The Whole Hideous Inverted Childhood
Derek Lowe offers an appropriately inconclusive meditation on what Ritalin might have done for the aging Philip Larkin. One thing that struck me about Larkin’s letters and, despite author Andrew Motion’s best efforts to obscure the pattern, his biography: Legendarily Morose Larkin arose only after Larkin’s body began breaking down in the early 1970s - the health problems came first and the melancholia second. (The other factor was the death of his mother.) Before the illnesses set in, he had what we can only call a decent time juggling his two girlfriends, working his jobs, writing poems, living the life of the mind with his buddies (Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest chiefly) and caring for his collection of spanking magazines. Early Larkin is acerbic, sure, and cynical, but a different order of curmudgeon from late Larkin. Chronic physical pain seems to have had a lot to do with that. (Link via Instapundit.)
