Perceptions of Dylan Thomas

these two areas of experience are, for the moment, set side by side. The park is an actual park, the one opposite Thomas' boyhood home, wherc he played as a child, where his hunchback loitered, and where a stone inscribed to his memory stands today. The setting of the second line, on the other hand, is a mystic realm where time and space have been abolished. In this passage we can walk over the edge of one of these halves of Thomas' universe into the other, as Joyce's Stephen Dedalus imagines himself to be doing when he strolls the beach and wonders, "Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand?" Each of these four recent studies of Thomas addresses itself to a different spot along this walk; each focuses primarily on a part of the continuum extending from actuality to eternity which is the subject of Thomas' poetry. FitzGibbon's book does a superlative job of presenting the actuality. In giving a clear and thorough account of Thomas' life, it ranges freely over colorful background material and speculates expansively about matters of psychology and personal relationships. FitzGibbon makes use of a large quantity of published and unpublished sources, often quoting interesting passages from them at length. He knew Thomas and many of his friends, and by drawing upon conversations, anecdotes, and traditions available only to a biographer who has shared his subject's ambiance,