Philip Larkin: Subversive Writer
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Overview
"Overturning many of the established perspectives on Larkin's poetry and prose, Cooper's book presents new evidence from a range of previously unpublished sources, and is the first full-length critical work to analyse Larkin's early fiction, as well as advancing new readings of The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows." Critics have tended to label Larkin's poetry as sexist, racist and reactionary. However, this volume demonstrates that Larkin's artistic impulse throughout his career was to challenge orthodox models of social and sexual politics. Focusing on the Brunette Coleman novellas and the unfinished novels, a structural blueprint is identified as prefiguring the later poems' commentary on sexual and social conduct. Further unpublished material includes correspondence, workbook drafts, dream records, and a playscript, depicting, alternately, hostility to wartime heroics, revulsion from capitalism, unease with traditional gender roles and an interest in psychoanalysis.Synopsis
Cooper has written widely about Larkin, and here draws extensively from hitherto unpublished letters by both Larkin himself and his friend James Sutton to counter charges that Larkin's quasi-fascist views are expressed—at least with an unironic intention—in his poems, plays, and novels. The writer's overriding concern throughout his career, he says, was to unsettle many of those very same sexist, racist, and reactionary attitudes that he expresses in some of his published letters. He offers other letters revealing a plea for alternative constructs of masculinity, femininity, and social and political organization. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR