Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life

Rating:
Summary: A disappointing biography
Review: Andrew Motion's biography of Larkin, although well researched, is ultimately disappointing. Motion seems to have little sympathy for Larkin, and one wonders why he undertook this task. He does thoroughly cover the facts of Larkin's life -- his father, who admired Hitler even during the Second World War and his mother who seemed to have evoked only pity from her son. Indeed, according to Motion, Larkin claimed that his parents had such an unhappy marriage that he decided never to marry. It turns out, contrary to what one would believe from the poetry, that Larkin (at least in his later life) was fairly successful with women. However, he was careful not to commit himself too far. Although most people who knew Larkin liked him (such as Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest), this book will not tell you why. A more sympathetic sketch of Larkin can be found in Martin Amis's recent memoir. The book also falls short in its discussion of the poetry. That may be because Larkin's mature style was deceptively simple. While this make the poetry accessible to a wide audience, it robs the biographer of the opportunity to explicate obscure images or references. Anyone interested in Larkin is better off with the Collected Poems, and Required Writing, a book of essays.

Rating:
Summary: Humbug
Review: Ignore the previous writer. This is one of the handful of truly fine literary biographies from the last fifty years, maybe more. Unless Larkin himself was fully devoted to falsifying the record, he was every bit the unrelenting prig Motion has made him out to be; and not only does Motion show how Larkin as an artist transcended this, Motion personally knew and liked Larkin. Nowhere does Motion naively simplify the cause and effect between Larkin's childhood and his adult unhappiness --again, the facts are laid out judiciously, and the reader is free to draw conclusions. Finally, the idea that Motion, a Poet laureate, acquaintance of Larkin, and a gifted literary essayist, is somehow lacking in his analysis of the poems is nonsense. Motion takes us through the major work without allowing it to dominate the narrative which is, after all, about Larkin's life. All in all, this is a remarkable piece of literary journalism; absolutely first rank. That anyone interested in Larkin would be scared off by the prior casual dismissal, inattentive as it is, is a travesty.