Dylan Thomas: (Critical Lives)

Dylan Thomas author of some of the century's greatest poetry, stories, and film scripts as well as one of the greatest radio features ever broadcast, Under Milk Wood is often characterised as self-indulgent. This concise and up-to-date biography challenges this depiction with a fresh portrait of the artist as a consummate professional. John Goodby and Chris Wigginton locate the source of Thomas's daring and inventive style in the poet's Anglo-Welsh origins as well as his historical, cultural, and social contexts: the Great Depression and 1930s literary London, surrealism, World War II, and Cold War popular culture. The result is a revealing and fresh introduction to the life and work of this important Welsh writer. 'In an astonishing statement Dylan Thomas declared "So many modern poets take the living flesh as their object, and, by their clever dissection, turn it into a carcass. I prefer to take the dead flesh, and...build up a living flesh from it." This describes exactly the achievement of Thomas's revivalist biographers: they have conjured away the dead heritage body and the caricature of Thomas's life and poetry as coagulated emissions, quickening both life and poems to track actively their intelligent and nervous response to their environments, social, intellectual and literary. This book is the latest stage in Thomas's restoration as a serious writer, whose work is shown newly as vital in our time.' John Wilkinson, University of Chicago 'This superb new biography by John Goodby and Chris Wigginton, a distillation of their work on Dylan Thomas over 25 years, is the first to take for granted his "acute intelligence" in rising to the challenge of his "inexhaustible" poetry. Anyone eager to hear all about his rambunctious ribaldry and transatlantic antics will find slim pickings, as poem after poem from the seismic lyrics of the inspired teenager to the magnificent 'Prologue' of his final year comes into startling focus, in an original and convincing reading of Thomas's life and art.' James Keery, author of That Stranger, The Blues and editor of Apocalypse: An Anthology

Table of Contents:
Abbreviations Introduction: An Intricate Image Chapter 1: Young and Easy: Childhood, 1914-25 Chapter 2: Eggs Laid by Tigers: The Apprentice Poet, 1925-32 Chapter 3: The Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive: The Poetics of Process, 1933-4 Chapter 4: The Direction of the Elementary Town: London, Surrealism and Love, 1935-7 Chapter 5: Loving Presences, Warring Absences: Marriage, Wales and War, 1938-41 Chapter 6: Singing in Chains: Apocalypse and Fame, 1942-7 Chapter 7: Against the Dying of the Light: Pastoral and America, 1948-53 Conclusion: Afterlife and Popular Culture References Select Bibliography Acknowledgements Photo Acknowledgements

About the Author :
John Goodby is professor of arts and culture at Sheffield Hallam University. The leading authority on Dylan Thomas, he has written extensively on his work and edited his Collected Poems. Chris Wigginton is pro vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University. His books include Modernism from the Margins: The 1930's Poetry of Louis MacNeice and Dylan Thomas.

Review :
In an astonishing statement Dylan Thomas declared “So many modern poets take the living flesh as their object, and, by their clever dissection, turn it into a carcass. I prefer to take the dead flesh, and . . . build up a living flesh from it.” This describes exactly the achievement of Thomas’s revivalist biographers: they have conjured away the dead heritage body and the caricature of Thomas’s life and poetry as coagulated emissions, quickening both life and poems to track actively their intelligent and nervous response to their environments, social, intellectual and literary. This book is the latest stage in Thomas’s restoration as a serious writer, whose work is shown newly as vital in our time. This superb new biography by John Goodby and Chris Wigginton, a distillation of their work on Dylan Thomas over 25 years, is the first to take for granted his “acute intelligence” in rising to the challenge of his “inexhaustible” poetry. Anyone eager to hear all about his rambunctious ribaldry and transatlantic antics will find slim pickings, as poem after poem – from the seismic lyrics of the inspired teenager to the magnificent ‘Prologue’ of his final year – comes into startling focus, in an original and convincing reading of Thomas’s life and art.