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  • Philip Larkin

  • Life, Art and Love
  • By: James Booth
  • Narrated by: Derek Perkins
  • Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (18 ratings)

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Philip Larkin

By: James Booth
Narrated by: Derek Perkins
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Summary

Philip Larkin (1922-1985) is one of the most beloved poets in English. Yet after his death a largely negative image of the man himself took hold; he has been portrayed as a racist, a misogynist and a narcissist. Now Larkin scholar James Booth, for seventeen years a colleague of the poet's at the University of Hull, offers a very different portrait. Drawn from years of research and a wide variety of Larkin's friends and correspondents, this is the most comprehensive portrait of the poet yet published.

Booth traces the events that shaped Larkin in his formative years, from his early life when his his political instincts were neutralised by exposure to his father's controversial Nazi values. He studies how the academic environment and the competition he felt with colleagues such as Kingsley Amis informed not only Larkin's poetry, but also his little-known ambitions as a novelist.

Through the places and people Larkin encountered over the course of his life, including Monica Jones, with whom he had a tumultuous but enduring relationship, Booth pieces together an image of a rather reserved and gentle man, whose personality - and poetry - have been misinterpreted by decades of academic study. Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love reveals the man behind the words as he has never been seen before.

©2014 James Booth (P)2014 Audible Inc.
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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Life amd poetry of Larkin

A great blend of exploration of Larkin's poetry with biographical content and the two skilfully linked. I found the narrator's voice lacked engagement and vitality but a solid enough performance. A must-read for lovers of Larkin the poet as well as Larkin the librarian, son and lover.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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excellent

Being already familiar with Larkin's poetry and elements of his life, I have realised that my knowledge was very limited. This excellently written book managed to interweave his poetry and his life in a very engaging way. The biographer's knowledge of poetry helped to analyse some of his poems creatively, yet technically. He did deal with Larkin's prejudices and shadow side openly and honestly but with possibly a degree of minimisation in my view.
Overall, it was well read and very stimulating.

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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More than a biography.

This is much more than a mundane tale of Larkin's life. Little time is wasted on his childhood nor his parents lives which is a blessed relief, but a huge amount of time is spent studying his poetry and prose and linking them with his life's story.
I really enjoyed the approach as it didn't simply paint a picture of the writer/librarian but gave me a deeper understanding of his work and his motivation for it.
The tone is quite dry and scholarly and I learned some new words (metonymy and diphthong spring immediately to mind) and neither the poet's life nor his work excites much if any emotional response in the author. This is no bad thing. In fact it is a refreshing antidote to the twenty first century predilection for hyperbole and vicarious exaggeration of and obsession with, the live styles of so called celebrities.
Larkin's life was not extraordinary, his talent was. This book lays that out clearly and unambiguously for the reader and is a vital companion to his work.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Good literary analysis embedded in a grating hagiography

Would you try another book written by James Booth or narrated by Derek Perkins?

Yes, I'd read a book by James Booth about someone he is less embarrassingly personally biased towards. The close, sensitive readings of the poems are excellent and beautifully done. The constant praise and defence of Larkin's personality - often contradicting and dismissing Larkin's own serious self-criticism - is deeply off-putting. It's annoying throughout the book but becomes appalling and offensive in the section excusing Larkin's racist language (which, broadly, adopts the theory that it's totally okay and ironic to refer to immigrants as niggers and pakis, provided you have a brown colleague somewhere who you are polite to). There's also an unintentionally hilarious moment when Booth proposes that Larkin is sexually involved with 2 women at once because he's too kind and considerate to break either's heart (again, dismissing Larkin's own scathing analysis of his own motives as misplaced 'guilt'). In general, I think that the book would have been much much better if all the barrister-for-defence stuff was dropped and he let Larkin do more of the talking.

What could James Booth have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

He could have avoided editorialising so extensively on Larkin's personality. I'm interested in Larkin's work and his life, on which James Booth is an expert. I'm not interested in James Booth's view on what counts as harmless racism and when cheating is altruistic - he's clearly not an expert in moral philosophy and it's both boring and embarrassing to have to listen to him go on and on in speeches for the defence that are built on such tenuous foundations.

What three words best describe Derek Perkins’s performance?

Clear, lively, unobtrusive.

Was Philip Larkin worth the listening time?

Yes

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13 people found this helpful