"Jazz Writings" made Larkin's jazz criticism widely available - Palmer now offers the first extensive revaluation of Larkin's writing on jazz as well as covering his poetry and early work."Such Deliberate Disguises: The Art of Philip Larkin" argues that a true understanding of Philip Larkin as man and poet lies beyond his enduring public appeal and the variety of criticism that has recently been applied to his work.Richard Palmer suggests that the ostensible simplicity of Larkin's writing, which continues to attract so many readers to him, is deceptive, masking as it does one of the richest and most resonant of oeuvres in twentieth-century poetry. Penetrating the many masks of Larkin, the book sheds new and considerable light on the hitherto largely ignored spiritual significance of his work. Based upon close and scrupulous reading of the poems themselves, it draws upon insights gained from the history of art and the study of religion and myth as much as literary criticism and personal biography.It also brings long-overdue attention to what is seen to be perhaps the chief love, and operative aesthetic force, of Larkin's life: jazz.
"Such Deliberate Disguises" is thus a major contribution, not just to Larkin studies, but to the wider cultural history of our times.
- ISBN10 1847140254
- ISBN13 9781847140258
- Publish Date 1 May 2008
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Imprint Continuum Collections, an imprint of Continuum International Publishing Ltd
- Format Paperback
- Pages 202
- Language English