with the Andrew Motion biography of Philip Larkin. Larkin was so miserable and tortured he makes Samuel Beckett look like the most well-adjusted writer in writerdom. (Beckett’s biography was the last one I read.) Although I am getting tired of Larkin’s many socially repugnant opinions, you can’t help feeling sorry for the man nonetheless. He wasn’t a particularly progressive person, or even, in many situations, a kind one, but he wasn’t a happy one, either.

For the record, I still love his poems–there have been, as of yet, no revelations that can change that.