The other night I did a search on my eight-year-old computer and discovered that there were over 250 different documents where I mentioned the Beatles by name. Book reviews, a screenplay (unproduced), a novel, a magazine article on Tolstoy, diaries, letters, even a wine review. They certainly got to me, those boys. And so when I started to write this book, on going back to places where you’ve suffered, I had to mention them. Because if you’re my age and have ever suffered in the name of love, chances are you’ve done it with the Beatles in the background. I went out and bought the paperback of Bob Spitz’s 2005, brick-sized Beatle biography. It’s a beautifully written, nine-hundred-page travail. Mr. Spitz spent six years on it, moved to Liverpool for six months, split up with his wife over it. But something surprising and vaguely discomforting happened. I got through maybe a hundred pages and then I stopped. I knew all the stories and I just didn’t care to hear them again. I was Beatled-out.
What do You think about The Perfect Order Of Things?
