxes me in a Zen kind of way, takes my mind off the ongoing horrorshow, and stops me from obsessing on the idea that we're all living in Bizarro World Camelot on a cube-shaped planet.

 

I hope you, too, will find the photo at least a little soothing.

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The Gift of Your Attention

I recently finished reading Collected Stories, by Saul Bellow, the Nobel Prize–winning author who died in 2005. It's a long, dense book that reminded me of what 20th-century critics considered great literature. The stories—most of them are novellas—are filled with aging Jews and celebrated intellectuals. Some of these tales I enjoyed. Others bored the hell out of me. But it wasn't until I got to the last page of the Afterword that I came across something I'd like to share.

 

This is what Bellow said:

 

"Now what of writers? They materialize, somehow, and they ask the public (more accurately, a public) for its attention. Perhaps the writer has no actual public in mind. Often his only assumption is that he participates in a state of psychic unity with others not distinctly known to him. The mental condition of these others is understood by him, for it is his condition also. One way or another he understands, or intuits, what the effort, often a secret and hidden effort to put the distracted consciousness in order, is costing. These unidentified or partially identified others are his readers. They have been waiting for him. He must assure them immediately that reading him will be worth their while. They have many times been cheated by writers who promised good value but delivered nothing. Their attention has been abused. Nevertheless, they long to give it."

 

He goes on to say that a "reader will open his heart and mind" to a writer who troubles "no one with his own vanities, will make no unnecessary gestures, indulge himself in no mannerisms, waste no reader's time. He will write as short as he can."

 

In other words a writer should make every word count.

 

And that's exactly what I try to do, every day, for the gift of your attention. I hope that on occasion I have succeeded in holding it, at least for a little while.

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I've Got Nothing to Say...

Photo by Mary Lyn Maiscott.

 

...because I read the news even though I can't stand reading the news and try not to read the news because every breaking story is a fresh slap in the face that depresses me, makes me feel helpless, and reminds me of all the things beyond my control. That's why my wife and I fled to Montauk for a couple of days the other week. We wanted to forget about reality. And here I am sitting in a cottage by the ocean, scrolling through my phone, probably reading the news and telling myself I shouldn't be reading the news, not here, not now, and that I'd like to go back to the way I was when I was 16, and didn't care about politics, and the only news I read was on the sports pages.

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Midas Man and Madness Cafe

I hope you've had a chance to read my latest piece in The Village Voice, "In Midas Man, Beatles Manager Brian Epstein Is Gay, Famous, and Doomed." It's both a review of the film and an interview with its screenwriter, who talks about pretty much everything having to do with Jews, Beatles, and gay hustlers. If you haven't read it, please click here.

 

I also spoke about my book Beaver Street with the hosts of Madness Cafe, Jennifer Bolanos and Raquel Howard. We deconstructed the political and feminist aspects of the adult entertainment industry, paying special attention to the Traci Lords affair. It's one of the best conversations I've ever had about pornography. You can listen here or on YouTube, below. Spoiler alert: Jennifer and Raquel loved Beaver Street and hated Beaver Street.

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Greetings From Montauk

We have escaped to Montauk, a little village at the eastern tip of Long Island. It's serene here. This is the view of the Atlantic Ocean from the window of our cottage. I'll be back next week. Till then...

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Return to Beaver Street

In 1983 I found my pornography job in The New York Times.

Every now and then, somebody remembers that I've written a book titled Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography. It came out in 2011 in the UK and 2012 in the US.

 

Beaver Street is an investigative memoir based on my 16-years of experience working as an editor for magazines like Swank, Stag, High Society, and countless others—"from the dawn of phone sex to the skin mag in cyberspace." I also did a lot of research.

 

In the past few weeks I've talked about Beaver Street on a couple of podcasts.

 

On Madness Cafe, I discuss feminist aspects of the book and the adult entertainment industry with Raquel Howard and Jennifer Bolanos. Raquel and Jennifer loved parts of Beaver Street but hated other parts. Still, this is one of the best conversations I've ever had about the book. The show goes live Thursday, January 23. When it does, you can find it on Apple Podcasts

 

Pepper Kat, the host of Spicy Spectrum!, works in the adult entertainment industry. In her latest episode, "Spicy Special: Uncovering Modern Pornography with Author Robert Rosen," we discuss how my experience editing sex magazines has shaped my perspective on culture and media; how adult entertainment mirrors societal shifts; how the portrayal of sexuality in media has evolved alongside changing cultural norms; and how the narratives surrounding adult entertainment impact the broader conversation about identity and freedom of expression.

 

You can listen here. The audio is a little choppy in parts, and some of the conversation is pretty raw—trigger warning!—but if pornography's impact on American society is a topic that interests you, this is well worth a listen.

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25 Years of Accolades and Attacks

Venezuelan playwright Paúl Salazar included Nowhere Man, along with One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez, on a list of "Five Indispensable Books" that appeared in the newspaper Últimas Noticias on January 31, 2022.

When my first book, Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, was published 25 years ago, I had no idea what to expect. The manuscript had been kicking around for 18 years before Soft Skull Press brought out the first hardcover edition. One thing I didn't expect was that it would become an instant bestseller in the US and UK. But that's what happened, and since then, there have been many editions in many languages. And here I am, still writing and talking about the book.

 

What is it about Nowhere Man that's enabled it to endure for a quarter century? Well, from what I've been told, people enjoy reading the book—it takes you into Lennon's head and has the feel of a novel. But more than good writing is necessary for a book to survive this long. So I'd also suggest that the heat and friction generated when accolades and attacks collide (there've been plenty of both) leave people wondering what's true and what isn't, and they want to figure it out for themselves. So they seek out the book. A generation not born when Nowhere Man was originally published have since discovered it.

 

No writer enjoys being subjected to vicious personal attacks from (mostly) anonymous trolls or having critics rip apart their work. But praise from both readers and professional critics counterbalances the attacks. As Oscar Wilde said, "When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself."

 

Apparently I've given critics a lot to disagree about. Is Nowhere Man an irresistibly gripping read that's obsessive, corrosive, and unforgettable? Or is it vulgar gossip and lies?

 

Twenty-five years ago, an excerpt of Nowhere Man that ran as the cover story in Uncut magazine, along with positive coverage in The Times of London, launched the book into the stratosphere. Mojo magazine and Court TV loved it, too. So did Booklist, which is one of the places libraries turn to when deciding which books to acquire. Then Christianity Today (of all places) included Nowhere Man on its list of the 10 best books of 2000. Foreign editions came next, and perhaps the most unexpected thing was the reaction of the media in Spanish-speaking countries. They treated Nowhere Man as literature, especially in Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, and eventually Spain. Invitations to discuss the book followed. During a 2003 visit to Mexico and a 2005 visit to Chile, it was as if I'd entered an alternate universe where everything I'd ever worked for had come to pass in a language I didn't speak. (Muchas gracias a los traductores.)

 

It was enough to make me forget about the attacks, which had begun in 1984, 16 years before Nowhere Man was published. That's when it became public knowledge that I'd had access to Lennon's private diaries and had written a book about what I'd learned.

 

Forty-one years ago, three articles ran in Playboy, People, and the New York Post. By all appearances, it was a coordinated attack, organized by Yoko Ono, to make me look like a criminal and prevent the story I told in Nowhere Man from ever being published. The day the articles came out, in January 1984, the New York District Attorney's Office informed me that I'd be arrested on criminal conspiracy charges, having to do with my access to Lennon's diaries, unless I signed a document forfeiting my First Amendment rights to tell the story. But the scheme fell apart when David Lewis, a high-powered criminal attorney more accustomed to defending mafiosi, took my case pro bono. A simple phone call Lewis made to the district attorney, telling him, "You're in gross violation of my client's constitutional rights," ended it. I signed nothing. I wasn't arrested. I never heard from the DA again. (I tell this story in more detail in Nowhere Man.)

 

Years later, after a couple of conspiracy theorists accused me of being a CIA operative involved in Lennon's murder, the Mexican news magazine Proceso ran a piece I wrote, which they titled (translated from the Spanish) "I just believe in one conspiracy: Yoko Ono's against me." (Check out Lennon's song "God" if you don't get the reference.)

 

Ironically, in 2002, Ono's attorneys subpoenaed me to testify at the copyright infringement trial of Fred Seaman, Lennon's personal assistant who gave me the diaries. My sworn testimony was the very story Ono had tried to suppress in 1984: the "John Lennon's Diaries" chapter of Nowhere Man.

 

I've come to understand that those who see me or any of my books as a target for their hatred can't help themselves. The best thing I can do is ignore them. Still, personal attacks, often based on the 41-year-old discredited Playboy story, are disturbing. But three years ago, in the Venezuelan newspaper Últimas Noticias, Nowhere Man appeared on a list, compiled by playwright Paúl Salazar, of five indispensable books that also included One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez. That, to me, felt like vindication, and it was the kind of recognition that makes me glad I wrote Nowhere Man.

 

I write not to get rich quick, as some have ludicrously suggested, but because I feel a primal need to communicate. And I take inspiration from people who've reached out to me to say that Nowhere Man made them want to be a better father or that reading the book out loud to their brother who was recovering from cancer had helped him get through the ordeal.

 

And speaking of cultural impact, let's not forget about this.

I can hardly wait to see what the next 25 years hold in store.

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Liars of Little Consequence

At a time when the soon-to-be president of the United States is a felonious man-child constitutionally incapable of speaking the truth...

 

At a time when vast swaths of the American people either don't care that their leaders are lying to them or are unable to distinguish truth from lies...

 

At a time when a new conspiracy theory is born every minute...

 

...it seems absurd, especially on the first day of this consequential year, to expend any energy writing about two liars of little consequence.

 

While there's nothing I can do to change anybody's mind about Donald Trump, perhaps I can still get through to the handful of people who give credence to Elliot Mintz and David Whelan.

 

If those names mean nothing to you, I applaud your ability to ignore celebrity gossip and conspiracy theories involving the murder of well-known individuals. But having written a book, Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, that touches on both topics, I've had occasion to encounter both Mintz and Whelan.

 

Elliot Mintz is a professional liar who would walked over his own grandmother for John Lennon and Yoko Ono (as G. Gordon Liddy said he'd do for Richard Nixon). Critics have panned his memoir, We All Shine On, for its grotesque display of sycophancy towards the ex-Beatle and his wife (see the Irish Independent). The Mexican news agency Amexi picked up "A Masterpiece of Propaganda," my review of the book, and ran it as a feature, "Refuta Robert Rosen las memorias sobre John y Yoko en 'We All Shine On', de Elliot Mintz," detailing my refutation of the lies that permeate the book.

 

David "Don't Call Me a Conspiracy Theorist" Whelan believes a mysterious right-wing cabal programmed Mark David Chapman to be a Manchurian patsy—that he did not shoot Lennon and that there was a second shooter, a professional assassin, who got away. Similar conspiracy theories, in circulation for 44 years, have come to nothing. Whelan is aware that his quest to prove this theory is pointless but chooses to continue.

 

I believe that Chapman, suffering from severe mental illness, shot Lennon.

 

My issue with Whelan is the lies he weaves into his interviews and blog posts (I've not read his book), especially when information surfaces that casts doubt on his theories. Three months ago, I wrote about his research techniques after we both recorded an episode of Robert Rodriguez's podcast, Something About the Beatles (SATB). I learned after the show that Whelan had made a number of false statements. This is what I wrote at the time:

 

The 27th Round

 

The Conspiracy Hustler

 

Did John Lennon's Killer Ask Him for a Job?

 

SATB 297 was broadcast last week. I said on the show that Whelan came to my attention when he misrepresented himself to Lennon's friend and gardener, Michael "Mike Tree" Medeiros, as a fact checker for 72 Films, the production company that made Murder Without a Trial. (Medeiros had been interviewed for the film.) So I knew Whelan was capable of lying, but I wasn't prepared for his style of conversation—interrupt, interrupt, interrupt, and attempt to never stop talking. Bury the listener under too much information and disinformation. Create confusion and doubt rather than illumination and clarity. It's the same game all conspiracy theorists play.

 

Reading Whelan's blog is like drowning in a cesspool. The hatred towards me that comes across in his writing is extraordinary. His efforts to discredit me read like a cry for help. When it comes to his critique of my work on SATB, he's wrong when he says there's no record of Chapman saying to a psychiatrist that he felt "like a bloodied prizefighter in the 27th round," as I wrote in Nowhere Man. (There's an easily accessible record.) He's wrong when he says he knows I wasn't at Chapman's sentencing hearing because I didn't explicitly say in Nowhere Man, "I was there." (I wrote the story in the third person.) He's wrong when he says my description of Chapman looking proud of what he did can't be true because nobody else described him that way. (That's how he looked as police marched him out of the courtroom.)

 

What else does he say on his blog, in his book, and in his interviews that isn't true? I don't know, but my guess would be plenty more.

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All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

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