Another book on the Beatles? Give me a break! But…this one is way, way different.

Says Argentinian editor Salvador Biedma on the brand-new 2013 Spanish-language edition of the book, “The range of topics covered in ‘Los Beatles y Lacan’ is truly comprehensive: it is a multi-disciplinary analysis of history which, based on concepts of Lacanian theory, takes us on a politico-social-cultural journey of factors converging in the 1960s that created the context for the rise of the Beatles.”

Biedma goes on to say that ‘It is certainly odd to connect Lacan and the Beatles (though there are countless studies on the complex phenomenon of the band as such, there is practically none with a psychoanalytic point of view), but Henry W. Sullivan shows that, for example, Lacan’s Name-of-the-Father concept can be really useful when comparing the generation gap between the youth of the 1960s and their parents and grand-parents.’

Associate professor of music theory at University of North Texas, David Schwarz, thinks that ‘The strength of this book lies in the expertise with which the author draws upon three strands of knowledge to support this thesis: (1) Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, (2) a largely biographical approach to a history of the Beatles, and (3) intellectual history from 1500 to the present.’

Enter British film score composer David Buckley: ‘Sullivan argues that what gives the Beatles and their music their real distinction is their location, temporally, between the modern and the postmodern world views. This is an innovative piece of writing and stands as the first real attempt to theorize the Beatles’ life and work.’

The Author: Henry W. Sullivan is currently Professor of Spanish Golden-Age Literature at Tulane University in New Orleans. He has previously published Tirso de Molina & the Drama of the Counter-Reformation (1976), Juan del Encina (1976), Grotesque Purgatory: A Study of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Part II (1996), The Poems of Gustavo Adolfo Becquer in English translation (2002), and Death Threats From British Petroleum & Life Beyond the Grave (2011), a tribute in verse to his late environmentalist wife Gillian Richardson (1939-2009). Anke Albrecht’s German translation of his book on Calderon in Germany will be published in Berlin by Matthes & Seitz in 2014