By Tim Riley

“The John Lennon Letters”
A book edited by Hunter Davies

Like rain into a paper cup, words fairly giggled out of John Lennon’s pen nearly every day of his too-short 40 years. Now Hunter Davies, the Beatles’ early “authorized” 1968 biographer, has collected 285 Lennon letters, postcards, telegrams and to-do lists from early childhood to Dec. 8, 1980, hours before he was killed. They are bound in a handsome layout with reproductions of every entry, many of which are typed—hilariously—beside Davies’ transcriptions. Almost all reward close inspection both for Lennon’s intriguingly loose hand and whimsical cartoons. If he hadn’t become a songwriter/performer, Lennon could easily have gained notoriety as a scathing countercultural satirist on a par with B. Kliban or George Crumb.

For more on this story, visit: Imagine All My Words – Book Review – Truthdig.