Twenty years ago, on December 8, 1980, John Lennon was shot dead outside the Dakota apartment building in New York. The event was shocking enough, but the timing made it even worse. After five years living as a recluse, looking after his son Sean and baking bread, Lennon was inspired again and back in the studio, recording the excellent “Double Fantasy” album with Yoko.
In the weeks before his death, Lennon let a journalist, David Shepp, follow him around and record their long conversations. An edited version appeared as the “Playboy Interview” just after the shooting; now the entire text has been reissued, as “Last Interview” (Sidgwick & Jackson).
Not many rock stars could be this interesting over 200 pages. John was a very bright guy, and his return to the spotlight had got him all fired up. After five years of reflection, he had a lot to say about the ’60s, the craziness of fame, and life with and without the Beatles. Ono is also interesting, but she doesn’t have John’s surreal wit or love of metaphor. When a fan asks him when the Beatles are getting back together, he snaps back “When are you going back to high school?”
In the final section of the book John goes through his entire back catalog describing how each song was written. It’s a fascinating look at creativity in action, and his intense collaboration with Paul.
Beatles fans can also gorge on “The Beatles Anthology” (Cassells/Chronicle, Seuil in French), a massive tome containing the group’s story in their own words. The text is cleverly edited, and the pictures, mostly unpublished, are a marvel. Obsessives should also visit the new official Web site, at www.thebeatles.com

The books of the Book
Often just called The Book, the Bible is the biggest best-seller of all time, not to mention the bedrock of Western civilization. Two years ago the small Scottish publisher Canongate had the brilliant idea of reissuing it as it first appeared, as a series of individual texts, the books of The Book. It was a huge success, and now two French editors, Serpents à Plume and Mille et Une Nuits, have adapted the concept to the French market, as Les livres du Livre.
Like Canongate, they have started with 12 small, elegant paperbacks, only ten francs each, with introductions by unlikely writers. So we get trash novelist Will Self on Revelations, gothic singer Nick Cave on The Gospel According to Mark, and novelist Doris Lessing on Ecclesiastes. The French have also commissioned some local authors, including Nancy Huston on Matthew. With the holy season upon us, it's a chance to check the ideological baggage at the door and rediscover the texts.

Legend of the Holy Drinker
Joseph Roth, no relation to Henry or Philip, was born in 1894 into a partly Jewish family in Galicia, a far-flung eastern corner of the Austro-Hungarian empire. One of the first journalists to warn of the dangers of nazism, he was forced to flee Germany for Paris in 1933, and wrote most of his 13 novels, including the classic “The Radetzky March,” here. A prolific writer, he was also a prodigious drinker, and died destitute in 1939.
As part of an ongoing reissue of his works, British publisher Granta have just re-released four of his novels: “Job,” “Hotel Savoy,” “Rebellion,” and “The Legend of the Holy Drinker.”
The last is a kind of “Down and Out in Paris,” and was once made into a Dutch film starring Rutger Hauer. It’s a sort of alcoholic’s fairy tale. Despite the grim plot — a man drinking himself into oblivion, sleeping on the quais by the Seine — it is both funny and magical. Miracles keep happening, and our narrator just smiles and accepts them.
It is a poignant work, especially when we know that Roth died just days after finishing it.

Briefly Noted
“Let Them Eat Cake” (AAWE, 130F)
This bilingual cookbook was put together by the 600 members of the Association of American Wives of Europeans. It concentrates on desserts, because, in the words of editor Janice Kass, “the French are very weak on cookies.” Not to mention all those other yuletide faves like gingerbread, carrot cake and pecan pie, all based on recipes tested twice: -once in French and once in English! To order, call 01 47 28 46 39.

“The Beat Hotel” by Barry Miles (Grove Press), in which the author, who has written biographies of Burroughs, Kerouac and Ginsberg, revives their little-known Paris years. The book’s backdrop is a cheap rooming house on rue Gît-Le-Cœur, where our heroes howled at the peeling wallpaper late into the night.

“Boulangerie!” by Jack Armstrong & Delores Wilson (Ten Speed Press) This “Pocket Guide to Paris’ Famous Bakeries” gives the rundown on 220 of the city’s best bread-makers, arrondissement by arrondissement. They got it right for my part of the 14th, and I learned that my favorite source of baguettes is also famed for its macaroons.

“Super-Cannes” by J.G. Ballard (Flamingo), “1984” for the dot.com age, an air-conditioned nightmare set in a futuristic business park on the French Riviera, by the man The Guardian called “the Dr Moreau of British fiction.”

“Artisans and Guilds of France” by François Icher (Abrams), a richly illustrated account of the stonecutters, plasterers, woodworkers, and other skilled artisans who built France’s great cathedrals, châteaux and other monuments (translated from the French).

“Birkhauser Architectural Guide: France, 20th Century” by Bertrand Lemoine (Birkhauser), a richly illustrated region-by-region guide to the best in modern buildings, with 100 notable works and 350 additional realizations.