Philip Larkin: Subversive Writer

by Stephen Cooper

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established perspectives on Larkin s poetry and prose, Cooper s book presents new evidence from a range of previously unpublished sources, and is the first full-length critical work to analyze Larkin s early fiction, as well as advance new readings of The Less Deceived, The Whitsun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 Further unpublished material includes correspondence, workbook drafts, dream records, and a playscript, depicting, alternately, hostility to wartime heroics, revulsion to capitalism, unease with traditional gender roles and an interest in psychoanalysis. This study makes available to scholars paintings by Larkin s friend, James Sutton, which illuminate the writer s concern with social oppression, especially the predicament of women in the 1940s. Philip Larkin: Subversive Writer is a fresh and revealing study on Larkin s artistic subversion; stylistic and thematic, it reveals the underlying themes of Larkin s entire oeuvre.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004