Philip Larkin?!

[ghost of miles]

WTF--came across this on Atrios' blog today:

"BLEG: I know that at some point, the poet Philip Larkin, in a letter or review or essay, wrote something to the effect that he regretted the civil rights movement in America because it was ruining jazz. It was a joke, of course, but you can see the deeper point he was making." -- Andrew Sullivan.

Putting aside Sullivan's "deeper point" (I have nothing but contempt for him anyway), what WAS it with Larkin anyway? I've generally avoided his writings on jazz because of remarks like this. Is there anything of merit to be found there?

[Big Wheel]

A lot of conservative intellectuals subscribe to all these exalted Aristotelian theories of aesthetics. For them, the best art can't be "about" anything worldly--that debases it in their eyes. So jazz that has a social subtext too subtle for them to see=good; jazz that wears civil rights on its sleeve=bad.

I haven't read any Adorno so I'm not sure what the hell his beef with jazz in general was all about.

Edited October 11, 2005 by Big Wheel

[AllenLowe]

Larkin, despite his foibles, is quite good as a jazz writer when writing about something he knows - though he, like, say, Stanley Dance, missed the boat in the modern era. He is worth reading, however -

Edited October 11, 2005 by AllenLowe

[BruceH]

Larkin, despite his foibles,  is quite good as a jazz writer when writing about something he knows -  though he, like, say, Stanley Dance, missed the boat in the modern era. He is worth reading, however -

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Quite so. But I'd have to add that, often enough, even when writing about the bop he personally disliked he displayed a capacity to actually hear what's going on in the music and describe well to the layman. For instance, he would review, say, a Monk record by warning the reader that he didn't care for Monk's approach, then would go on to describe the piano playing in a very not-technical but very apt way. Must have been the poet in him. So yes, he was a conservative in many things, and a moldy fig with respect to jazz, but there was nothing wrong with his poweres of observation and description. (And he gave Clifford Brown his due.)

[sidewinder]

I've had a copy of his 'All What Jazz' book for many years. It's a compendium of reviews for UK jazz releases from 1961 to 1971 that were originally published in the Daily Telegraph and a pretty good reference for UK LP releases of that era (he gets to review some real obscurities). Anything beyond the swing era tends to floor him (particularly Coltrane) but he writes with real insight. It's also very funny in parts.

A typical sample:

'Albert Ayler's 'New Grass' (Impulse) is an extraordinary piece of-work, being (not to put too fine a point on it) a rock record by the master of the gothic galosh. The first track 'Message From Albert' has the usual screeching, plus some half-baked nonsense about having lived before, but after that it is all soul, Gospel, R&B and even Lat-Am, giving the reader the worst of both free form and funky worlds.'

[AllenLowe]

I like "gothic galosh" -

[sidewinder]

Another example:

'If Ayler's tenor sounds at times like a cello being scraped with a wet rubber galosh, Norman Howard's trumpet achieves a kind of benediction at the close of the eleven-minute 'Witches and Devils' that is charged with emotional feeling.'

[Alexander Hawkins]

I agree with much of what has been said. Larkin's writing, for me, is a good example of something I can enjoy reading, whilst disagreeing with, and getting annoyed by, most of what's said.

He does have a wonderful turn of phrase though. A few more examples used to make exactly this point in the preface of the edition I have to 'Jazz Writings':

...he is aware of the opportunities for the charlatan that a revolution in any art provides, and thinks he can distinguish, so to speak, the Shepps from the goats.

...we are left in the end with an impression of brilliant superficiality. Perhaps this is editorial policy: the New Yorker was always strong on polish. But the only thing you can polish is a surface.

[bop] has been ... called development. But there are different kinds of development: a hot bath can develop into a cold one.

[Nate Dorward]

A few things:

1) Larkin's most objectionable comments on jazz are contained in the preface to All What Jazz, which among other things states bluntly that jazz went wrong when black folks stopped trying to entertain the white folks. -- Individual reviews can be shrewder & less doctrinaire, as Allen Lowe notes above.

2) There is a collection of Larkin's uncollected writings on jazz that appeared a few years ago--I forget the title but it was something nondescript (something like Uncollected Jazz Reviews). This is part of the general scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel that's been going on with the Larkin legacy in recent years, which among other things saw the publication of his dabblings in lesbian porn. -- The collection includes his obituary notice for Coltrane, which is unrepentantly vitriolic about Coltrane's legacy; the newspaper that commissioned it from him refused to publish it at the time.

3) For a good, subtle account of Larkin & jazz, there's a recent book called Larkin's Blues, I forget the author, which I read around in a few years back & remember as being quite good.

Adorno is a whole nother ball of wax, or heap o' shit. People have tried to defend his remarks by saying that he was largely talking about the watered-down (white) pop-jazz of the day, but that's nonsense: the piece in Prisms for instance specifically singles out the beboppers & Louis Armstrong for negative comments.

[BruceH]

I agree with much of what has been said. Larkin's writing, for me, is a good example of something I can enjoy reading, whilst disagreeing with, and getting annoyed by, most of what's said.

←

That's pretty much it in a nutshell.

[garthsj]

I thought that I would throw in this famous poem of his .. just for the hell of it!

Philip Larkin (1922 - 1985)

written 1974

This Be the Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extras, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don't have any kids yourself.

Good stuff, indeed ... my students usually love it ....

[Kalo]

Larkin on jazz is well worth reading, agree with him or not. The man could write, and as Bruce H stated above, he often could describe very well what he didn't personally care for.

[Nate Dorward]

written 1974

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To be pedantic: 1971, actually; published 1974.

Still can't decide if Larkin's poem for Bechet is good or not, but anyway it's his one notable poem on jazz. Surprising he didn't write more, though I suppose that given that most of his poems are downers in one form or another that wouldn't have worked with his enthusiasm for jazz.

[Dr. Rat]

Reading Larkin on jazz is often like reading the later writings of his pal Kingsley Amis. Amis was wrong and intentionally offensive on a lot of stuff, but is still worth reading . . . and sometimes there's more than a grain of truth even when he's wrong.

The Larkin/Amis letters are often pretty interesting in a snarky kind of way. Amis, especially loves to play the curmudgeon, and even criticizes his kid with some relish.

--eric

[BruceH]

Yes exactly; often a grain of truth even when you disagree with the main point.

Good ol' Philip L-----ya gotta love 'm (though not his politics.)

[Guest]

A few things:

1) Larkin's most objectionable comments on jazz are contained in the preface to All What Jazz, which among other things states bluntly that jazz went wrong when black folks stopped trying to entertain the white folks. -- Individual reviews can be shrewder & less doctrinaire, as Allen Lowe notes above.

2) There is a collection of Larkin's uncollected writings on jazz that appeared a few years ago--I forget the title but it was something nondescript (something like Uncollected Jazz Reviews).  This is part of the general scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel that's been going on with the Larkin legacy in recent years, which among other things saw the publication of his dabblings in lesbian porn. -- The collection includes his obituary notice for Coltrane, which is unrepentantly vitriolic about Coltrane's legacy; the newspaper that commissioned it from him refused to publish it at the time.

3) For a good, subtle account of Larkin & jazz, there's a recent book called Larkin's Blues, I forget the author, which I read around in a few years back & remember as being quite good.

Adorno is a whole nother ball of wax, or heap o' shit. People have tried to defend his remarks by saying that he was largely talking about the watered-down (white) pop-jazz of the day, but that's nonsense: the piece in Prisms for instance specifically singles out the beboppers & Louis Armstrong for negative comments.

←

Adorno is always an interesting read, but he was a relic of a particular time and place and mindset. He didn't like jazz, principally, because he applied standards of western classical music. Well, it *does* fail as western classical music.

[Nate Dorward]

Mmmnhnnn, it's not as simple as that, I think (take a look at the Prisms piece which ends with a truly wacky bit about how jitterbugging dancers are celebrating their own castration at the hands of jazz, e.g.).... but Adorno's a different thread perhaps. -- Larkin certainly had much more of value to say about jazz than Adorno did, anyway.