Damp-Lipped Hilary 
Jenny Diski
- Trouble at Willow Gables and Other Fictions by Philip Larkin, edited by James Booth
Life is too short to read Philip Larkin’s juvenilia. Reading ‘Trouble at Willow Gables’ and ‘Michaelmas Term at St Brides’ is up there with stuffing mushrooms: there is a part of me which, as I read – or stuff – has precognition of the moment of my death and the very last conscious thought, which is the blinding awareness of the precious hours wasted on Larkin’s schoolgirl stories or mushrooms when I might have done something more positive with them such as sleeping or filing my nails. Actually, I’ve never stuffed a mushroom in my life. That much sense I’ve got. I have no idea whether James Booth has ever gone in for fancy cooking. No time probably. He has his hands full of Larkin. He is a Reader in English at Hull University, and after a false start in 1981 (Writers and Politics in Nigeria), he has devoted himself to the cause of Philip Larkin. Philip Larkin: Writer in 1992 was followed by a collection of essays, New Larkins for Old (2000); he is secretary of the Philip Larkin Society and edits its newsletter, About Larkin (it’s a joke, d’you see?). Now he has edited and introduced these mostly unfinished and unpublished fictions that have been lying around in the archive. It’s what some literary academics do for a living, I know, hanging on the every word of their chosen one, but when it comes down to scratching about at the bottom of the barrel of the 21-year-old Larkin’s doodlings during the summer after leaving university, it’s time to head for the kitchen and get the mushroom scraper out.
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Jenny Diski has finally finished her novel Apology for the Woman Writing, which will be published in November.
Other articles by this contributor:
Hang on to the doily · Catherine M.
Who wears hats now? · Jenny Diski walks back to the future
Diary · Jenny Diski is dragged to the shoe shop
XXX · Doing what we’re told
Seriously Uncool · Susan Sontag
Oh, Andrea Dworkin · Misogyny: The Male Malady by David Gilmore
Did Jesus walk on water because he couldn’t swim? · Jewish Seafarers
It wasn’t him, it was her · Nietzsche’s Bad Sister
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