A Study of "A Study of Reading Habits"

Larkin's poem is cleverly titled a Study of Reading Habits in order to mislead the reader. At first glance, one would expect a scientific account of observations of one's reading habits, but that would defeat the purpose of writing a humorously nuanced poem! The poem is designed as a narrative of three stages of the speaker's life and how his reading experiences impacted his philosophy and assessment of himself as a person. We can't assume that Larkin himself is the speaker in this poem, because a poet probably wouldn't say that "books are a load of crap." The ABCBAC rhyme scheme, line enjambment, tonal changes, maturity of viewpoints, loaded words and final message at the end are all utilized to describe the speaker's evolution of reading habits throughout his maturity.

The three stanzas of the poem are divided by tone correlating with a stage of life. For instance, the first stanza embodies the cleverly courageous, whimsical and inventive mind of a child. Childhood is full of highs and lows, so naturally a child will find some sort of medium to escape the the difficulties of growing up. The speaker's preference, was books. The naive imagination of the speaker as a child was used as a secret weapon against the harshness of being picked on by his peers. This relates a lot to the imagination section of chapter 1 of How to Read a Poem. It states that imagination is a "form of compensation for our natural insensibility to one another." Similarly, the poem's speaker uses his intellectual capital he acquired from books as a tool to defend himself against "dirty dogs" and escape the insanity even if it meant "ruining" his eyes.

The second stage of life could be interpreted as young manhood. Just tapping into the excitement and fearfulness of making one's own rules and deciding who to be and how to be one's idealistic person. Or how to embody the qualities of culturally accepted attractiveness in the eyes of the opposite sex. There is still maturity lacking in this stage of life. The tone of the second stanza is enthusiastically scheming, even pretentiously overambitious. This is where we really start to notice the stage of life pattern. The speaker's ideology changes from playful and childish, to dangerously careless. Innocence is lost, the genre of reading preference has changed from adventure, to thriller and mystery. The application of imagination is being applied for scandalous, almost immoral reasons. Rather than using it to defend himself from bullies, the speaker uses it to fantasize about his attractiveness to women. This attraction is almost fatal by the use of the loaded words "ripping" and "clubbed with sex!" Associating women with a sweet delicacy like "meringues" empowers him on a domineering pedestal in comparison to the weak-kneed, fragility of a female he had sexual relations with. There is a boasting quality by the plural "women" and exclamation point of that line. In this stage of life, the act of sex is more of a self-glorifying, recreational activity without deep feelings for a woman. The subtle implication of the speaker taking joy in imagining himself as a rapist is also present.

The third stanza indicates the hopeless defeat of a mature adult. With adulthood comes pros and cons. Wisdom might be gained, but sometimes at the cost of one's spontaneity and care-free nature. By this time, the speaker has grown bored with all the stories because he knows he exists in reality, not fantasy. He is not a fabricated, intellectual weapon invented by a childhood fantasy. Nor is he a fatally attractive vampire, werewolf, or creature of the night that sweeps women off their feet only to be "clubbed" with meaningless sex. Nor is he an idolized hero of wealth that wins over the dame and keeps good economic standing. The speaker is only "the dude." At least, that is all he sees himself as because he has grown tiresome of the same old tale. So, he leaves the reader with a final message: drink up, because books are stupid and useless. Alcohol is the only way to numb the realization that you are not a character in a book. Books have become a waste of time because they don't possess the magical stimulation that they used to. One can question why the speaker's imagination was lost with age, and whether it was Larkin's primary goal to make the reader aware of this.