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Authors: Oscar Hijuelos
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bought his copy of Lennon’s book, asks Lennon to inscribe it, and Lennon does, to “another Spaniard in the works.”The narrator is also an aspiring musician, with a partner who is at once hilarious and realistic, and the narrator manages—or he may have managed—to get a copy of a cassette with some of his songs on it to Lennon. What happens next, I think, is at the heart of the story, and it deserves to be read without anyone giving anything away.
Still, in the conversations that the narrator has with Lennon, real and imagined, in the subjects they discuss, Oscar Hijuelos touches on humanity’s eternal questions, such as what happens when we die, what happens to our dreams, and how we come to terms with them, and it is all done with that exquisite lightness of touch and profound understanding.
I’d like to add one personal note: Oscar and I used to get together a couple of times a year to have dinner, and when we did, I was always invigorated and moved, too, because of the fact that, in addition to the jokes Oscar liked to crack or the stories he liked to tell, underneath it all I felt that same delicacy and lightness of touch, not to mention understanding, that is so evident in Another Spaniard in the Works.
Craig Nova
August 2015
Another Spaniard in the Works
On an October evening in 1980, at the end of another day’s drudgery at my office job in midtown Manhattan, I happened upon a down-on-his luck black man selling books outside the 40th Street and Seventh Avenue entrance to the subway. Among the frayed and time-curdled volumes the vendor had laid on a piece of plastic sheeting over the sidewalk, it delighted me to find a pretty good copy of A Spaniard in the Works, by John Lennon, for two dollars. This I soon tucked into my raincoat pocket and happily perused as I stood below on the crowded station platform, waiting for my train. Having planned to stop and visit a guitar-playing buddy of mine, Max Stein, who lived on West 83rd, I was climbing up the steps of the 79th Street station, the book’s open pages in hand, when, coming to the newspaper kiosk on the northwest corner, I saw John Lennon himself standing before the girly-magazine racks, his wife Yoko Ono beside him, watching his every move adoringly.
Though the buzzing life of Manhattan at 5:45 teemed everywhere around him, and the bells of a church on that corner clanged loudly, Lennon exuded a serene presence. Not an overly tall fellow, about five feet ten in height, his hands were long and slender— “artistic,” as my Cuban mother would put it—and his fingernails clean. He had clear brown eyes and a striking rosiness to his cheeks, as if he had just spent a crisp winter’s day on a horsedrawn sleigh. Quite nineteenth-century looking, with longish hair and mutton chops, he resembled a Dickens shopkeeper, I imagined. In his own bubble, and a cheerful sort, Lennon, as I encountered him, was singing one of his own tunes, “Across the Universe.” He was wearing blue jeans, a denim jacket, and sneakers. His socks were black. Around his neck hung some kind of turquoise amulet, perhaps a Navajo charm or an Egyptian scarab, and two red ballpoint pens with red nibs were sticking out of his jacket pocket. His head bowed, eyes intent, he flipped through the glossy pages of magazines, adding a copy of Playboy to his pile of Cheri, Penthouse, and Hustler . I watched him pulling open a centerfold, which he looked over as if reading a scroll; then he popped a piece of chewing gum into his mouth. As for myself, though I was half dead after a day of stupefying office life and a shy fellow, I dispensed with my usually reserved manner and, stepping toward him, said, “Excuse me, Mr. Lennon, you’re not gonna believe this, but I just picked up a copy of your book a half an hour ago.” And I showed it to him. “Pretty amazing, huh?” I could not help myself from adding.
Underneath my raincoat, I had a shirt and tie and jacket on, and my loafers were
Still, in the conversations that the narrator has with Lennon, real and imagined, in the subjects they discuss, Oscar Hijuelos touches on humanity’s eternal questions, such as what happens when we die, what happens to our dreams, and how we come to terms with them, and it is all done with that exquisite lightness of touch and profound understanding.
I’d like to add one personal note: Oscar and I used to get together a couple of times a year to have dinner, and when we did, I was always invigorated and moved, too, because of the fact that, in addition to the jokes Oscar liked to crack or the stories he liked to tell, underneath it all I felt that same delicacy and lightness of touch, not to mention understanding, that is so evident in Another Spaniard in the Works.
Craig Nova
August 2015
Another Spaniard in the Works
On an October evening in 1980, at the end of another day’s drudgery at my office job in midtown Manhattan, I happened upon a down-on-his luck black man selling books outside the 40th Street and Seventh Avenue entrance to the subway. Among the frayed and time-curdled volumes the vendor had laid on a piece of plastic sheeting over the sidewalk, it delighted me to find a pretty good copy of A Spaniard in the Works, by John Lennon, for two dollars. This I soon tucked into my raincoat pocket and happily perused as I stood below on the crowded station platform, waiting for my train. Having planned to stop and visit a guitar-playing buddy of mine, Max Stein, who lived on West 83rd, I was climbing up the steps of the 79th Street station, the book’s open pages in hand, when, coming to the newspaper kiosk on the northwest corner, I saw John Lennon himself standing before the girly-magazine racks, his wife Yoko Ono beside him, watching his every move adoringly.
Though the buzzing life of Manhattan at 5:45 teemed everywhere around him, and the bells of a church on that corner clanged loudly, Lennon exuded a serene presence. Not an overly tall fellow, about five feet ten in height, his hands were long and slender— “artistic,” as my Cuban mother would put it—and his fingernails clean. He had clear brown eyes and a striking rosiness to his cheeks, as if he had just spent a crisp winter’s day on a horsedrawn sleigh. Quite nineteenth-century looking, with longish hair and mutton chops, he resembled a Dickens shopkeeper, I imagined. In his own bubble, and a cheerful sort, Lennon, as I encountered him, was singing one of his own tunes, “Across the Universe.” He was wearing blue jeans, a denim jacket, and sneakers. His socks were black. Around his neck hung some kind of turquoise amulet, perhaps a Navajo charm or an Egyptian scarab, and two red ballpoint pens with red nibs were sticking out of his jacket pocket. His head bowed, eyes intent, he flipped through the glossy pages of magazines, adding a copy of Playboy to his pile of Cheri, Penthouse, and Hustler . I watched him pulling open a centerfold, which he looked over as if reading a scroll; then he popped a piece of chewing gum into his mouth. As for myself, though I was half dead after a day of stupefying office life and a shy fellow, I dispensed with my usually reserved manner and, stepping toward him, said, “Excuse me, Mr. Lennon, you’re not gonna believe this, but I just picked up a copy of your book a half an hour ago.” And I showed it to him. “Pretty amazing, huh?” I could not help myself from adding.
Underneath my raincoat, I had a shirt and tie and jacket on, and my loafers were
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