Larkin Fields

[Pöster's nöte: Let me grace your oché. Cause I'm going to Larkinberry Fields. Big fücking deal. And nothing to get hung about. Larkinberry Fields forever.]

SAMSON YOUNG: "On Sunday he had walked with Nicola Six in London fields...Kneeling, the children launched their boats into the cold agitation of the water; the smaller craft wobbled all the more eagerly, as if activity could redress their want of size; among them, a black-sailed unfamiliar." SAMSON YOUNG: "She played for time (taking little rests) by staring in saintly silence at the water: the toy galleon with black sails, in whose wake..." SAMSON YOUNG: "They love to be chased, hilariously aware that the bigger thing cannot but capture them in time. I know how they feel, though of course with me it isn't funny, the bigger thing loping along in my wake, and easily gaining." PHILIP LARKIN: "Only one ship is seeking us, a black-sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back a huge and birdless silence. In her wake no waters breed or break." [From *Next, Please*.]

SAMSON YOUNG: "How I wish I could share in her hope---the awakened, lips parted, the new ships." PHILIP LARKIN: "Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear, sparkling armada of promises draw near." [From *Next, Please*.]

SAMSON YOUNG: "What we take from animals, what we take from our pets (without trying, and without asking), is a lesson about death: an overview of the shorter span. After two cats and nine hamsters, the adolescent is a bit better equipped for the awful call to his grandmother's bedroom." PHILIP LARKIN: "Fetch the shoebox, fetch the shovel---Mam, we're playing funerals now." [From *Take One Home for the Kiddies*.]

SAMSON YOUNG: "Chapter 7 looms like Keith's tower block. A fortress." SAMSON YOUNG: "Over the gardens and the mansion-block rooftops, over the window boxes and TV aerials, over Nicola's skylight and Keith's dark tower (looming like a calipered leg dropped from heaven), the air gave an exhausted and chastened sigh." PHILIP LARKIN: "Higher than the handsomest hotel the lucent comb shows up for miles". [From *The Building*.]

SAMSON YOUNG: "Just smiled and gazed out of the window at the speeding clouds." SAMSON YOUNG: "Above, the clouds were moving with preternatural speed; you felt as if larger units of weather were passing overhead like meteorological discs on a chart---months, entire seasons sweeping by in less than thirty seconds." PHILIP LARKIN: "But if he stood and watched the frigid wind tousling the clouds". [From *Mr. Bleaney*.] PHILIP LARKIN: "And that high-builded cloud moving at summer's pace." [From *Cut Grass*.]

SAMSON YOUNG: "It makes me think of Yeats's lines (and here my memory still holds): 'We have fallen in the dreams the ever-living breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world, and then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh.' " PHILIP LARKIN: "The white steamer is gone. Like breathed-on glass the sunlight has turned milky." [From *To the Sea*.]

SAMSON YOUNG: "What impresses and stays with me is the power of the baby's face---*the power*. It is knit tight, like a tautly prominent navel, chockful of possibilities, tumescent with potentiae, as if the million things that could happen to her, the essences of the million Kims there might one day be out there, are concentrated in this powerful face." PHILIP LARKIN: "To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here". [From *The Old Fools*.]

SAMSON YOUNG: "Guy's faith, a feebly gleaming heirloom (a locket, perhaps, that once belonged to his dead mother), was much tarnished for a while by the clear impossibility of anything surviving such a thorough subtraction of the human body." PHILIP LARKIN: "Religion used to try, that vast moth-eaten musical brocade created to pretend we never die". [From *Aubade*.]

SAMSON YOUNG: "If the intelligent eye could lift off and climb past eaves and skylights, and speed over rooftops, and settle as it liked where people thought they were alone---what on earth would it see?" SAMSON YOUNG: "And how *strange* it is in here, fish-grey, monkey-brown, all the surfaces moist and sticky, and the air no good to breathe." PHILIP LARKIN: "If my darling were once to decide not to stop at my eyes, but to jump, like Alice, with floating skirt into my head...she would find herself looped with the creep of varying light, monkey-brown, fish-grey". [From *If, My Darling*.]

SAMSON YOUNG: "You look for the loved one everywhere, of course, in passing cars, in high windows". PHILIP LARKIN: "Rather than words comes the thought of high windows". [From *High Windows*.]

SAMSON YOUNG: "What is it that is always pulling us back down?" PHILIP LARKIN: "What loads my hands down?" [From *Going*.]

SAMSON YOUNG: "As the darts crowd, the arrowshower, steadily grew in its growling". PHILIP LARKIN: "We slowed again, and as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled a sense of falling, like an arrow-shower sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain." [From *The Whitsun Weddings*.] [Previously mentioned by StephenP.]

SAMSON YOUNG: "Because when we're not there, their worlds begin to fall away. On every side the horizon climbs until it pushes out the sky. The walls come in." PHILIP LARKIN: "In this dream that dogs me I am part of a silent crowd walking under a wall, leaving a football match, perhaps, or a pit, all moving the same way. After a while a second wall closes on our right, pressing us tighter. We are now shut in like pigs down a concrete passage. When I lift my head, I see the walls have killed the sun, and light is cold." [From *Träumerei*.]

SAMSON YOUNG: "Hand in hand and arm in arm we totter, through communal fantasy and sorrow, through London fields. We're the dead." PHILIP LARKIN: "Give me your arm, old toad; help me down Cemetery Road." [From *Toads Revisited*.]

SAMSON YOUNG: "On Sunday he had walked with Nicola Six in London fields." PHILIP LARKIN: "There is an evening coming in across the fields, one never seen before, that lights no lamps." [From *Going*.]

Re: Larkin Fields

Great pöst - but öne small additiön:

SAMSON YOUNG: "How I wish I could share in her hope---the awakened, lips parted, the new ships."

nust surely cörrespond with:

"This form, this face, this life Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken, The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships."

From "Marina" by T.S. Eliot (Ariel Poems)

The Lärkinization

[Pöster's nöte: The big drawback to the Svedish langvage is that it doesn't have a definite article. In other vords, there is no Svedish eqvivalent for the vord *the*. Vell---actually there is. But it's a piss-poor substitute. The Svedish vord for *the* takes the form of a suffix. Martin Amis's book *The Information* vas translated into Svedish as *Informationen*. But don't get the vrong idea. I didn't actually read the Svedish translation. Are you kidding? I vouldn't go back to Sveden for all the smack in China. Remember Gvyn Barry's tennis coach named *Buttrugvena*? Amis says that Buttrugvena "spent every vaking moment vondering vhy he vasn't a resident of Monte Carlo". A resident of Monte Carlo. Like---for example---me. And Björn. And Stefan. And Mats. And lemme tell ya something, Smedley. I'm here to play and I'm here to stay. Right here in Grimaldi Gulch. I'm not going back to Malmö. They can't make me go back. Because I'm not going back. I'm sick to frigging hell of the tvanging siren-song of the Great Vhite Night. Screw that crap.]

THE INFORMATION: "It was the tiredness of time lived, with its days and days." PHILIP LARKIN: "What are days for? Days are where we live...Where can we live but days?" [From *Days*.]

THE INFORMATION: "I expect you get many young girls who. You will be delighted to hear that the air tickets will be. The judges reached their decision in less than. These terms are, we feel, exceptionally. I am beginning to be translating your. Here is a photograph of the inside of my." PHILIP LARKIN: "I am directed to inform you that under the will of the late Mr Getty...Dear Philip, You'll be interested to know that old Humpleby is at last giving up the Library at Windsor, and HM...of course, only 10,000 pounds, but there's a rather jolly little grace & favour Georgian dower house in the Great Park that seems to go with the job...Dear Mr Larkin, I expect you think it's jolly cheeky for a schoolgirl to---...Dear Dr Larkin, My freind and I had a argument as to which of us has the biggest breasts and we wondered if you would act as---...My youngest, she's fourteen and quite absurdly stuck on your poems---but then she's advanced in all ways---refuses to wear a---." [From Philip Larkin's letters.]

THE INFORMATION: "On the mantelpiece Richard thought he saw a devotional knickknack or icon, lit from within by a bulb the shape of a closed tulip; it was the Virgin Mary (he sensed), but travestied, with joke breasts outthrust like the figure of a redoubtable maiden on a ship's prow." PHILIP LARKIN: "Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked, each rope distinct, flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits arching our way". [From *Next, Please*.]

THE INFORMATION: "Demi told tales of lost kittens, beloved ponies, myxomatotic marmots, rabid rabbits". PHILIP LARKIN: "I make a sharp reply, then clean my stick. I'm glad I can't explain just in what jaws you were to suppurate". [From *Myxomatosis*.]

THE INFORMATION: "In the stairwell some Angaoas or Iaiain would be bent over his bicycle clips or patting the pockets of his donkey jacket." PHILIP LARKIN: "Hatless, I take off my cycle-clips in awkward reverence". [From *Church Going*.]

THE INFORMATION: "And he had no trouble visualizing her poolside with the five-million-a-pop screenplay writer, walking the chateau grounds with the belly-worshipping Francophile". PHILIP LARKIN: "So the shit in the shuttered château who does his five hundred words then parts out the rest of the day between bathing and booze and birds is far off as ever". [From *The Life with a Hole in it*.]

THE INFORMATION: "Richard thought that the adults looked like child-murderers, and so did the children, with their hairdos and earrings and their shallow, violent eyes." PHILIP LARKIN: "How few people are, held apart by acres of housing, and children with their shallow violent eyes." [From *How*.]

THE INFORMATION: "But at three in the morning something woke them with the fizzy rush of an old flash camera, and there they all were, staring down the sights of their lives and drawing a bead on the information." PHILIP LARKIN: "Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain edges will grow light. Till then I see what's really always there...the dread of dying, and being dead, flashes afresh to hold and horrify." [From *Aubade*.]

THE INFORMATION: "And then there is the information, which is nothing, and comes at night." PHILIP LARKIN: "And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless." [From *High Windows*.]

And a few earlier notes on Larkin/Amis:

    Hey Shmoey. I just got hold of Eric Jacobs' book about Kingsley Amis. Kingsley said that Martin had "gone all lefty and of the crappiest neutralist kind, challenging me to guess how many times over the world can destroy itself...He's bright, you see, but a fucking fool, and the worse, far worse, for having come to it late in life, aetat. [aged] nearly 37, not 17.".....In other words, nuclear ethics is a passing teenybopper phase. Boy ya know, ya talk about your major obnoxoids. I can always count on Kingsley's crusty-but-lovable grumpy-old-fascist-curmudgeon horseshit to set my teeth on edge and send me screaming into the night.

    I can't help but notice that Jezzaroona is fixated on a particular Martinism: "And then there is the information, which is nothing, and comes at night." Which serves as a lead-in to "Night Train". But doesn't that line remind you of another line? A line that preceded Martin's line. From another writer. Surely I can't be the only poltergeist phenomenon who's noticed this. That line sounds like a deliberate echo of Philip Larkin: "And immediately/Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:/The sun-comprehending glass,/And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows/Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless."

"Macatitch" is a referential joke-name

    Who can take a Martin. Sprinkle him with pee. Dip him in diarrhea and pluck out the heart of his mystery? The Sammy Man. The Sammy Man can. The Sammy Man can cause he slings it kosherly up here in Lounge Lizard Limbo.

    Hiya squeezypies. It's me again. Mister Wonderful. Boy ya know, it's absolutely marvy to be back in Michigan. It's a real borderline-thrill, lemme tell ya. Albion audiences are the greatest audiences in the world. (With the possible exception of North Platte, Nebraska. Christ, I've played some shitholes. But THAT takes the cake.) Hey. Guess what. I finally got a hold of Diedrick's book. The one with the picture of Diedrick looking like he just ate the Lindbergh baby. (Hey Diedrick. The Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre prop department just called. They want their tweeds back.) Is it just me or does Diedrick look like the unholy love child of John Updike & Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS?

    But listen---Diedrick told me something I didn't know. Namely, that Rachel Noyes's last name is a foul-minded Martinian pun. Diedrick sez: "As befits a novel about self-consciousness, the plot of 'The Rachel Papers' concerns Charles's own obsessive plotting: to achieve his twin, intertwined desires of entrance to Oxford and Rachel Noyes. He achieves both, the first on the first attempt and the second (as Rachel's last name implies) after an initial rejection."

    I don't know if Diedrick discovered this joke himself. My guess is that Dino or Frank or Vic Damone figured it out and then he told Diedrick. Whatever the case, the "Noyes" joke establishes the fact that Martin Amis is an unregenerate word-trickster who knows no shame and will stop at nothing.

    The reason I'm here is because I just identified another one of Martin's degenerate little joke-names. I believe it was Buddy Greco who once said: "The poetry of earth is never dead." Well, the clever-dickery of Martin is never dead either. So let's indulge Martin. Let's take his bait. Let's ride with the ketchup.

    The joke-name is "Macatitch". Johnny Mac is one of the cops in "Night Train". "Macatitch" is a reference to "Titch Thomas". "Titch Thomas" is a sleazoid vandal who defaced a poster in a poem called "Sunny Prestatyn" by Philip Larkin. Here is the poem:

"*Come to Sunny Prestatyn* / Laughed the girl on the poster, / Kneeling up on the sand / In tautened white satin. / Behind her, a hunk of coast, a / Hotel with palms / Seemed to expand from her thighs and / Spread breast-lifting arms.

"She was slapped up one day in March. / A couple of weeks, and her face / Was snaggle-toothed and boss-eyed; / Huge tits and a fissured crotch / Were scored well in, and the space / Between her legs held scrawls / That set her fairly astride / A tuberous cock and balls

"Autographed *Titch Thomas*, while / Someone had used a knife / Or something to stab right through / The moustached lips of her smile. / She was too good for this life. / Very soon, a great transverse tear / Left only a hand and some blue. / Now *Fight Cancer* is there."

    Jennifer Rockwell is the poster-model who was "too good for this life". Jennifer's gunshot wounds correspond to the poster-girl's knife wounds "right through the moustached lips of her smile". Tom Rockwell refers to Jennifer as being "sunny" (page 29). The poster-girl wears "tautened white satin". On page 128, Jennifer "came out of the cabana and walked toward us in her white one-piece". Larkin sez: "a great transverse tear left only a hand and some blue". On page 75, Mike sez: "A woman fell out of a clear blue sky."

    There you have it. Martin subtexted "Sunny Prestatyn" into "Night Train". The evidence is incontrovertible. This theory is unassailable. This theory is now a proven fact. I don't wanna hear any crap from any of you poopyheads. Anyone who thinks that the Macatitch/Titch Thomas connection is a mere coincidence is cordially invited to eat my shorts.

    Here's another possible Larkin/"Night Train" link. A link which possibly explains Jennifer's motive. On page 173, Mike sez: "Ever have that childish feeling, with the sun on your salty face and ice cream melting in your mouth, the infantile feeling that you want to cancel worldly happiness, turn it down as a false lead?" Compare that to another Larkin poem called "Wants" and see if Mike's comment doesn't sound like a deliberate echo of that poem. And that maybe Larkin is speaking for Jennifer:

"Beyond all this, the wish to be alone: / However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards / However we follow the printed directions of sex / However the family is photographed under the flagstaff--- / Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.

"Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs: / Despite the artful tensions of the calendar, / The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites, / The costly aversion of the eyes from death--- / Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs."

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