The young poet-to-be, when he looked like this…
Philip Larkin is one of England’s most eminent postwar poets. But relatively few know of his early sallies into fiction. Hence, the Another Look book club, which takes on overlooked, forgotten, off-the-beaten track novels (or simply ones that haven’t received the attention they merit) is taking on Larkin’s 1947 A Girl in Winter.
The event will take place at the Bechtel Conference Center at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, April 30. Panelists will include author Another Look Director Robert Pogue Harrison, who will will moderate the discussion. The Stanford professor also hosts the popular talk show, Entitled Opinions, and contributes regularly to the New York Review of Books. He will be joined by renowned author and National Medal of Arts winner Tobias Wolff, professor emeritus of English at Stanford. Literary scholar Elizabeth Conquest knew Philip Larkin—a close friend of her late husband, historian and poet Robert Conquest—and has written about Larkin’s poetry.
If you’d like to know a little more about the book (I always do), Clive James discusses the work here. there’s a 2011 Guardian article by the British poet Carol Rumens here. And also a 1976 discussion of the book by Joyce Carol Oates in The New Republic here. They each have a very different take on the exquisite novel.
A Girl in Winter is going to be a terrific book to end the sixth Another Look season. The book will be available at Stanford Bookstore on the Stanford campus and Kepler’s in Menlo Park.
The book is also available on Kindle, for those of you who prefer that format, and many used copies are on sale at Amazon and Abebooks. Please be aware that there are two editions of the book, listed separately and unlinked on Amazon: One from Faber & Faber here, and the other from Overlook Books here.
