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2009 – 'The Most Underestimated Work in the Larkin Canon: A Girl in Winter, harbinger of greatness'.
Reclaiming Ambiguity – by James L. Orwin.
Jim Orwin reports on John Osborne’s talk on A Girl in Winter; Leslie Downs lecture theatre, University of Hull, 9 February 2009; a joint meeting with the English Department, 'Research Seminar series', University of Hull.
[From About Larkin 28, Autumn 2009]
In December 2005, during the Larkin and After event organised to mark the 20th anniversary of Larkin's death, John Osborne faced a barrage of (good-humoured) ribbing and ridicule from Alan Jenkins, Anthony Thwaite, Mark Lawson, James Booth, David Wheatley and others, when he contributed to the day's discussions some of the ideas that would form the basis of his Larkin, Ideology and Critical Violence. Specifically, he was highlighting one of Larkin's literary techniques—the use of ellipsis (in this context, the omission of specific or identifying detail) as a means of broadening the interpretive canvas of his poems—to show that most of the literary criticism of Larkin's work to date, particularly the work of those critics favouring (or locked into) the biographical approach, is fundamentally flawed. Osborne's intention, on that occasion, was to identify new and profitable areas of investigation for Larkin scholars to explore.
That so many of those present at Osborne's talk in 2005 unwilling to accept the ambiguities arising from the ellipses in Larkin's poetry—and by extension, in all poetry—are established writers, is particularly disturbing. For me, Osborne had described (and given a name to) a discipline I frequently employed when writing poetry; one I often suggested to others when asked for advice. Subsequent to that event, I began to try to codify my own methodology for writing. For a long time, I'd believed that the creative writing maxim: 'Show, don't tell', was an over prescriptive simplification of what the best writing actually requires; and that authors need to utilise the full range of possible 'values' on the show/tell scale, if they are to maximise the dynamic and emotional range of characters and plot. I now recognise that the show/tell scale presents an incomplete model for this purpose; and represents only half of a larger, far more effective scale, the median position of which is occupied by 'show'. On this new and larger scale, the 'value' at one end of the range will still be 'tell'; but the 'value' at the other must be 'hide'.
It is the habit of a good friend of mine—a guitarist—to frequently repeat the mantra: 'The notes you leave out are as important as the notes you put in'; a philosophy common among musicians (particularly jazz musicians), the origins of which, in its various forms, are hard to pin down.
Author Adeline Yen Mah has documented that Larkin once said his favourite book of all time was the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu; and that the Arthur Whaley translation [1934] was the version with which he was most familiar. Larkin told Yen Mah: “Every word in that book matters...Nothing is superfluous. It’s a work of absolute genius”. This is Whaley's translation of Chapter XI:
We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel; But it is on the space where there is nothing that the utility of the wheel depends. We turn clay to make a vessel; But it is on the space where there is nothing that the utility of the vessel depends. We pierce doors and windows to make a house; And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the utility of the house depends. Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the utility of what is not.In this more recent talk, John Osborne continued the exploration of the ideas expressed in Larkin, Ideology and Critical Violence by applying his theories to Larkin's second and final novel, A Girl in Winter, arguing that as early as 1947 Larkin was experimenting with a variety of poetic techniques that would prove to be fundamental in defining his later work, particularly the poems in the three mature collections (The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows), which progressively established and then secured his reputation as a great poet. For the benefit of those audience members who had not read Larkin, Ideology and Critical Violence, Osborne began by briefly rehearsing the arguments expounded in the volume, before moving on to challenge the idea of what some premier-league Larkin scholars (including Richard Palmer and James Booth) claim to be a 'rupture' [Osborne's word] between Larkin's pre- (prose) and post- (poetry) 1950 work. He also rejected the orthodoxy that Larkin is 'anti-Modernist', by comparing the 'study of a displaced person' in A Girl in Winter (and its single day plot) to—among many others—James Joyce's Ulysses.
A definition of the term 'montage' in the context of Modernist aesthetics followed, along with numerous examples of its use in Modernist cinema and literature. Osborne then made the connection between Modernist applications of this technique and Larkin's use of ellipsis, by invoking as intermediary Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' (about which he re-stated his belief that it is 'the single work by any author most often alluded to in Larkin'). He further contended that Larkin's use of ellipsis in Realist contexts made it 'the more extreme', confounding commentators, who 'routinely ignore or explain away these black holes in the text'.
Two examples of such 'black holes' that occur in A Girl in Winter are Katherine Lind's origins and 'the denouement of her story'. Osborne enumerated a role call of Larkin commentators and their contrary and conflicting views regarding Katherine's nationality, and suggested that the majority of critics are more interested in trying to pin down her origins in order to try to fill in a 'black hole' than addressing the question of what is the function of the ellipse. Osborne's contention is that this ellipse serves as a Modernist device to force the active engagement of the reader: in considering the various possibilities of identity that Larkin refuses to rule out, the reader is unable to avoid having to examine his or her own reaction to each of the myriad different options, thereby confronting the intensified focus—indeed, the reliance—on national and cultural stereotypes that living in a time of war inevitably engenders. At this point it is worth quoting Osborne in some detail:
...we are left with a startling fact (though one that no critic has bothered to remark): Larkin wrote during the Second World War a novel whose central character and presiding consciousness is impossible to securely recruit to either the French or German, Christian or Jewish sides. At the very least this must stand as a devastating reproach to the divisive national and racial ideologies undergirding international conflict.
Osborne took a two-pronged approach to issues of Empire, Nation and Gender in the novel: dealing first with 1936 and then 1942, the two time frames in which the novel's narrative takes place. In considering the 1936 mid-section of the novel, he demonstrated how, seen from Katherine's viewpoint—an alien, devoid of racial or national identity—the notion of Englishness is 'incisively' deconstructed; her otherness allowing English readers to see themselves through the eyes of an outsider. It was also noted that the descriptions of scenes Katherine observes on her journey (via train and car) from Dover to Oxford, prefigure similar 'traditional English scenes...and modern despoliation', later so effectively depicted in 'The Whitsun Weddings'.
The two 1942 sections, it was suggested, highlight acutely—and in doing so force the reader to challenge—the gender norms of the period:
Anstey has been over-promoted in accord with a patriarchal culture that would sooner place incompetent men in jobs vacated by competent ones than call upon the services of talented women.
Moreover, a 'pervasive English philistinism' is exposed: Katherine's observations of both speech and (apparent) reading habits demonstrate the English lack of respect for, and command of, their own language; while Anstey's upbraiding of Katherine for her lack of 'what we English call savvy or gumption . . . or nous', allows his 'anglocentrism' to 'blind' him to the non-English etymology of all three words he chooses to press his point.
The second of the two 'black holes' identified by Osborne ('the denouement of [Katherine's] story'), and another crucial ellipse, is the omission of any evidence—despite the best efforts of some commentators to persuade otherwise—to confirm that sexual intercourse takes place when Robin (in his military uniform) visits Katherine. Though we are told that Katherine agrees to Robin's request: 'Let me stay with you', we are also told: 'She named a condition that he accepted'. [My own interpretation of the unspecified condition named by Katherine is that she allows Robin to sleep on her bed, while she herself sleeps in the bed.] Whatever Larkin had in mind, an inevitable consequence of this ellipse, Osborne argued, is that 'the novel ends by subverting the martial patriarchy embodied in the uniformed Robin Fennel.'
Time constraints prevented Osborne from discussing fully his theories regarding Larkin's deconstructive and Postmodernist four-act structure with closing reversal (as evidenced in many of the major poems) and its development from the Modernist tripartite format that A Girl in Winter adopts (see Fig. 1). However, his detailed analysis of its evolution, through to the mature poems, can be found in Chapter 4, Section II of Larkin, Ideology and Critical Violence.
Fig. 1 Matrix demonstrating the tripartite format of A Girl in Winter
A Girl in Winter is not a masterpiece: Osborne is very clear about that, pointing out that the 'uncertainty' with which Larkin employs these techniques 'on occasion thwart[s] character motivation and strain[s] credulity'; but—he convincingly argues—they clearly anticipate the 'key strategies' of the mature poems.
Throughout, Osborne referred to a seemingly limitless array of Larkin critics and scholars and their misinterpretations of various aspects of not only A Girl in Winter, but also the mature poems. That his research into his subject has been meticulously conducted is self-evident: the depth of references and breadth of examples was remarkable.
One can't help thinking that if more of the commentators who have previously attempted to shed light on A Girl in Winter, and its significance in the development of Larkin's art, had managed to succeed to any appreciable degree, Osborne might not have had to pull these particular shutters so masterfully and so completely down.
John Osborne's Larkin, Ideology and Critical Violence was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2008, and was reviewed in About Larkin No.25.
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