Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982 (Poets on Poetry) [Paperback]

Philip Larkin (Author)

Book Description

Series: Poets on Poetry | Publication Date: October 1, 1999

The reappearance of Philip Larkin's Required Writing will be welcomed by the late poet's many readers and admirers. The book's first two parts, "Recollections" and "Interviews," provide autobiographical glimpses of the very private Larkin's childhood, his youth at Oxford, the genesis of his forty-year career as a librarian, and the influences that initially steered his poetry.

The second half of the book reflects Larkin's literary standards and opinions in often witty and surprising, always beautifully wrought, essays and reviews. His subjects range from Emily Dickinson (were her first lines her best?) to the contemporary mystery novel. Required Writing concludes with a selection of pieces on jazz music.

"Larkin is a punctilious, honest critic. He prefers good clear writing to pretentious eyewash; he prefers tunes to discordant wailing; and he prefers home to abroad. Unlike the majority of critics, he is clear-sighted enough to say so." --A. N. Wilson, Sunday Telegraph

"I read the collection with growing excitement, agreement and admiration. It is the best contemporary account of the writer's true aims I have encountered." --John Mortimer, Sunday Times (London)

"Subtle, supple, craftily at ease, Required Writing is on a par with Larkin's poetry--which is just about as high as praise can go." --Clive James, Observer

Philip Larkin was the author of poetry collections, including High Windows, The Whitsun Weddings, and The Less Deceived; a book of essays entitled All What Jazz: A Record Diary; and two novels, Jill, and A Girl in Winter, published early in his career. Required Reading was originally published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0472085840
• ISBN-13: 978-0472085842
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #960,368 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Larkin on poetry and jazz, September 4, 2001

By 

R. H OAKLEY "roboakley" (Vienna, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982 (Poets on Poetry) (Paperback)

Anyone familar with Larkin's poetry will want to read this book of essays on literature and jazz. In it he demonstrates the same humor, common-sense, and intelligence that can be found in his poetry. His strong preference is for poets who are not deliberately obscure or difficult. Indeed, at times Larkin can sound almost anti-intellectual. This is misleading; he is very serious about his art. In this collection, he shows great insight into the works of other 20th Century British poets. His essays on jazz are more melancholy; for Larkin, jazz started going downhill with Bop. Nevertheless, his comments on jazz are insightful.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Larkin's miscellanies, August 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982 (Poets on Poetry) (Paperback)

Readers who liked Larkin's poetry will find the same humorous and pessimistic point of view to like in Larkin the book reviewer and jazz critic.

This book gathers together Larkin's miscellanies. It consists of two interviews with Larkin, his introductions to his novels and books of poetry, talks about poetry, reviews of poetry anthologies, biographies and novels plus some material about jazz that is also included in his book "All What Jazz." Most of the writing is about literature and music with the exception of a review of a book on the language of children.

The poets discussed are almost all British poets of the late-19th and 20th century such as A.E. Housman, Stevie Smith, Wilfred Owen, John Betjeman, Thomas Hardy and W.H. Auden (the last two being Larkin's favorites). Throughout these writings, Larkin is seen fighting a battle against modernism. For him, the arts in the 20th century went astray with "(Ezra) Pound, Picasso and (Charlie) Parker." He prefers poems that "use language in the way we all use it" and music that is "an affair of nice noises rather than nasty ones." This is a reasonable asethetic principle but he restates enough times in the book to become a little repetitious.

There is still enough good stuff to make the book worthwhile. There's some funny patches such as Larkin's description of the "fleshy, inarticulate" and aging jazz fans "whose first coronary is coming like Christmas." As a critic and a writer, Larkin is all for providing pleasure, instead of material for earnest study. Many readers will be refreshed by this approach to literature.

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Writing, November 28, 2011

By 

Lost John (Devon, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Required Writing Miscellaneous Pieces (Paperback)

Philip Larkin was one of the best Poet Laureates England never had. Not becoming Poet Laureate was his own choice; the post was offered but he declined. It is also Larkin's own doing that he has a reputation, not justified, as something of a `miserable old devil'. Yes, he was an unusually private person; as an Englishman of his generation and professional status he thought his sensitivities best concealed. When those sensitivities burst out through his poems, conferring celebrity status, he raised a number of defensive barriers, one of which was the pretence of a thoroughly dull personal and interior life.

In truth there was a wealth of friendships, correspondences and shared holidays, as well as a very full involvement in his work as a university librarian and in the librarians' professional association. He also sustained a deep interest in his own writing, and that of a wide range of classic and other writers of poetry and prose. This volume attests to that, provides us with much information about his early years (albeit with the complete omission of any possible titillation), and reveals a number of surprising enthusiasms.

Because the writing collected in the book was produced in response to requests for introductions to books by himself and others, book reviews, newspaper columns and the like, he called it Required Writing. That is misleading. As he makes clear, he was never a professional writer; he did not have to seek outlets for his writing, study markets, or try to interest editors in pieces that he thought he could produce if encouraged by a commission. Thus the door was opened to a freshness not always found in the press cuttings of well-known authors, and those surprising enthusiasms - for instance the early James Bond books, the work of crime writer Gladys Mitchell, the obscure Julian Hall, and poets such as Thomas Hardy, John Betjeman and Sylvia Plath. At least, he seems to have liked some of Plath's poems; his judicious assessment of her large output is so very fair it is hard to be certain.

Balance is a strong feature throughout the book. He admires Edward Thomas for his poetry, but notes that even Thomas's devoted widow conceded he was close to impossible as a person. Yes, the early Bond books were good, but Fleming could not sustain the quality beyond the first seven, and the films and film-derived book clones became ridiculous (even by the time of Larkin's 1981 piece). Interestingly, when Larkin loses his balance it is with reference to music. His appreciation of the types of jazz available on record in his own late teenage years is essentially uncritical, leading him to unjustified deprecation of the blues, rhythm and blues and - perhaps the most jarring note in the whole book - Mick Jagger.

But you can take what you want and leave the rest, and if you have an interest in Larkin, poetry, good writing in general, or Marvell, Tennyson, William Barnes, Hardy, the First World War poets, Houseman, W H Auden, Stevie Smith and others in particular, you will take much more than you leave. It's only a pity the book isn't indexed; there is much here well worth a quick reference at a later date.