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Gold Gato
, July 22, 2015
(view all comments by Gold Gato)
Did the mermaids grab Dylan Thomas as a boy and shake him until the words started flowing out of him? I wonder. This was my first bio on Dylan Thomas and chance certainly favored me. Constantine Fitzgibbon has written a fascinating chronological review of the Swansea wordmeister but has done so with the clarity of a true friend. We get the soft side of the poet along with the showy drunk who turned it on for friends and strangers alike. The constant scrounging for money, the inability to stay focused for long, and the ever-yearning need to be somewhere, anywhere, from where he was already.
Fitzgibbon's style matches wonderfully with Thomas's life. There are snippets of Dylan's poems, but this is truly a life review. Letters are printed in full and Fitzgibbon's honesty about the demise of Dylan Thomas is not filled with envy, just simple truth.
This 1965 edition is also different. Real paper! Not the thin recycled bit or the heavy gloss of Chinese mass printers, but paper that won't bend or tear despite my usual clumsy efforts. I would rub the pages each day. Whatever tree produced such heartiness was a good tree indeed.
Book Season = Autumn (chips by the sea)
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