John Lennon gets his fair share of attention and there are plenty of fanatical Beatles fans who will forcibly advance the view that his lyrics are worthy of inclusion into the literary canon. However, it is his often neglected In His Own Write and A Spaniard In The Works that are most deserving of greater recognition.

Published in 1964 and 1965 respectively these books are collections of poems and stories, all of which feature Lewis Carroll-esque imagery and surreal humour. More than the Beatles’ lyrics, which Lennon tossed off during, these years these works are at once hilarious, witty and incisive, while offering a unique glimpse into the author’s personality. The books were a great commercial success, eagerly bought and revered by Beatlemaniacs few of whom, it would seem, appreciated the uniqueness of the humour and the accomplishment of the prose and poetry.

As a figure of immense importance to popular culture, and enduring relevance, there is a temptation to idolise Lennon to the extent that his personality is obscured and his work neglected in a strange recognition of his genius. These works do not suffer from this problematic tendency. Perversely, that they have been so ignored means that they offer the greatest insight into this hugely influential character.

Lennon’s impressive faculty for language was evident in his song lyrics but reaches its full expression in these books, which are a space without three minute limits. His wit shines through in hilarious stories, full of wordplay and deceivingly childish jokes. References to the ‘Nasties’ (Nazis) are indicative of this, along with quotable aphorisms, one of which was used as the title of a Beatles song, album and film, “a hard day’s night”.

These works foreshadow Lennon’s later development as a writer as, in the late 1960s and ‘70s, when his lyrics began to take on a deeper, more complex and more playful side. Those looking to gain an understanding of him should stop attempting to decipher obscure lyrics and instead direct their attention to these works.

I am often asked what it is actually like studying at Oxford. I am sure it is a question we have all been asked and after the awkward cough and shuffle that accompanies any admission of our Alma Mater, my next step is always a brief exposition of the college system (that is both incomplete and inaccurate), a poor joke about drunkenly stumbling on cobbles before feebly trailing out with the old lie, “It’s just like any other university really…”

It is rare, then, to find fiction that encapsulates the contemporary Oxford experience – Brideshead Revisited may still be a handbook for students of Christ Church and Magdalen, but I am willing to bet it is about as far from most of our lives as Trainspotting. The Last Enchantments manages to fill this gap for modern Oxford, and do it spectacularly, grippingly, and with heart-wrenching pathos. There are gems of Ox- ford life within Charles Finch’s first foray into non-crime fiction: the frequent trips to Purple Turtle, the permanent backdrop of intellectual struggle and a cameo for Hassan’s kebab van, which struck me with particular fondness.

Beyond the excitement that comes from reading about places that also form the backdrop to one’s own life, Finch captures themes that should resonate with Oxford students, and then reflects on them with a maturity, eloquence            and sparkling humour that is both uncommon and addictive. In particular, the daily littleness of life amongst the dreaming spires, the feeling of unreality that occurs both when reflecting on home life from Oxford and thinking of Oxford from home, and the frequent meaningless romances that emerge from college life are expounded in light, beautiful prose, profound and yet not pretentious.

But more than being about Oxford, The Last Enchantments is a novel about youth and its loss, love and life. The protagonist, Will Baker (whom one suspects is an image of Mr Finch himself) is an American graduate student, standing on the threshold of adulthood and placed before decisions that will profoundly shape his life. The choices are ones that are familiar and yet intensely moving: his long term and dependable partner Alison, left at home in the States, is placed in contrast to his British love, the enigmatic Sophie; the lucrative career in the City, the passion and excitement of the campaign trail and the ethereal promise of an academic grant. All pull Baker in different directions that cross oceans. Most of all, the novel presents the foreboding sense that – in one’s early 20s – one’s decisions begin to have serious and long term ramifications.

Oxford is the perfect setting for this regretful abandonment of youth. One line in particular resonates, when the University is given its epitaph: “so much of being at Oxford is the stretch of days behind and before you, the feeling of shelter inside that great mammoth body, the security of it”. The sense of contemplative melancholy is at the end overpoweringly sad, and a fitting end to a novel that not only perfectly encapsulates being a student of Ox- ford, but also beautifully expresses the feeling of no longer being young.

Vladimir Sharov, author of Before and During, tells me “when I was around twenty- five or twenty-six, I ran out of poems, “For me, it was a great catastrophe.” His fiction is filled with ‘great catastrophes’ of this kind, but also with strange magic. In Before and During, the first of his novels to be translated into English, history bubbles up improbably and seemingly without any boundaries.

Sharov, born 1952 in the former USSR, is composed, serene even. He has a prophet’s beard and when he speaks about his vision of the world it is hard not to think of Tolstoy. I interviewed him sitting in his room at St Antony’s College as we drink instant coffee out of little white cups and speak through an interpreter. While we were waiting for the interpreter to arrive, he showed me a book by his father, Alexander Sharov, who was also a writer. It is a book of children’s fairy tales, printed in bold letters and exquisitely illustrated. I squint at the first line and decipher, “Far, far away…”

“In my childhood, I was omnivorous”, explains Sharov. He sits sideways, legs crossed, speaking slowly at first, then faster; a torrent of words. “I read all the fairy tales I could get my hands on and I think, in many ways, it did shape me as a writer”. I ask him how his training as a historian (Sharov has a PhD in Russian history) intersects with his historical fiction and he holds up his hands in swift protest, “I just want to make a small amend. Indeed, I am a historian… but I have never written any historical fiction”.

Born to a science fiction writer in Soviet Russia, Sharov grew up listening to his father’s friends discussing literature and politics and imbibed their understanding of the world on Sharov. He started writing early in life, but under the strict censorship of the Soviet Union, he never thought about publishing them. If history had gone differently, his writing might never have seen the light of day and Sharov is painfully aware of this.

Before and During was originally published in 1993 in the journal Novy Mir, which famously also published Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denissovich. The book was instantly controversial, with several of the editors later coming out and announcing they had been against its release.

“What was most important for me to explore in this novel,” Sharov explains, “is that, basically, a whole layer of life was destroyed in Russia. People who were afraid of impending doom and being arrested, burned their diaries, burned their personal documents, being afraid of having implications found in them. And even to their children, they were telling imaginary stories about their lives, because they were afraid their children would be affected. So perhaps what is most important in this novel, Before and During, is an attempt to resurrect this inner life, this inner psychic novel, and to present it to the leader. Because we cannot resurrect the people, they are gone, they are killed, but we can try and recreate the life they lived and their inner life as well.”

In the opening pages of the novel, one of the characters plays with free association, recalling how the “Bolshevik cake factory” across the street made him associate Bolsheviks with sweets for years, a fantastic parody of the way the Soviets used words, imbuing them with their own significance. Unsurprisingly, Sharov thinks words are imprecise “I think that without words, our view of the world is much more complex than with them. And the more complex is this vision of the world, the more accurate, the more careful a human being is. They’re just trying not to harm other people’s lives, not to do something to destroy. Revolutions and dictators are great simplifiers of life. Somehow, simplification of our understanding of the world and violence always stand close to each other. They go hand in hand.”

Breathtaking as Before and During is in England in 2014, imagine the impact it must have had in Russia in 1993. Sharov has worked all the pain, complexity and forgetfulness of Russia’s history into a dark and erudite fairy tale, that confronts the destruction of the Soviet era from a largely introspective point of view. At the launch of Before and During, Oliver Ready declared that many of Sharov’s novels “suggest that the wish to return to childhood is a fatal Russian trait, a wish to simplify things and not face complex questions”.

Sharov though does not shy away from such questions. When I ask him whom he would choose to meet from the past, he clears his throat: “I think probably… this would be my mother and my father”.

★★☆☆☆

Two Stars

Despite superficial differences in character, one could quite plausibly argue that Seth Rogen has played the same role in almost every film he has starred in. Even in the shockingly dull Paul, in which he voices a foul-mouthed extra-terrestrial, his dreary adolescent humour is no different to that found in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, or the otherwise hilarious Superbad. This Is The End is yet another example of this. Clearly, somebody once told him that he was a funny guy and he has clung to the same brand of witless smut that earned him this accolade.

In Bad Neighbours, he tries to pass himself off as an adult, struggling to cope with the responsibility of a newborn daughter, yet you would not trust his feckless Mac Radner with a pet rock. He and his wife Kelly (Rose Byrne) are finding their feet as parents when a fraternity moves in next door and wreaks havoc with their tame suburban life.  At first, Mac and Kelly enjoy the frat boys’ booze-guzzling, dope-smoking activities, relishing the chance to revisit all that they have grown too old for. As the fraternity’s incessant loud music and ceaseless partying continue, however, they ultimately decide to destroy it, with the help of their friends Jimmy (Ike Barinholtz) and Paula (Carla Gallo).

Zac Efron co-stars as the fraternity’s charming president Teddy, whose good looks and seemingly sweet disposition are instantly magnetic. On reflection, the film missed a trick in focussing on Rogen instead of Efron. Efron’s character, although lacking in any sophistication or originality, is at least believable, whereas Rogen, in a vague attempt at implying internal conflict, lacks any convincing depth and just appears childishly unscrupulous.

Dave Franco and Christopher Mintz-Plasse are regrettably under-employed, the latter barely featuring in any memorable capacity. Byrne is completely uninteresting as Kelly,  Barinholtz and Gallo are similarly unmemorable and a short cameo from Lisa Kudrow is painfully unfunny. In truth, Efron’s Teddy is the only character even remotely watchable; his endearing good-nature and enviable – there’s no other word for it – coolness are even compelling at times.

There are funny moments; a confrontation at a ‘Robert De Niro Party’ is brilliantly executed (‘Are you talking to me?’ asks Teddy, as Taxi Driver De Niro) and Craig Roberts (who starred in the brilliant Submarine) has an entertaining role as a timid fraternity pledge, but such moments are all too scarce for a big-budget comedy like this. Far more common is the unimaginative dross essential to most Seth Rogen comedies, packed with enough meaningless swearwords to trick you into thinking it funny. Some scenes, one in which Mac is forced to milk his own wife’s breasts for example, are genuinely nauseating.

The film’s premise is funny enough; the relationship between responsible adult missing his riotous youth and popular frat president living a life of hedonistic pleasure has obvious promise and in fairness, the opening half an hour is moderately entertaining as the two meet each other. But, as the plot slides out of view, lost in a dense fog of unfunny penis jokes, the film begins to border on unwatchable.