264
PARTISAN REVIEW
It might almost have passed for a lack of interest. In a London pub
with Thomas, Brinnin was impressed that the poet was, for once, "not
the object of everyone's attention." Here in America the approbation
was extreme, the notice sometimes hysterical, the pace killing. The cost
of these trips was "disproportionate to the rewards." The trip before
the last one was felt to be "too exhausting to contemplate," and still
it was not only contemplated, it was arranged, it happened, and was
followed by an unbelievable another, the last of the three. In these
tours Thomas seems like nothing so much as a man in the films, ad–
dressing the audience cheerfully, but with a gun in
his
back.
It
was
a ghastly affair, preserved faithfully and grimly by Brinnin. There is
an element in this story of ritual and fantasy, a phantasmagoria of pain
and splendor, of talent and untimely death. And there is something else:
the sober and dreary fact of the decline of our literary life, its thinness
and fatigue. From this Thomas was, to many, a brief reprieve.
June
1st,
1956
is the closing date f·or the
HARPER $10,000
PRIZE NOVEL CONTEST
Any unpublished novel in the English language is eligible.
No entry form is needed. But each manuscript must be
accompanied by a letter stating that it is submitted for the
Contest and has never been published in book form.
The ]udgss:
HAMILTON BASSO
novelist, author of
The View from Pompsy's
Head, The Green Room,
etc.
ORVILLE PRESCOTT
daily book critic of the
New York Times.
JESSAMYN WEST
novelist, author of
Cress Delahanty, Tlie Witch·
diggers, The Friendly Persuasion,
etc.
Send manuscripts or write to:
The Harper Prize Novel Contest
HARPER
&
BROTHERS, 49 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N. Y.
