Philip Larkin Books

Larkin was a great writer and an honest critic, and this is the best-written book of popular music criticism available.
The other reviews posted for this book on Amazon are wrong to imply that Larkin's tastes were timid or stuffy. In fact his heros were Henry Allen, Pee-Wee Russell, Bessie Smith, Earl Hines, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Jabbo Smith, Jack Teagarden and so on. These are among greatest musicians and innovators of jazz.
Yes, Larkin thought Charlie Parker was overrated; he couldn't stand Coltrane; he thought Miles Davis was a bore. But don't be afraid to read why he thought so and you may learn something about your own heros.

All What Jazz, indeed. While Philip Larkin was a poet of some note, I'm thinking it probably didn't pay real well. So he got a gig, doing a monthly jazz column for the Daily Telegraph. He used this gig to blather endlessly of the superiority of Dixieland and trad jazz, and the travesty and utter disgrace that is modern jazz, i.e., bebop, hard bop, and horror above horrors, the dreaded free jazz. Indeed, the book opens with a quote from Miles Davis, trashing Ornette Coleman's music. Nothing like hiding behind an icon, there, Phil. Miles, who was the Charles Barkley of his day, would regularly say outrageous things for effect and "press." In print, the words look harsh - the printed page does not capture Miles's raspy cackle following his "quote." But the printed page does capture quite well the clammy, pasty discomfort that Larkin feels for modern jazz. Yes, pip-pip, give me the old Dixieland bands that I loved as a lad in prep school! OK, fine. A nice remembrance piece, on occasion, is nice. A barbed attack on an artist or genre can also be thought-provoking. (I've been known to dabble in such things...) However, Larkin did it EVERY MONTH for 10 years. Talk about a one trick pony, in an era that spawned creative genius and obliterated musical boundaries, Old Frumpy Phil is pining for the syncopated rhythms of his past. He would allow for Duke and Basie, but he had little use for Bird or Monk, and if he wasn't outright trashing them, he was smugly doling out left-handed compliments. But don't get him started on Trane, or, God forbid, Ornette. Truly the only book that I have read in anger, and out of morbid curiosity. Bottom line: it wasn't worth it. Save your money, or better yet, go buy a Coltrane disk!

When a reviewer calls Coltrane's playing 'possessed continually by an almost Scandinavian unloveliness', and questions Thelonious Monk's sense of rhythm, you start to get a feel for what kind of jazz he'll go for. And you'd be right: nothing ever seems to please Larkin quite so much as old-school big band or dixieland, and he's not afraid to say so. Still, he's a good writer and all, so if you're looking for a collection of jazz reviews from the 60s written by a slightly stuffy guy who never really got over Woody Herman, this is the book for you.

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.

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.