Finished Philip Larkin this morning: ten to eight and lying in bed reflecting on the awkardness of reading the very end of a thick paperback with everything that has gone before, 500-plus pages, jammed into one hand while the other stops the final folios from flicking shut. The book is scuffed now and dog-earred from having made lots of journeys in my bag and because of thumbing on the Tube with work-grubbed hands. I notice also that the cover, a lovely grainy mono photo, has nail impressions, crescents in the finish. A well read book, that was, chewed over slowly like chunks of steak and very much enjoyed.I remain intrigued though slightly horrified by his duplicity - triplicity, in fact - since he had three woman on the go at one point and seems always to have thought principally of himself, his pleasure, and of having space to write. Also, fascinated by Aubade, which makes it possible to comprehend his fear of death, feel it for the spear-point of emotion it was. He saw it coming a long way off, dried up as a poet, soaked up as a boozer, bridled at celebrity, died aged 63 - the same age as his father - fulfilling a prediction he had made as a younger man. That part is sad.
What is also sad is that the book tells, perhaps unwittingly, something about the death of the provinces, the pride and distinctiveness of them. Hull, where Larkin was the university librarian, was beaten up from bombing when he arrived but is beaten up in a different way now. The library he built in the 1960s and 1970s had the stuffing knocked out of it by education cuts (yes, I know, Mrs Thatcher). The city, distinctive formerly for smelling of fish and for the funny little streets in the Old Town, is a museum piece in places with flats - sorry, apartments - around the marina that was once a basin for trawlers and pilot boats. Yachts, unused, bob on the black water with their sails folded and wrapped.
Everywhere is the same, isn't it? Outside London that is how it feels. And is it possible that someone lauded in his lifetime as the greatest living poet in English would today be allowed to remain in relative obscurity without imbeciles pestering him by email and constant demands - more even that when Larkin breathed - to be up and doing? Poor old fella. I wonder what he would have made of there being a Starfucks in every town and a Multiyork in every out-of-town mall? Not a lot.
