Philip Larkin visits Martin Amis's Childhood

From Understanding Martin Amis, by James Diedrick (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995).

    Philip Larkin was Kingsley Amis's best friend, Martin's brother's godfather, and a frequent visitor to "the series of flats and houses where I spent my first ten years, in Swansea, South Wales" (82). It was the custom then for godfathers to give money to their godsons when they visited, and since Larkin was "a genuine miser," his performance of this ritual was always solemn ("the tip . . . would be doled out in priestly silence"). Amis writes that when he readdresses his own "eager, timid, childish feelings in [Larkin's] presence, I find solidity as well as oddity, and tolerant humor (held in reserve, in case it was needed) as well as the given melancholy." (127)

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