Philip Larkin’s friendship with Kingsley Amis began at Oxford in 1941. Larkin writes to Amis with a cynical take on friend Robert Acworth’s fourth marriage, and discusses his tendency to avoid “modern” novels.
To Kingsley Amis – 18 September 1979 TS
105 Newland Park, Hull HU5 2DT
Dear Kingsley,
Wotcher me old china PIECE OF BEDROOM FURNITURE: back at the grindstone after my oliday look you INTO THE REARS. Trotting round the Lake District—Ruskin’s house at Brantwood, Norman Nicholson country at Millom oowooWOOWHOOOOP leggo my
How did you get on in Scotland, drinking for a living? I’ve stopped not drinking now. Bloody dear it is though.
Geo Robt Acworth tells me he’s getting hitched—glutton for punishment. No doubt she will drag him back to her transatlantic lair, as all Yank bags do. Still, I can think of worse fates, with NUPE shadowboxing for another winter of pisscuntment or whatever, I really dread falling ill (I dread lots of other things to do with falling ill, as well, but never mind that for the moment); visited a member of my staff in two hospitals recently, and shuddered at the awful incompetent lack of privacy, discomfort etc. Have just switched to BUPAcare, and been accepted on the understanding that they don’t stump up for anything that could possibly go wrong with me (‘I’ll push a cricket stump up your—‘)
I really ought to write to Bob offering my felicitations, but the flesh is v. v. weak these days. Anyway, I don’t know where he lives. He says a prothalamium or summat will do as a wedding present, but I don’t think I can raise of suckof one of them, not that it wouldn’t be ‘fun to do’, in a sort of way. Have you any dope about it all?
I’m reading the new Gladys Mitchell: naked bathing by p. 22 (‘her back was childishly thin’). No Laura so far. It’s very rarely that I read a new book, unless I’m reviewing it or doing the Booker or something: there are whole legions of novelists I’ve never read and who I think of as ‘modern’, like Doris Lessing. My mind has stopped at 1945, like some cheap wartime clock. Bought a Penguin GrGr on holiday, a recent one, and found it full of new ideas like terrorists and a spoiled priest and a child heroine. Good old Graham, always the saham.
Drop me a line when you’ve a moment.
Afraid the left ear’s going the way of the right bum,
Philip
From Selected Letters of Philip Larkin: 1940-1985. Edited by Anthony Thwaite and B. C. Bloomfield. London: Faber and Faber, 1993. Print.
FURTHER READING
Watch Kingsley Amis reminisce on Larkin, his life and literary inspirations.
Read a review of the GrGr (Graham Greene) book that Larkin read on holiday, The Power and the Glory.
Read Larkin’s delightfully acerbic poem This Be The Verse.