Breaking style (Non-Fiction Blues)

Right now I am reading Peter Doggett's You Never Give Me Your Money, a satisfying chronicle of the breakup of the Beatles. I make no claims of authority in this contentious field, but the book seems to my eyes to satisfy both established camps: those after historical precision and those who revel in the rich myth of the band. Still eighty pages to go, though, so hold the presses.

The presiding thesis, although I don't remember it being spoken explicitly, is Lennon's death as a turning point for the major players, their careers and their litigations. Believable. Whether the event derailed a train headed for reunion or merely solidified the lingering hope as a plot lost to fiction is implied throughout Doggett's thorough coverage, although I don't think it is the sort of question that has a particularly valuable answer. I doubt he thinks so either.

In any case, all this to say that Lennon's death is given special treatment within Doggett's work. A prologue details the hours and days after the shooting (the curtain opens on, of all people, James Taylor, a bit player here and a markedly sterile opening perspective). Later, once we've caught up chronologically, the facts-and-figures style used -- and with good reason -- throughout the book is momentarily cast aside, replaced with a few grisly images formed in a voice that, to be frank, made me shiver the first time through. I had to re-read it to make sense of the jarring effect this change in style had. I want to reproduce it here because it is so plain and yet so strange; note how the paragraph begins in the familiar style of the dutiful biographer (details, details) before veering head-on into oncoming carnage:

Lennon and Ono walked outside to the limousine, and during the journey they talked briefly about where they could get some food. They arrived home at 10.54 p.m. EST; six minutes later and the entrance to the Dakota would have been locked against intruders. Their driver could have taken them inside the safety of the courtyard, but Lennon asked him to stop at the kerb. He got out of the car first, and strode towards the entrance, clutching cassettes of Ono's song. As he neared the cubicle where the night guard was sitting, a voice called from the shadows: 'Mr. Lennon?' Then there was only a barrage of noise that echoed through his head. He stumbled forward a few paces, out of the instinct to survive, and fell to the ground. A torrent of blood, fragments of bone and fleshy tissues surged in his chest and was propelled out of his mouth, and oozed from the wounds torn in his torso and neck. His face was grotesquely squashed against the floor. There was a gurgle, which might have been a word lost in the ebb of his life force, and slowly his body rolled onto its side, having served its final purpose. Then the scene reels away, as if in horror, to a world from which John Lennon would always be absent. [Peter Doggett, You Never Give Me Your Money (Harper, 2009), 270]

 Again, to be honest, I wasn't sure I liked the way this moment was being handled. It resembles a bit too closely the cold of forensic reporting; perhaps that is the point. As I thought about it, however, the abrupt tonal shift seems not only warranted, but a masterful stroke. Of course, it is first warranted as a device of empathy: we are transported into the moment in a visceral and sudden way, almost entirely absent anywhere else in Doggett's writing. (That is not a criticism.) Lennon's death was an immense emotional weight, one that echoes here as would be difficult in a straightforward, obituary-like coverage. But that is not really what impresses me.

What has my attention is how discomfiting the change in style is, almost as though it were spliced in from another source -- a literary jump cut, perhaps. Even apart from its intensity of feeling, the writing stands out. In the rhythm of reading, especially when the flow is more or less chronological and the subjects held at arm's length, this is a sharp jolt.

The lesson: have ye a moment or scene ye wish to elevate, distinguish, or otherwise call attention to? Break stride, break style. Or clang pots together, or something.

With appropriate reverence: