Name: Portrait of the Artist As a Young Dog
ISBN: 9781780227276

Dylan Thomas

Portrait of the Artist As a Young Dog

Emmett

These are stories of Welsh country - the places of Thomas' childhood, where the rough ways of life mingle with naivete in the most unexpected of ways. They are not quite fictional accounts, as the poet/writer himself is often the main character (or to put it in another way, the main character is named Dylan Thomas). His life is largely unknown to me and I can't ascertain fact and fiction, and so this volume dwells in between fantasy and reportage, between sketches of country life and an affecting, experiential account of it. The smells, textures and feelings however become real. They are intriguing stories, episodic in their memorability, snaring the reader's attention by some small detail, lingering briefly over an encounter, or a boy's unforgettable glimpse of the ocean. But Thomas-as-short-story-writer exhibits less of the same concentrated power and mastery of the line as Thomas-the-poet, and thankfully it is the latter which we get, and which survives in the cultural imagination. When a poem begins in the middle of the story, time seems to stop and the reader, like a captive audience, waits, barely breathing, taking in each grave and considered line.

Portrait of the Artist As a Young Dog

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