Robert Rosen

 

In last week's post, "My Habitat," I said I might share a photo showing the chaos of my bookshelves. Well here it is. The two shelves in the photo are similar to my other bookshelves—a disorganized collection of books that have come to me randomly. Some of them I have no idea why they're there or where they came from. Others I've read and loved and will comment on a few of them below.

 

Before taking the photo, I removed the artwork and most of the tchotchkes on the bottom shelf so you could read the spines. The top shelf I left as is to give you the true flavor of my library.

 

I'll begin with some of the titles on the bottom shelf.

 

Lying horizontally in the second pile from the left is Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller. I've read it at least 10 times and it was a huge influence on my writing. I went through a phase where everything I wrote came out sounding like Miller—that's how taken I was by his voice. He taught me that it's possible to write a great book that's voice-driven rather than plot-driven.

 

On top of the horizontal pile on the far right is The Good Soldier, by Ford Maddox Ford. It's considered a classic, it's been lying around here since the dawn of time, and I finally picked it up about a year ago. It's boring.

 

Below The Good Soldier is On the Road, by Jack Kerouac. It's another book I've read multiple times, beginning in my late teens. Kerouac turned me into a hitchhiking fanatic. Between 1970, when I took my first serious hitchhiking trip, and 1978, when I quit hitchhiking because the vibes on the road had gotten too threatening, I put on about 25,000 miles by thumb, through the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Israel. This summer marks the 50th anniversary of my hitchhiking from New York to San Francisco, more or less following the route Kerouac took in 1947.

 

Among the books standing upright on the bottom shelf is An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser. I haven't read it, but it did remind me that in 1978 I read his earlier novel, Sister Carrie. I remember little about it other than in the early 1900s it was banned for its "sexual immorality," and I enjoyed reading it more than I thought I would.

 

In the middle of the shelf is Household Hints & Handy Tips, a Reader's Digest book. I mention it only because my wife, Mary Lyn Maiscott, did much of the research for it, which means if you're looking for some handy household hints you can trust this book. We do. (Perhaps we should consult it for the proper care of bookshelves.)

 

City on Fire, by Garth Risk Hallberg, is the fattest book on the shelf. Everybody was writing about this tale of New York City in the 1970s when it was published in 2015—because the author received a $2 million advance, the most ever paid for a debut novel. I read it and it was pretty good. But $2 million good? This guy must have some agent.

 

On the top shelf, where all the spines are partially obscured, I'll comment on the artwork, tchotchkes, and other items. 

 

Long before Nowhere Man was published, I was working on a fictional version of the story, which I called Rockjesus. One of my former coworkers, Rita Trieger, designed the dummy cover, and I used it as part of the package I was sending to agents.

 

Other items on the shelf include a toy Space Shuttle; two paintings of trout by my friend the late John Babbs, a fisherman who lived in Oregon and was on the Electric Kool-Aid Acid bus; an antique menorah with a candle holder missing; and a couple of impressions of my teeth.

 

Behind the fish painting on the left is Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy, one of the very few 19th-century novels I enjoyed reading. 

 

Behind the menorah is The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol 2. In college, one of my professors described it as "the crème de la crème" of English literature. It is, and I still refer to it on occasion.

 

Lying horizontally towards the right is a pile of videocassettes. The red one on top is a video of Jeopardy from December 26, 2003, the first time Nowhere Man was a question on the show. The second time was October 18, 2023. So, every 20 years. Cool.

 

Now, if I can only find that copy of Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt. I've been meaning to read it for years and it's rumored to be around here somewhere.

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All my books (the ones I wrote) are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on X or my eternally embryonic Instagram or my recently launched Threads.

 

Over on Facebook, there's a group called "The Rosen Book Salon," though perhaps a better name might be "The Rosen Book Saloon." I describe it as "A forum to discuss the wide-range of topics I explore in my my writing, especially my three books: Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, A Brooklyn Memoir, and Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography." The discussions are lively and civil, and if you haven't yet joined the group I'd urge you to do so.

 

Obviously, the Salon (or Saloon) is a virtual room. It's been around for many years, and after all this time I thought you might like to see the real Salon—the actual habitat where I live and write. So here's a photo of the main room of the Manhattan apartment (I can't call it a saloon) I share with my wife, Mary Lyn Maiscott, a singer songwriter who's also my editor, and our cat, Oiseau.

 

We're in Soho. The large windows face MacDougal Street and look east; the smaller window on the left faces north. Look out and you can see the Empire State Building. In the far left corner, between the windows, is the desk where I work. You can also see Mary Lyn's piano, and in the foreground, on the left, the neck of her guitar. There are also a lot of books here, probably more than you can imagine. But they're out of the frame, and they're not well organized. Maybe next time I'll share the chaos of the Rosen Book Salon Library.

 

Until then, I'll see you on Facebook, in The Rosen Book Salon or Saloon if you prefer.

______

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

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on X or my eternally embryonic Instagram or my recently launched Threads.

If there's a better Beatles podcast than Something About the Beatles, I haven't found it. What makes SATB great is its host, Robert Rodriguez. His knowledge of the Fab Four is PhD level and his interviews often explore territory well beyond rock music. For example, in episode 286: Nowhere Man '24 with Robert Rosen, Rodriguez and I got into a discussion of MK-ULTRA, the CIA mind-control experiments. In in the 1950s and 60s, the agency used drugs like LSD and heroin, mostly on unwitting prisoners, in an attempt to create programmed assassins commonly known as "Manchurian Candidates."

 

This subject came up because conspiracy theorists believe that the man who assassinated John Lennon, Mark David Chapman, was either a Manchurian Candidate or a "Manchurian Patsy"—someone who took the fall for the murder when there was really a second gunman who shot Lennon.

 

I don't believe this and I said so on the podcast and in my book Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, in the extensive Chapman section and in a chapter titled "A Question of Conspiracy." Rodriguez, though, doesn't discount this possibility. Yet our conversation remained respectful, informative, and factual, both of us presenting our evidence as if in a courtroom, and letting listeners make up their own minds.

 

We also discussed my trip to Spain earlier this year, where Beatlemania lives. At La Tregua nightclub, in Sevilla, I presented the Spanish edition of Nowhere Man, and my wife, Mary Lyn Maiscott, joined Aida Vílchez, Martín León Soto, and the Nowhere Band, to perform Beatles and original songs for a packed and enthusiastic house. You can watch a video of the event here.

 

In addition, we touched on Lennon's friend and gardener Michael "Tree" Medeiros and his memoir, In Lennon's Garden, that Yoko Ono continues to repress; how information in May Pang's documentary, The Lost Weekend: A Love Story, meshes with information in Nowhere Man; and Lennon's fascination with "lucid" or programmed dreams.

 

This was my fourth appearance on SATB. I look forward to a fifth, and after you listen to episode 286 (and perhaps a few others), I hope you'll understand why I think SATB rocks.

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

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on X or my eternally embryonic Instagram or my recently launched Threads.

If you read my book Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography, you may recall a story about Bill Bottiggi, an editor I used to work with at Swank Publications who was murdered in 1991. 

 

A piece about Bottiggi in The Rialto Report, a website dedicated to the history of the adult entertainment industry, was recently brought to my attention. A number of Bottiggi's close friends were interviewed, and a portrait emerged of a beloved gay man with severe substance abuse issues. I'm referenced in the article as an associate editor who worked under Bill at Stag magazine, which is not quite correct—I was Bill's managing editor. One of his friends is quoted as saying that in Beaver Street I was "mean" to him.

 

In Beaver Street I describe what it was like to work for a boss who was in way over his head in a job he couldn't handle and would show up at the office reeking "like gin is coming out of his pores," as it says in The Rialto Report. I also describe how Bill damaged our working relationship by trying to demote me for making a few proofreading mistakes and hit on me when we went out drinking after work one night, and then got permanently pissed off when I made clear I wasn't interested. If this is being mean to Bill, then so be it.

 

It also says in The Rialto Report that I wrote in Beaver Street that Bill was extorting money from prisoners. This is false. I said he was soliciting correspondence from prisoners, selling their letters to porn magazines, and keeping all the money for himself, which is what I'd heard the police had theorized back in 2009 when I was writing the book. I suggested this might have been the motive for Bill's murder, though it seems more likely now that he was killed by somebody he picked up and took home.

 

I should add that several years ago I got a phone call from a cop who saw what I wrote about Bill in Beaver Street, which is in part why they reopened the case. That's how I found out that the police know who murdered him, they had the suspect in custody, but they let him go because the evidence was tainted.

 

According to The Rialto Report, the police encourage anyone with information about Bill's murder to call 800-577-TIPS.

______

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

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on X or my eternally embryonic Instagram or my recently launched Threads.