What do you think?
Rate this book
The Life of Dylan Thomas
Book by CONSTANTINE FITZGIBBON
348 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
4 people are currently reading
50 people want to read
About the author
Constantine FitzGibbon
113 books5 followersRobert Louis Constantine Lee-Dillon FitzGibbon
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 3, 2024
He could not swim but he was only ever happy by the sea.
That is an elegant way to describe Dylan Thomas. In a nutshell, it's the turmoil of the great poet, who always seemed to yearn for something he could not touch. Neither foot on shore. Did the mermaids grab Thomas as a boy and shake him until the words started flowing out of him? I wonder. He would never be a man who flowered with the gradual contentment of life. No government jobs with safe payroll for him. Absorb the daily sun.
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.
He was no Milton, he was no builder of cathedrals.
The idea that a poet can write difficult and truthful poems on his knee between Hammersmith and Trafalgar Square is a romantic fallacy.
Fitzgibbon's style matches wonderfully with Thomas's life. There are snippets of Dylan's poems, but this is truly a life review. Still, I certainly wanted to sit down in a corner with the collected poems and a bowl of stew and dumplings (Dylan Thomas poems always make me hungry, ask not). Letters are printed in full and Fitzgibbon's honesty about the demise of Dylan Thomas (Dylan paid dearly for his discovery of America) 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 thinking that back in the days when Thomas was writing, he might have written on such paper. Whatever tree produced such heartiness was a good tree indeed.
"The ball I threw while playing in the park
Has not yet reached the ground."
Book Season = Autumn (chips by the sea)
That is an elegant way to describe Dylan Thomas. In a nutshell, it's the turmoil of the great poet, who always seemed to yearn for something he could not touch. Neither foot on shore. Did the mermaids grab Thomas as a boy and shake him until the words started flowing out of him? I wonder. He would never be a man who flowered with the gradual contentment of life. No government jobs with safe payroll for him. Absorb the daily sun.
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.
He was no Milton, he was no builder of cathedrals.
The idea that a poet can write difficult and truthful poems on his knee between Hammersmith and Trafalgar Square is a romantic fallacy.
Fitzgibbon's style matches wonderfully with Thomas's life. There are snippets of Dylan's poems, but this is truly a life review. Still, I certainly wanted to sit down in a corner with the collected poems and a bowl of stew and dumplings (Dylan Thomas poems always make me hungry, ask not). Letters are printed in full and Fitzgibbon's honesty about the demise of Dylan Thomas (Dylan paid dearly for his discovery of America) 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 thinking that back in the days when Thomas was writing, he might have written on such paper. Whatever tree produced such heartiness was a good tree indeed.
"The ball I threw while playing in the park
Has not yet reached the ground."
Book Season = Autumn (chips by the sea)
August 5, 2013
This was the first of the biographies. Since there have been others, including the most recent tome by Andrew Lycett.
But hell -- this was a fantastic start. It is written by a friend and some of the detail is personal. Fitzgibbon quotes at length from letters, articles and so on -- and everything he quotes is fascinating. He comes across as not just a biographer but a member of the cast. He played a part in the Dylan Thomas story, no question about that.
Ruthven Todd (another friend of Thomas's, though not so close) was meant to write the biography, and he certainly completed most of a putative volume (never published). But Constantine F actually did the business.
After reading the biographies by both Paul Ferris and Andrew Lycett, I was expecting this to be a sort of prototype -- a not very good early attempt, a beginning. In fact, it is first rate. It doesn't develop in detail the last awful visit to the States, the one that ended with Dylan Thomas in a coma and Caitlin getting off the plane saying, 'Is the bloody man dead yet?' But that section in both Ferris and Lycett is exquisitely painful. This book does deal with Thomas's early life in colour and detail, and with the London literary life at that time too.
And to my relief, Constantine Fitzgibbon is warm-hearted towards Caitlin, the only biographer I have read to honour both her and Dylan. The others give her a hard time, poor woman.
Three cheers for Fitzgibbon!
But hell -- this was a fantastic start. It is written by a friend and some of the detail is personal. Fitzgibbon quotes at length from letters, articles and so on -- and everything he quotes is fascinating. He comes across as not just a biographer but a member of the cast. He played a part in the Dylan Thomas story, no question about that.
Ruthven Todd (another friend of Thomas's, though not so close) was meant to write the biography, and he certainly completed most of a putative volume (never published). But Constantine F actually did the business.
After reading the biographies by both Paul Ferris and Andrew Lycett, I was expecting this to be a sort of prototype -- a not very good early attempt, a beginning. In fact, it is first rate. It doesn't develop in detail the last awful visit to the States, the one that ended with Dylan Thomas in a coma and Caitlin getting off the plane saying, 'Is the bloody man dead yet?' But that section in both Ferris and Lycett is exquisitely painful. This book does deal with Thomas's early life in colour and detail, and with the London literary life at that time too.
And to my relief, Constantine Fitzgibbon is warm-hearted towards Caitlin, the only biographer I have read to honour both her and Dylan. The others give her a hard time, poor woman.
Three cheers for Fitzgibbon!
July 12, 2012
The tragic story of one of the greatest poets of the late twentieth century. Any one who can
describe his glass of beer in these terms can't be all bad.
"I like the taste of beer,its live,white lather,its brass bright depths,the sudden world through
the wet brown walls of the glass,the tilted rush to the lips and the slow swallowing down to the
lapping belly, the salt on the tongue,the foam on the corners.Same again miss."
describe his glass of beer in these terms can't be all bad.
"I like the taste of beer,its live,white lather,its brass bright depths,the sudden world through
the wet brown walls of the glass,the tilted rush to the lips and the slow swallowing down to the
lapping belly, the salt on the tongue,the foam on the corners.Same again miss."
July 21, 2019
Considered the definitive life of Thomas.
February 4, 2021
An insightful and nuanced portrait of a man whose life was overshadowed by his legend.
I basically never read biography, and I feel a little disingenuous giving it a 5-star review without any other point of reference. So I hedge with four. In my brief assessment this is a brilliant work of compassionate scholarship. Though it may well be another run of the mill exemplar of the biography of a literary figure and popular broadcaster -- in which case I would benefit from reading more biography.
From the book's dust jacket: [Constantine FitzGibbon] was selected as the authorized biographer by the Trustees of the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas, partly because of his long friendship with Thomas. He was unlimited access to papers and documents, including a wealth of unpublished letters ... No conditions were attached to the assignment of writing this authorized but uncensored biography, which he has fulfilled with both tact and candor.
Dylan Thomas is the poet whom I have most dearly taken into my heart, and I still find it difficult to express succinctly what it is I love so much about his poetry and prose. (One day I shall try to put some of it into words with a review of The Poems of Dylan Thomas.) I am thoroughly immersed in the literary output of the poet's brief career, but have never been drawn to read his letters, although some volumes of his correspondence have been published in the years following the publication of the biography. What I discovered from the biography was just how enchanting reading these make; Thomas' letters to his friends, his girlfriends, his rivals, his wife, his editors and publishers, are extremely warm, moving, raw, humble, (mostly) honest, and without fail, surpassingly imaginative in their humor. The wealth of letters that comprised the material for this biography renders it in some passage as if one were reading an autobiography, and that is probably its greatest value.
I basically never read biography, and I feel a little disingenuous giving it a 5-star review without any other point of reference. So I hedge with four. In my brief assessment this is a brilliant work of compassionate scholarship. Though it may well be another run of the mill exemplar of the biography of a literary figure and popular broadcaster -- in which case I would benefit from reading more biography.
From the book's dust jacket: [Constantine FitzGibbon] was selected as the authorized biographer by the Trustees of the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas, partly because of his long friendship with Thomas. He was unlimited access to papers and documents, including a wealth of unpublished letters ... No conditions were attached to the assignment of writing this authorized but uncensored biography, which he has fulfilled with both tact and candor.
Dylan Thomas is the poet whom I have most dearly taken into my heart, and I still find it difficult to express succinctly what it is I love so much about his poetry and prose. (One day I shall try to put some of it into words with a review of The Poems of Dylan Thomas.) I am thoroughly immersed in the literary output of the poet's brief career, but have never been drawn to read his letters, although some volumes of his correspondence have been published in the years following the publication of the biography. What I discovered from the biography was just how enchanting reading these make; Thomas' letters to his friends, his girlfriends, his rivals, his wife, his editors and publishers, are extremely warm, moving, raw, humble, (mostly) honest, and without fail, surpassingly imaginative in their humor. The wealth of letters that comprised the material for this biography renders it in some passage as if one were reading an autobiography, and that is probably its greatest value.
July 26, 2011
Interesting, considering it was a person I knew nothing about and had really no interest in. But I still have no interest in them. And it just kept going on and on.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews