Homage to 'DMT I liked the assessment of Dylan Marlais
Thomas in last week's cover story in the TLS 'a dedicated craftsman . . . a hard and honest worker. . . .' Indeed, this article serves in many ways as a rehabilitatibn of Thomas—if 1 may take the liberty of referring to him by his sur- name—for his reputation has suffered both from his admirers and the reaction against their literary necrophilia. On the one hand we've had the strictures of the Leavisites and the Puritans seeing in him no more than a drunken balladeer. And on the other we've seen too many tributes to 'Dylan' of the sort which crammed that sym-
posium, The Legend and the Poet. My favourite from this lush farrago was that by Richard Eberhart who wrote that one could not tell the truth about Thomas, because 'it would be too harsh, too unbelievable, too rich, too deep, too wild and too strange,' when all that Eberhart was trying to say was that Thomas had gone off with his raincoat, never to be seen again. R.I.P.
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