John Malcolm Brinnin and Dylan Thomas
John Malcolm Brinnin took on the job of being Dylan Thomas' lecture agent in America, and as such did not protect him from friends and admirers. This means that Dylan was surrounded by poet tasters who wanted to converse and drink with Dylan as the famous, even immortal poet, that he was. They would take him to the bars of Greenwich village, especially the White Horse Tavern, and ply Dylan with free, strong drinks, the American whiskey way, and so on.
The woman who slept with Dylan during that last forth tour, Elizabeth Reitell, worked for Malcolm Brinnin. She also was responsible for Dylan's welfare and may have helped kill him through neglect. As George Reevy tells it, Elizabeth Reitell and Dylan were out of the city when Dylan went into a coma. She called Malcolm Brinnin but they both did nothing for several hours.
They did not bring Dylan immediately to hospital. One report has Dylan in a coma with Reitell at the Chelsey hotel nearby and not taken to the hospital until the next morning. The George Reveey report to me has Reitell someplace with Dylan out of the city phoning Malcolm Brinnin but neither of them doing anything for several hours to get Dylan medical help.
Dylan never came out of the coma. George Reavey, not Malcolm Brinnin or Elizabeth Reitell phoned Caitlin, Dylan's wife in Wales, that Dylan was in the hospital. She flew in before he was dead. George reports that when Caitlan came to the hospital, Elizabeth Reitell was up in the hospital room with the unconscious Dylan. Reitell was warned and went down the back stairs while Caitlan was coming up the elevator.
When Caitlin saw Dylan's state she screamed and tore the crucifix off the wall of Dylan's room. She was subdued by hospital attendants, put in a straight-jacket, and taken to a private psychiatric clinic. Brinnin and his crew would not tell anybody where she was. George Reevy contacted the British embassy to find Caitlin and get her out of where she was being held incommunicado against her will.
You won't find this in Brinnin's book. George Reevy was quite upset at Dylan's condition and how he had been handled. He, Oscar and several other poets were waiting at the hospital for hours into the night that first horrible day. Dylan was in coma for a few days. They all discussed the events, and what had happened. So there was obviously confirmation of what most likely happened. I took notes on what George Reevy and Oscar Williams told me.
Dylan Thomas and Love
When one of us humans appears a god on earth, do we not all worship? Dylan Thomas is right up there with Shelly, Colleridge and Keats, far beyond the cold, acerbic T.S. Eliot, edited by Pound and more a philosopher than a lyric poet. Dylan Thomas was love, loved this life, loved love, made poetry of compassion for the human condition, while Eliot condemned the human condition.
Dylan Thomas is known by his women and his poems. T.S. Eliot is known by his imitation of the poetry of the past, his philosophy of the dead in life, of the cold reality of the scientific attitude, not only applied to life to produce sky scrapers and the atomic bomb, but also Eliot now applied the cold, objective attitude to poetry itself. We condemn T.S. Eliot because he could not love. America loved Thomas. But it was the wrong kind of love and it killed him.
Another incident inflamed Oscar Williams, my father, not exactly himself a feeling man. Now Dylan Thomas is returning to England on the ocean liner after a successful first tour and Dylan's 'friends' are surrounding him in his stateroom, as they did in those days in seeing someone off. Oscar is there as a friend and Dylan's agent. Malcolm Brinnin is also there with some of his 'gang'.' Just before they have to get off ship as the ship's horn blows its warning sound for departure, Malcolm Brinnin kisses Dylan Thomas right on the lips, and holds the kiss in front of my horrified father. Is this love, or is this the predator of love in the ongoing lust for power, even over a god?
Talk about literary New York in the heydays of 1950! The kiss that kills the cat kills the poet too! Malcolm Brinnin would bring Dylan Thomas back to America soon for more money-making, of which Dylan saw little himself. The poet would make three tours, the next and second with his wife, Caitlan, but the third alone, and the forth would kill him.
Who was it who first said that if Jesus returned to life in present day America they would crucify him all over again?
While Dylan was not saint, neither was the real historical Jesus, described as an eater and drinker in the gospels. Both men were at times lyric, Dylan more of a poet and Jesus more of a wisdom teacher, who yet had famous lines and great, little wisdom stories to tell his people.
Both men died a similar kind of death. Dylan Thomas embodied the archetype of a god on Earth, divinity in the soul of the human being. Dylan was betrayed by his poet-taster followers. Jesus of Galilee embodied for his disciples an extraordinary energy as well. Instead of poetry he gave wisdom statements and stories. Like Dylan, Jesus also commanded large audiences. People were healed in Jesus' presence. They felt him as God on earth, just as with what Dylan Thomas' followers felt.
The people responsible, and surrounding Dylan on his tour, did not protect him from alcohol, sex and sycophants, including an irresponsible doctor. Dylan went into a coma from which he never emerged, sensing before already his doom at his young age of thirty-nine.
John Malcolm Brinnin made a lot of money after Dylan's death off his book called 'Dylan Thomas In America'. He benefited from Dylan Thomas' early death and provided the physician and the friends who together through neglect and who knows what else, killed Dylan Thomas. Both George Reevy and my father, Oscar Williams, were horrified at this.