A bowl of tart fruit: some five dozen introductions, book and
record reviews, bits of reminiscence, and other prose items by a
cantankerous, sharp-eyed poet. Actually Larkin doesn't write poetry
any more, and producing even these minor fragments seems to have
been a bother to him; but flashes of his dry, acerb intelligence
enliven all but the most perfunctory pieces. How not to like a man
who says that "Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for
Wordsworth," who likes living in Hull (where he is University
Librarian) "because it's so far away from everywhere else," who
doesn't read much (he's never heard of Francis Parkman or Borges),
who loathes academic critics, and refuses to make a fuss over
anything. When asked to comment on his own work, Larkin almost
always dodges: "Once I have said that the poems (The Whitsun
Weddings) were written in or near Hull, Yorkshire, with a
succession of Royal Sovereign 2B pencils during the years 1955 to
1963, there seems little to add." Larkin damns the
"culture-mongering" of Pound and Eliot, the whole "aberration of
modernism," in fact, as sterile and mandarin. The only contemporary
poet he praises with any feeling is Betjeman - because he "knocked
over the 'No Road Through to Real Life' signs that this new
tradition had erected." As if to complete his self-portrait as a
conservative troglodyte, Larkin announces that he "adores" Mrs.
Thatcher, despises children, and is suspicious about the "invasion
of women in men's colleges." But Larkin balances such peevishness
with dead-pan wit ("I wouldn't mind seeing China if I could come
back the same day") and total freedom from cant. A lonely, prickly
original. (Kirkus Reviews)
The appearance of Philip Larkin's second prose collection - reviews
and critical assessments of writers and writing; pieces on jazz,
mostly uncollected; some long, revealing and often highly
entertaining interviews given on various occasions - was a
considerable literary event. Stamped by wit, originality and
intelligence, it was vintage Larkin throughout: 'Deprivation is for
me what daffodils were for Wordsworth'. 'I see life more as an
affair of solitude diversified by company than as an affair of
company diversified by solitude'. Question: 'How did you arrive
upon the image of a toad for work or labour?' Answer: 'Sheer
genius'.
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