View from the Boundary

A man with one bookmaker's account might be understood to just enjoy a harmless weekend punt. One could probably lend him a fiver with every expectation of getting it back. But how do we regard someone with two accounts. A bit of a liability, perhaps, on his way to the loan shark's tawdry clutches and then the workhouse.

But I have opened a new account with Paddy Power in order to take advantage of their free bet to use that to back up my investment on Hollinghurst for the Booker Prize (4/1) with a similar gratis stab at the Forward Prize, which is one of the more exotic markets that the Irish firm offer prices on.

They have Geoffrey Hill at 13/8 fav with Sean O'Brien at 2/1, David Harsent at 4/1, then Longley 8/1, Burnside 10/1 and Nurske 12/1. This is roughly in line with their respective kudos and reputation, one would guess, but I'm not convinced it takes account of the specific volumes in competition for this year's prize.

While Hill is undoubtedly the doyen of High Church English poetry, and could win the prize on that reputation alone, it's not likely to be his best work but I'm not to know whether it is or not. In betting against favourites, you do so in the hope they are not quite on top form. However, although a long-time admirer of O'Brien and all his work, I do regard Harsent's book as 'better' this year. And this is in the knowledge that O'Brien's form figures in the Forward Prize read 111.

Michael Longley's reputation seems to remain a little way ahead of his achievement for me while the prize going to an outsider would make it just one of those events in which the roulette ball goes into 0 or 00. So, I'm with Harsent on this and can't help but notice that twenty pounds on two 4/1 shots multiplies up to five hundred. A monkey, in fact. The only way I've ever had a monkey before is by saving up for one. Perhaps Hollinghurst and Harsent will deliver me one over the winter.

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Faber and Martin Amis would be the only ones who could know why a Selected Larkin (pictured) is required. I can't see the need for it myself but it's due out very shortly.

It will mean me going into a bookshop next month to check on the contents list and skip through Martin's introduction. I don't intend paying to have a copy for myself.

Faber's Selected Poems of Douglas Dunn 1964-1983 ends on page 262 whereas their Collected Larkin edition of 2003 has its last poem on page 198. It has always seemed to me that Larkin did the selecting of his poems before publishing, finishing or even writing them. His Collected Poems are also his Selected Poems. So the interest in Martin Amis's edition is only really in what he leaves out or what he says in his introductory essay. We know he admired the 'instantly unforgettable', 'mnemogenic' nature of Larkin's poems while taking a less sympathetic view of the unambitious, provincial nature of the man himself. We don't really need a new selection to read that point of view again but I will be seeing if I can find a High Street bookshop to sneak a look at whatever else he has found to say.

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And, finally, from Robert Robinson's knowing and worldly-wise memoir, Skip all that,

(though Bill Gaskill, who wore an ear-ring and went to parties dressed as Nijinsky, had met Lady Redgrave in the vacation and after she'd said to her butler 'Butler, would you bring Mr. Gaskill a glass of fruit juice,' Bill had asked her if this was the correct way of addressing butlers, and she replied, 'certainly, if their name is Butler'.)