A STUDY OF READING HABITS // PHILIP LARKIN

What is it about?

This poem does exactly what it says on the tin – it talks about reading and how books have different effects on different individuals. The poem is split into three distinct stages, each stanza outlining a phase in Larkin’s life; the first focuses on his childhood, the second takes us through his adolescence and finally, the third is his point of view on reading in adulthood. When Larkin was a boy, he used books to escape everything, except school, because that was inescapable: ‘when getting my nose in a book cured most things short of school.’ This could suggest that Larkin was perhaps bullied during his school-years for reasons that are unconfirmed, although we do know that reading provided him with comfort and reassurance. They allowed him to imagine he was in the shoes of the heroic protagonists in his stories – ‘deal out the old right hook to dirty dogs twice my size’ – and we can presume that these ‘dirty dogs’ were the school bullies. In his adolescence, he turned to the genre of horror, explaining that ‘evil was just my lark’. There are hints towards adult fiction also, when he mentions the women he ‘clubbed with sex’, breaking them up like ‘meringues’. This therefore implies books gave him a bit of a thrill. In his adulthood, Larkin explains how he doesn’t ‘read much now’, because all of the books he comes across are rather the same as one another – they ‘seem far too familiar’ – and he finishes with a comic epiphany, by telling his readers that ‘books are a load of crap’.                                    

What are the deeper meanings?

There are not many deeper meanings within this poem as the context is all rather surface-level, however there are themes of isolation present. Reading cuts one off from any social interaction, as one is enraptured in the story in their hand. This could therefore suggest that Larkin used to read a lot in his youth because he was lonely; there are, after all, hints that he could have been bullied during his school years. However, as he grows older, Larkin realises that being lonely perhaps isn’t such a bad thing and as he enters adulthood, he gives up the reading when he comes to terms with the fact that being alone isn’t the worst case scenario after all.

What poetic devices are used?

The language within the poem is informal and there are comic moments throughout that offer a funnier side to Larkin that we do not see in most of his other pieces of work. He uses exaggeration, explaining how in his adolescence, he wore ‘inch-thick specs’ and ‘me and my cloak and fangs had ripping times in the dark’. This could also be perceived as Larkin mocking himself and the boy he was in his youth. Slang is used in this poem as well, such as words like ‘specs’, ‘dude’ and ‘chap’, words that we would not usually associate with Larkin’s refined style. However, this makes us aware that Larkin intends for this particular poem to be comic and not for it to be taken seriously.