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