Just Like Him To Die by Douglas Bruton tells of the last days of Dylan Thomas as he lies unconscious and dying far from his Welsh home in a hospital bed in New York's Saint Vincent Hospital.
Dylan Thomas was a womanizer, a drunk, a bad husband, parent and friend, but Just Like Him To Die makes an effort to redeem him.
In this new novella from Douglas Bruton, Dylan Thomas remembers ― albeit imperfectly ― episodes from his life which he transmutes these into gentle Under-Milk-Wood-like stories which are full of fun and word-play pyrotechnics.
After all, when we each come to tell the stories of our own lives, we turn them into 'untruths' in just the same way.
Weaving in and out of the poet's thoughts and recollections are the voices of those gathered around him at the end. At the poet's death, everyone forgives Dylan Thomas his failings and remembers only the soft and the warm and the good things about him.
Just Like Him To Die is subtitled 'a short novel for voices' which mirrors the subtitle for Under Milk Wood: (a play for voices).*
The novella can be as long or as short as a piece of string, and as such invites the writer to experiment with the form and encourages both an intense focus on the writing and a sustained sense of play. Think juggling and the writing of a novella is like that moment when all the balls are in the air at once, all in play at the same time — at least for this writer it is. In Just Like Him To Die, (which is, incidentally and by design, the same length as Dylan Thomas' 'play for voices', Under Milk Wood) I hope I have captured the ebullient character of the raconteur with the fictionalisation and fabrication of his life for the entertainment of others. Try reading this novella with the lilting Welsh voice of the great poet, all coffee-grounds and cigarette smoke, in duelling opposition to the New York drag and drawl of Liz, Linnie, John Malcolm Brinnin and the Doctors.
Douglas Bruton
