A Study of Reading Habits

A Study of Reading Habits
-Philip Larkin

When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.

Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my cloak and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark
The woman I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up like meringues.

Don't read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
the hero arrives, the chap
Who's yellow and keeps the store,
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.


This poem strikes me for several reasons. Philip Larkin's time period, 1919-1985, doesn't come to mind as the time when phrases like "crap" and "dude" were used. So I don't know if the meanings are somehow perceived differently back then compared to present day.

My favorite part of the poem is when he says "the dude who lets the girl down before the hero arrives." Larkin is generalizing so many works of literature here in this phrase and it makes me wonder if he is generalizing the rest of his examples as well. The transition between when the narrator used to read with awesome adventures and now when the stories are all starting to sound the same really took me as a surprise. However, I can relate to the narrator by saying that books used to be filled with stories and adventures, but then we grew up and so did our books.

"A Study of Reading Habits" kind of pulls the first part and second part together. As we age our reading habits change because the literature changes and so does our lives. The last line stumps me though. The narrator used to believe in books, but now he doesn't seem to care about them. Is he upset that literature is not the same for him anymore or does he think that all books are filled with pointless stories. Its hard for me to believe the latter because he used to have such adventures with books.