Given that privacy was so important to Philip Larkin, there has been rather a lot of investigation into his most intimate affairs in three biographies in the nearly thirty years since his death. Had he done more than write poems and run libraries, there might be more to write about but Larkin Studies is reduced to such things as compiling lists of what his record collection might have contained and detailed analyses of his letters.
At Cheltenham a few years ago, Anthony Thwaite assured an audience that Larkin knew, in his Letters to Monica, that the letters would be read by a wider public and so he wrote with an awareness of posterity reading over his shoulder. Not that this idea was given any credence by the fact that many of the letters had to be retrieved from down the back of chairs or found stuffed behind the fireplace. But, of course, if we don't want to know, then we don't have to read them. One shouldn't expect to have one's cake, eat it and also complain about it. However, the only remaining correspondance is embargoed until 2035 and the diaries were burned as per his instructions and so Booth suggests there might not be much more to come for a while.
Booth's main strategy is to defend his man and the work against the charges of racism, sexism and misogyny. He accepts a certain misanthropy and perhaps selfishness but balances this with evidence of Larkin's sympathy, empathy and general good humour in the right circumstances. I don't know how much he needs defending and the efforts to present him in the best possible light start to be potentially counter-productive. Larkin himself, in a letter when aged about 20, puts his 'mental age as fifteen; and likely to remain so many moons'. Yes, much of his political incorrectness is showing off in private to friends. A shy, stammering, bookish boy, he adopts such a personality as a mask. He was a long-term supporter of the RSPCA, a huge admirer of American jazz, even invited to write a biography of Louis Armstrong, and here is credited with early left-wing sympathies- although most would be left-wing compared to Monica Jones and he becomes more deliberately philistine and right-wing in his pronouncements as he gets older. But the political correctness of Lisa Jardine, Tom Paulin and the like is no longer quite the pious way to righteousness that we once thought, as it starts to fray at its edges, and Booth need not worry so much. Just because someone can write like an angel doesn't mean they are an angel..
There is little disputing Larkin's preservation of his life kept to himself, without any unnecessary commitment, and Booth more than the previous biographers brings out more of Monica's pressure to get married. Larkin has feet of clay, of course, in more respects than his avoidance of that but Booth is able to interpret that as 'kindness' which,
did indeed require him to continue both relationships
when he judges that he has made both Monica and Maeve Brennan dependant on him.
Booth is also ever vigilant to refute criticism of many of the poems. Of The Large Cool Store, he writes,
Larkin notes that this has been called 'a silly poem about nighties'. It is in fact a moving evocation of the awesome impersonal power of sex.
But Booth's analysis is useful in finding subtle developments in the poetry. From the finer lyricism of the Less Deceived poems, he notes Larkin as a 'celebrant of social ritual' in The Whitsun Weddings and a greater dependance on intertextual reference in High Windows, while not denying a harder tone in the later work. He is also good in showing how often Larkin is 'symbolist' and acutely aware of French poetry as exemplars rather than a purely English Tradition poet who exchanged Yeats for Hardy as a model. He identifies Here as the apex of Larkin's career,
Larkin had always been uncannily sensitive to life's climacterics, and had long anticipated the moment when he would reach his 'prime'. If one were to put a date on this moment it would be October 1961. After 'Here' the way is downward.
And one might say that, at a roughly similar age, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, after which things got considerably darker.
There is an elaborate reading of The Building and its unsettling, complicated rhyme-scheme. Just how useful it is to follow James Booth through these suggestions is a moot point but he isn't the first and won't be the last to take the role of poetry commentator beyond what is reasonably required. He is also able to at least posit the theory that The Dance is left unfinished deliberately. I have heard the same idea about Kubla Khan and The Art of Fugue but to apply it to The Dance is not to notice that it is surely still very 'first draft', rambling and fails to 'take off' in the way that most of Larkin's best collected work does. I think it was simply abandoned because it wasn't good enough.
We learn, along the way, that Larkin referred to his early publisher, George Hartley, as 'the ponce' because of his 'natty appearance' whereas I had thought it was because he exploited the copyright he owned as best he could.
Eventually, in a discusion of the relationship with Maeve,
It is difficult, and perhaps unnecessary, to be sure exactly what occurred between them.
whereas, presumably, because it was easy, it is perfectly fine to go into great detail about exactly what happened with everybody else. But two women at a time, and for a long time, wasn't quite enough for Larkin and around about the period that Booth is speculating on impotence, partly due to alcohol, Larkin decides he needs a third girlfriend and it seems he isn't all that impotent after all given new stimulus. But,
How largely did the promise of new poetic occasions feature in his decision to embark on the relationship?
Oh, good heavens.
Firstly, we seem to be told that Larkin was afraid of commitment because it might intrude on his private time, much of which was devoted to writing. But eventually, he is taking a third lover in order to stimulate writing. I think I blame Booth for even imagining such a possibility because I can't really believe Larkin's prime motivation in such a thing could be quite so clinical.
And then Booth finds himself in a later reference to Larkin's fictional academic biographer, Jake, as Larkin foresees what Booth is now doing. And this is what the whole Academic Poetry Literary Biography industry has led us to.
But, of course, the book is all but unputdownable to Larkin devotees. There is much to admire in Booth's assessments, and Larkin's- like the way all the accoladaes pour in once one is in terminal decline and hardly able to write a line. There is no glossing over the sad final years.
Booth has collected a fine series of examples of Larkin's sour wit, not least his invective against most of his contempoaries, especially Ted Hughes. But much of it, surely is caricature of himself, 'pretending to be himself' in one of the many phrases once available to anybody but now claimed as Larkin's. Booth is especially good at the Larkin Concordance, of when, where and how many times each word is used. It tries to shift Larkin's reputation and perhaps tries too hard to be successful, especially when so many now have decided upon and entrenched themselves in their point of view or, quite honestly, aren't too concerned.
It is in the detail, and not the more prurient detail, that James Booth has provided an account to stand with all the rest of the available material. But if Larkin devoted himself so determinedly to the composition of poems then it is those that we still ought to be reading.