Robert Rosen

The first Beaver Street review has been posted on many sites, and it's enthusiastic. Here's the one from the Seattle PI. One small step for the literary insurgency.

Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography, scheduled to be published next month by Headpress, is mentioned in "Hot Type" in the February issue of Vanity Fair UK.

Here's the original English of La vida inconclusa de John Lennon, that ran in Proceso magazine.

So there we were 30 years later, onstage at Purchase College, just north of New York City, a panel of rock ’n’ roll experts and assorted journalists who’d all lived through the events of that ancient day: December 8, 1980. We’d been invited to share our wisdom with a group of journalism students who were exploring “The Myth vs. the Reality of John Lennon.” The students were full of questions. They wanted to know about Lennon’s heroin use, and about his sons, Julian and Sean. But mostly they wanted to hear our stories about what we were doing the night we heard the news that John Lennon was dead. Read More 

My story about the meaning of John Lennon 30 years after his death, La vida inconclusa de John Lennon, is now available online en español in Proceso. I'll post the original English here in a few days.

I'm riding in a minivan with Ron Jeremy and Seka. Jeremy's driving, I'm in the passenger seat, Seka's sitting behind us. I ask Jeremy if he'll give me a blurb for Beaver Street. "You talk too much," Jeremy says.

If you’ve ever googled me, you may have come across the website of a prolific conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier who’s implicated me in John Lennon’s murder. This has been going on for years and I’ve ignored it because…it’s insane. (Though I do take some comfort in the fact that Stephen King, too, has his own personal conspiracy theorist who’s implicated him in Lennon’s murder.) But now I’d like to bring your attention to a piece I found yesterday that satirizes the top three Lennon murder conspiracy theories, including the one that implicates me. When your conspiracy theories are reduced to satirical grist, the game, at last, is over. Read More 

As always on days like this they let me speak my mind in Latin America. This interview is from the Chilean paper La Tercera.

Tonight, at midnight NY time (11 PM in Mexico) there's a special radio program about my Lennon bio Nowhere Man (en español). You can listen live by clicking here, or if you're in Mexico City you can listen on the radio on 96.1 FM. The program's called Radio Etiopia and it's free-form radio the way it used to be. Lot's of Lennon and Beatles music, which is the same in any language. Read More 

For those who've been asking how the John Lennon panel at Purchase College went the other day, I offer this Twitter post from Marilyn Johnson, author of This Book Is Overdue and The Dead Beat: Incredible stories of Lennon's assassination (Bob Christgau's word), but Robert Rosen gave chills describing how he heard the news. Read More 

I've posted on my home page the long awaited Beaver Street cover. Click here to check it out. Bound galleys are now available for the media. Please e-mail your request.

Would you believe I'm 118 across in the LA Times crossword today? Click on "Featured Puzzle" for November 28.

I've posted the Beaver Street Prologue here. I hope this will entice some of you to pre-order the book and those of you in the media to request an advance reader's galley, which will be available by the end of the month. (PDF galleys are available now.) A special note to any readers from Brooklyn: The Prologue opens in my father's candy store on Church Avenue, in 1961. Read More 

I make a recommendation to Karen Lillis, a very friendly and supportive reader.

I'm making a rare local appearance on this John Lennon panel. Hope to see some of you there.

If you’ve watched any of the Beaver Street videos on my home page, you may have wondered about the actor who plays Erich von Pauli. His name is Paul Slimak and he’s a character in the book. If he looks familiar, that’s probably because you remember him from his appearance as the Weeping Nazi on the premier episode of Late Night with Conan O’Brien. With the second (or is it third?) coming of Conan imminent, von Pauli has written an open letter to Conan, asking him to allow the Weeping Nazi to return and contribute to the launching of his “new comedy Reich.” You can read von Pauli’s letter here.

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One problem with writing a book about pornography is that a lot of people who enjoyed reading Beaver Street are hesitant to say so publicly. The author of the blurb on my home page--"Robert Rosen is a genius for connecting Traci Lords to Iran-Contra"--once worked in porn. Now he has a serious, high-profile job, and would prefer that people didn't know about his X-rated past. Who can blame him? But I love his insightful comment because it goes right to the heart of the book--the "climax," if you will--and it shows the wide, provocative range of material that Beaver Street covers. Read More 

This is a very cool essay by Karen Lillis about working in the St. Marks bookstore and reading on company time. I'm pleased to report that one of the books Ms. Lillis read was Nowhere Man.

My favorite Nazi, Erich von Pauli, has recorded another Beaver Street propaganda video.

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What happened yesterday in Mexico and Venezuela is magic because I didn't do anything. It just happened. A prominent story in El Universal mentioned Nowhere Man in the lead. The story went out over the wire and was featured in dozens of newspapers all over the country. People pay PR firms exorbitant fees for this kind of coverage. And this was the year I was going to let go of Lennon and concentrate on Beaver Street. Read More 

The book is being mentioned all over the wire services. Here's a sampling from Mexico and Venezuela.

El Universal

El Nacional

MSN Venezuela

Wicked Magazine Read More 

For me, October 9 and December 8 are the high holy days of the secular calendar, the equivalent of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Here are a couple of links that commemorate John Lennon.

10 Mathew Street

Number 9

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On the eve of John Lennon's 70th birthday, as my wife, Mary Lyn Maiscott (the Mistress of Syntax), and I continue to work on correcting the Beaver Street galley, I've taken a few minutes to talk about Lennon on The Louie Free Radio show. I've also accepted an invitation from the journalism department at SUNY Purchase to participate in a panel discussion on the myth of John Lennon on December 2. And here's a link to a piece by David Comfort, author of The Rock & Roll Book of the Dead, that discusses Nowhere Man and Lennon's fascination with number 9. Read More 

Annie Sprinkle is a former porn star with a Ph.D, a photographer, an author, and self-described “ecosexual artist.” I was her editor in the mid-1980s when she was a columnist for Stag magazine. Annie is now a character in Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography, and that’s why I sent her a galley of the book. Here’s what she had to say:

“Thank heavens Robert Rosen has documented his, mine, and your wacky, tacky, rich and fun smut-rag history. Beaver Street is a deliciously delightful read, a fabulous book. He captures the complexities, ironies, and color of the times when sex magazines ruled. As a girl who has been round the Beaver Street block, I can attest that this is the raunchy truth, extremely well told.”

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Mark David Chapman is again up for parole, as he is every two years. Some people consider me an “expert” on the subject, and I have indeed researched the hell out of it. (See Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon.) Consequently, I am quoted. Read More 

I continue to be encouraged by the reaction of people who’ve been reading the Beaver Street galleys. The running commentary below is from Darius James, author of Negrophobia (St. Martin’s Griffin) and That’s Blaxploitation!: Roots of the Baadasssss ’Tude (St. Martin’s Griffin).

I’m lovin’ this so far. I SERIOUSLY think this should be a movie.

The more I read the better it gets. Very insightful. Especially like "The Secret History." Funny how so much of this dovetails into my own world.

I’m three-quarters through with the book. I have something like 40 pages to go. Real interesting about Traci Lords.

Beaver Street is a lucid and entertaining read. Made me want to jump back in the porn game myself if there was one.

Now I want to read Beaver Street II. Read More 

A few days ago I sent the uncorrected proofs for Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography, which Headpress is scheduled to publish in the UK in October, to four “characters” in the book, former coworkers who knew they were in it, but had never seen it. Below is the response of the character I call “Pamela Katz,” an editor and filmmaker who once dated the late Ruben Sturman, whom the government considered the most prolific pornographer in America. Let’s call this the first review:

I’ve just completed Beaver Street, and as you could guess, I could not put it down. Can not determine WHY this was not bought in USA because there is nothing like it...no comprehensive history of modern porn, especially The Golden Age, which we were so fortunate to experience. I used to call you Nosy Rosey. Did not know you were a diarist. But noted you were always asking “why” and were just (to me) nosy. You were like a visiting anthropologist, like Margaret Mead observing the Samoans. But you were in the thick of it, not just observing, which is what makes the book work. (As you call it an investigative memoir.) Perfect mix of personal experience, research, reporting, and conclusions.

Did I ever tell you that Traci Lords lived with Greg Brown and Walter Gernert (the Dark Brothers)? She was so into the porn lifestyle. It’s like I had totally forgotten how outrageous my life had been. I remember, as if it were yesterday, Ruben Sturman telling me (while seated on a banquette at a fancy French restaurant) how some book/video store didn’t pay him his cut and he’d had to firebomb it. Telling me that like any other guy chats about “my day at the office,” remembering having the diner next to us overhear all this. Remembering how very candid he was and how uncomfortably paranoid his candidness made me feel. Insanity, all of it. Remembering doing a photo shoot on Baltimore’s Block. Sex with a stripper. Owner put a loaded gun to my head. Remembered fighting with the Teamster’s Union over equipment rental for Raw Talent. So many stories...point is, I wish I had kept a diary. Because it was all pretty incredible compared to my life in porn now. The Eighties were insane.

Anyone reading the book will also be surprised how many female pornographers were working. You not only captured the past, you offered an overview of a huge, pervasive industry people know little about. You nailed it! Read More 

The Spanish Beatles site 10, Mathew Street just ran a little piece about "Transcriptions from the Universe," my article in Headpress Journal 2.2 that discusses my own diaries at the time I began writing Nowhere Man.

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Headpress Journal 2.2

An excerpt from my new piece on John Lennon's diaries, "Transcriptions from the Universe," has just been published in the online edition of Headpress 2.2. You can read it here. The complete 28-page article will soon be available in the printed edition of the journal. Stay tuned for more details.

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My BBC radio 5 interview on Mark David Chapman's parole hearing is now archived for a day. Please click here to listen. My segment comes about one hour into the show. Read More 

I'll be on BBC Radio 5 tonight at about 9:00 New York time, on a show called Up All Night with Rhod Sharp, talking about Mark David Chapman's parole hearing. To listen live click here.