Popular Culture Review Volume 30, Number 2, Summer 2019 | Page 31

Popular Culture Review 30.2
ers in his apartment , “ Here Comes the Sun ” and the tunes that follow it mask the devastation that will define his own divorce .
UNIVERSAL LOVE
Addressing the group ’ s perennial global attraction in Dreaming the Beatles , rock journalist Rob Sheffield at one point spins out on flat “ be ” verbs , second-person plural , and hyperbole : “ The Beatles are what they are because they are the most beloved human beings of their lifetimes and mine ” ( 19 ). Sheffield is like other top writers on the band�e . g ., Kenneth Womack , Mark Lewisohn , and Walter Everett� who tinge historical , cultural , and social reasons for their impact with hagiography , seen in Ian Inglis ’ s closing words in his 2017 book simply titled The Beatles : “ the Beatles ’ story has transcended the constraints of popular music to become one of the key historical events of the twentieth century ” ( 176 ). In a collection on the Beatles co-edited by Kenneth Womack and Todd Davis , the scholar Jane Tompkins shares that the boys
let me know that kindness , fantasy , creativity , and vulnerability could go together and were not necessarily unmarketable traits . This knowledge ... made me feel better about myself ; it comforted me to know that some of the sensitivities and longings I had were shared , and it made me feel better because these attitudes and feels were being expressed in a way that joined me to millions of other people . ( 219 )
To such testimony , the present writer , with the emotional life of Gogol / Nikhil Ganguli in mind , restates the earlier point
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