Number 9

After Lynn Hansen's death in April 1995, I provided some assistance to the Hansen family in dealing with the estate, particularly with Lynn's comix and Beatles collections. Eventually both of those chunks of popular culture found an academic home in the Washington State University library system.

Then there was the problem of what to do with Lynn's unfinished manuscript, Number 9.

This was a book Lynn had been writing for at least a decade. The first time I proofread it was back in my days at Pullman, so that would've been between 1983-1986. Sometimes he would ask my help in researching trivia and details.

He was fascinated with the Paul-is-dead hoax from the Beatles era. He developed his own original theory about the event and kept fine tuning it over the years. His goal was to have the thing commercially published.

An interesting topic, to be sure. But not nearly half as interesting as the circumstances surrounding Lynn's final year, as covered in the memorial volume Interrupted Song.

To make a long story short, Lynn called me in August 1994 and said he was sending the Number 9 manuscript to me for safekeeping, since he was sure he would soon be dead or have to go undergound very soon. He made me promise to see that the work would be published.

According to Lynn's father, a newer version of the manuscript was found by the front or back door when the police went to Lynn's house and discovered his body.

Through phone calls and correspondence with Lynn's parents in Boise, we worked out a deal where I would edit the text and they would foot the printing bill-- although I think I paid for extra copies to distribute. I can't remember what the print run amounted to, perhaps as many as 100 copies or more. Some of them were given to libraries.

The final product was v, 77 leaves on letter size, held with comb binding.

The Hansens and I were at a loss to locate some of the people Lynn thanked in his introduction. As it has turned out over the years since his death, I have learned Lynn led a highly compartmentalized and enigmatic life. Among those in his comix circle I knew him as well as anyone, but I am still constantly amazed by strangers and the truly odd characters who find me and share some weird tidbit of info about Lynn that portrays a very different person than the Lynn I had known.

Editing this manuscript six months after Lynn died was quite difficult. He had a good outline. He had good essay hooks. He was just a clumsy and awkward writer. How do you edit something like this without losing the voice of the person who created it? Especially when it is impossible to return it to the author with suggested revisions? In addition to that, my mind wandered to an almost unthinkable direction.

This was a book about a death hoax. Death hoax. Lynn was immersed in planted clues, secret messages, creating an illusion. Today I am sure Lynn is really dead (even if he doesn't show up in the Social Security Death Index!) but in September 1995, right after I had finished transcribing and editing this book (on a typewriter!) I wasn't so sure. The surrounding events had been weird enough to make me wonder if I had been set up as I replayed 1994-1995 in my head.

Maybe one day I will draw a comic about this whole thing. Actually I have started to write it several times, but I keep waiting for enough clues in this real life bizarre mystery to show up so I can make sense out of it. I might be waiting forever.

I'm posting the covers and intro material to Number 9. The illustration for the cover was also used in promotional material when Washington State University held an exhibit of Lynn's Beatle collection in 1997, From Penny Lane to Abbey Road: the Beatles, 1964-1970.