Philip Larkin Book

Motion was one of Larkin's literary executors. He's also a scholar and a poet (in fact, the current Poet Laureate). Being a biography, this leans heavily to Motion's scholarly side... On the one hand, one can't help but be impressed. Motion's talents as a scholar as undeniable: he digs out information diligently, and the wealth of information present in this book is a must for the Larkin scholar (I would say, fan, but not all fans are this rabid presumably?). More than this, Motion's readings often have merit, he's obviously talented at criticism -type things, and his biographical readings are highly enlightening.

But (this conjunction was coming from a mile away) -- but -- one can't help but get the sense, as Amis (Martin, not Kingsley) has written, that Motion is pretty harsh on Larkin. There is an impatience in the book, on Larkin's inability to act and how it contributed to his poetry. Somewhere along the line, as it often happens with criticism, the reading becomes about ethics, and this is no exception. Thus, as Amis says, you can feel Motion's impatience with Larkin's fear of death, his rather finicky manner, the way he dealt with his friends, the way he dealt with life in general.

Having read this hefty tome for myself, I must say that perhaps, as researcher, Motion's anger with Larkin is not (as Amis implies) pandering to a more politically correct world. It seems to be anger of a far more familiar sort, something I myself had to face while reading this. The man and his work, I always maintain, are aphoristically connected... they are separate yet inseparable. And so, in Larkin's poems, we get the best of him. Like most great poets, Larkin's art could somehow get at the general truth behind his own experience of life, to make the truths he gleaned from his life resonate with the lives that others have lived, to make it true for others. It is this that makes reading the tome so hard to bear.

It is hard to believe that Larkin had in him the capacity to cause so much human hurt. And the hurt that he had caused the women in his life is very tangible, from their letters, and from Motion's own conversations with Monica -- the almost exact quote I remember is "he lied to me, the bugger, he lied and lied, but I loved him". It is not a nice thing to face, that what you always considered as a very humane poet had a very cruel side, not just mocking others in his writings (that is more of a display of wit), but actually hurting people.

I feel that the anger that Motion has stems precisely from this: anger at Larkin for letting him down... the poet who speaks the truth in his poems lies to his friends, lies to his girlfriends, is cruel to them sometimes. We are all liable to do these things every now and then, but poetry (though born of these experiences), transcends them, and having transcended these experiences, to be reminded of the "sluggish matter of the earth" before it was "forged into an impalpable, imperishable being" is not a pleasant job for any reader. And of course, one has to admit that Larkin was *extraordinarily* messed up. A pursual of the Selected Letters hints at this, but the letters to his girlfriends (not in the SL) are very revealing, along with the wealth of detail that Motion provides. Larkin was selfish -- and this is antithetical to the nature of writing anyway -- it always is a sharing -- so it comes as a nasty shock. I suspect Motion was let down by his favourite poet. I myself find it hard to bear.

That being said for Motion, I still feel that he is too harsh. Larkin may have been messed up, but Motion made it sound like he was having a great time being messed up. A reading of the excerpts etc provided by Motion I think, proves that this is not true. Larkin was truly confused and upset sometimes, covering it with his usual ironic sense of humour... if there was delusion he probably never saw past it. He is not, I believe, from the facts presented, as calculating or manipulative as Motion implies. It was more like he was messed up on certain points and never managed to deal with it properly-- this in turn screwed up his character and caused him to inadvertently hurt some people in his life. It seems to me that Motion was angered by Larkin's selfishness and the hurt he caused others, and this caused some unfairness on Motion's part... to see almost every friendly or altruistic emotion that Larkin had as self-serving, deluded or even hypocritical!

Motion seems to forget to question one's own scholarly instincts: the tendency is towards judging and organisation. But most artists, like art, are incurably messed up. That's why scholars exist. While mess in an artpiece is always fun (one talks about 'tensions' and 'balances' and things like that) one tends to forget mess in an artpiece almost inevitably means mess in the person who created it!

And how do we react to messy people? Well, we don't like them ('that person has issues/ can't get his shit together/ is a fucking mess'). Motion's reaction is much the same; his book wants the sympathy one accords to the community of 'messedupness', especially those of the artists. Their messes were often unresolvable, for various reasons.... they either contributed to their vision or led to it (or did both!). Larkin didn't have a happy time; most artists don't really have happy times (there are some! don't throw names at me! I would say also it depends on the kind of writing they do but I digress). Their sacrifice is our gain, and indeed as Larkin says, the life is lived for art. One should always keep this in mind while judging, and not dismiss merits simply because there are flaws, and feel sorry for any pain (in the artist or caused by the artist) as opposed to laying blame and attacking the artist, especially if, as in this case, he seems to have genuine issues which caused his unhappiness.