Book review: The Wilder Shores of Dylan Thomas by Jeff Towns

Desmond Clifford

More than a decade after his centenary, the appetite for Dylan Thomas remains voracious.  No Welsh writer has attracted so many words, while leaving so relatively few of his own.

No one is better known beyond Wales or more talked about, argued over, disparaged and adored.

His life and death, or at least a version of it, is as well-known as his work.

He is the only Welsh writer who sustains a corner of the tourist industry.  Seventy years after his death, still not going anywhere gently.

The author of this beautifully produced volume, Jeff Towns, describes himself as a Swansea “antiquarian and second-hand bookseller”, though this reduction scarcely does justice to the immense knowledge built up through 50 years of collecting, dealing, investigating and promoting Dylan Thomas.

Few, if any, now alive can have handled more Dylan artefacts.

Book love

The book is published by the H’mm Foundation, which specialises in high quality production.  As well as 18 wide-ranging essays on aspects of Dylan, the book contains hundreds of photos, illustrations and memorabilia.

It’s a book about the love of books. As an education in the antiquarian book trade, I am interested to note the business can be as tiger-toothed as the NASDAQ.

Dylan Thomas wasn’t long becoming an icon.  He wrote young, was published and successful at home and then “conquered” New York, like an early harbinger for The Beatles.

His talent as a poet was matched by a superb voice and his career as a performer coincided with radio and the development of recorded sound.

He tapped into a New York poetry scene in the process of eliding into the emerging folk music wave.  Only a few years after Dylan’s death, the other Dylan (Bob) surfed the same tide.

When The Beatles included Dylan on the Sgt Pepper album sleeve collage – John’s request – it signalled cultural deification.

Slow burn

In Swansea, oddly, the burn had been slower.  As Jeff Towns explains, he and others promoted Dylan Thomas for years with limited results.

Dylan’s home community in those days had mixed, ambiguous views. The definitive turning point came with Swansea’s UK Year of Literature in 1995.

The director, Sean Doran, brought a strong sense of how Joyce and Yeats had shaped Ireland’s literary identity, culturally and commercially, and placed Dylan at the centre of things.

The Ty Llen/ Dylan Thomas Centre was the permanent legacy. Today, a good number of people visit Swansea because of Dylan Thomas.

1995 also marked the start of Jeff Towns’ own substantial Dylan literary output, a booklet introducing an exhibition in his book shop, reproduced in this volume.

For 15 years, Jeff’s shop was located at the Dylan Thomas Centre before a council property deal brought the relationship to a dismal end.

The Wilder Shores links essays on aspects of Dylan Thomas, some familiar territory, some less so.  He describes the meeting of Dylan (and Caitlin) with Max Ernst in Arizona, a fascinating cultural tributary.

Plagiarism

There is an interesting piece on plagiarism. Towns was excited to discover an early manuscript only to find the poems were copies from minor poets which the young Dylan may or may not have intended to pass off as his own (how many school poetry competitions have been won on this basis!?).

Had they been original works the manuscript would have been valuable; as they were not, it was simply a curiosity.

The 1930s/40s was the golden age of the literary periodical and Dylan was published in more than 100 small magazines. He never had money and lived by his pen, constantly selling work, sometimes more than once.

Jeff Towns handled all kinds of manuscripts and memorabilia. His best deal was a special edition of Twenty Six Poems inscribed by Dylan to Caitlin, bought from a Dublin bookseller, kept for a while and then sold on.

Dylan Thomas was a film enthusiast and one of his few full-time paid jobs was a stint as a scriptwriter at Strand Film. He wrote The Doctor and the Devils, based on the story of Edinburgh body snatchers Burke and Hare.

The film finally made it to production as a gothic horror starring Jonathan Pryce and Timothy Dalton in 1985.

Dylan on film

Jeff Towns’ career highlight was finding the only extant moving film image of Dylan. He appears in a crowd scene of a now obscure film, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, starring Ava Gardner and James Mason, filmed at Pendine Sands.

Dylan appears for just 2-3 seconds, spotted and authenticated by Jeff.

Dylan and his namesake, RS Thomas, were born 18 months apart in 1913/14 respectively. Between them, they filled a large chunk of public consciousness of Welsh poetry from the 1930s till the end of the century.

They could hardly have been more different. Dylan: lush, expansive, sociable, apolitical, surrealist, modern.

RS: dry, spare, ascetic, spiritual, intensely nationalistic, political, anti-modern.

Jeff Towns sets two two small photos side by side. RS in a dog-collar, hair combed severely, stern; Dylan is lighting a cigarette, brow furrowed, hair spilling.  Two ends of a spectrum.

Dylan and RS knew of each other, of course, but never met and would have struggled for conversation if they had.

There’s a one act play to be written:  the two Thomases sharing a train compartment – perhaps from Cardiff to Carmarthen. RS is all Pinter-esque silence and dry precision; gregarious Dylan gets drunker and more prolix through each station; the train breaks down in a tunnel…

Literary tourism

With two centenaries to choose from, officialdom chose Dylan as the acceptable face of literary tourism.

In fairness, marketing RS Thomas in Eglwys Fach or Aberdaron, hunting the carcass of a dead culture, would challenge any agency.

RS is the anti-tourist poet and would have despised a sanctioned centenary. Dylan, on the other hand, would have negotiated a decent fee, stuck on his bowtie and had a good time.

Dylan is supremely marketable, his persona vivid. For professional reasons, I happened to be in New York for part of his centenary celebration.

I took an early drink at the White Horse alongside Dylan’s grand-daughter Hannah Ellis and the First Minister; a friendly Cerys Mathews admired my Cardiff Blues woolly hat (it was February and freezing).

We walked to where St Vincent’s Hospital used to stand before its controversial demolition only a few years earlier.

Jeff Towns had a lot to do with the Dylan centenary and covers the ground extensively.  He mentions President Carter’s active interest in Dylan. President Higgins of Ireland, himself a poet, also came to Swansea to take part.

Mark of Cain

Mostly, Jeff keeps away from Dylan’s vocal opponents. Dylan is viewed with suspicion, if not contempt, by some nationalist critics – Saunders Lewis and Harri Webb, for example.

Dylan’s success was the mark of Cain in a cultural outlook framed by oppression and fragility (the very material of RS Thomas’ poetry, of course).

The book closes with an account of a book sale, which I found riveting.

In 2014 Jeff was commissioned by Swansea University to act at a Sotheby’s auction for a freshly discovered Dylan notebook, the most important manuscript discovery for years.  Towns clinched the deal and, happily, the manuscript stayed in Wales, in what Towns says, “…was the absolute pinnacle of my fifty-plus years as a Welsh book dealer.”

It’s a compelling insight to the vagaries of the book market.

There is interest here on every page and references to send you off to something else.  I found myself reaching my shelves to re-read Howl by Alan Ginsberg on the strength of an account of his first (unsuccessful) meeting with Dylan.

This book is eclectic.  My favourite new fact is that Dylan won the school Mile on sports day two years in succession.

This book is a joy to handle and a luscious source of pleasure.

The Wilder Shores of Dylan Thomas by Jeff Towns is published by the H’mm Foundation and is available from all good bookshops.