Dylan

Hardback edition published by New English Library, London, 1970; paperback edition 1971

The cover blurb from the paperback edition:
It was Hemingway who once said: ‘Only bullfighters and poets live life all the way up.’
Dylan Morgan, husband manqué and successful writer, lives life all the way up - and all the way down. His search for recognition leads him through the sea of dazzling characters that inhabits literary London. His decline is as inevitable as it is tragic.
In this vivid and compulsive novel, John Summers, author of NEL’s bestselling The Disaster, tries to answer the question ‘Why?’ Why does the world destroy men of the calibre of Fitzgerald, London, Behan and Thomas? Can we believe the answer credited to Hemingway: ‘It is the world that kills its best writers – because it is afraid of them?’

Further reading:
Extract from Chapter 1: Leaving Swansea Town
Dylan’s Cell – The Times article, 1970
All Dylans, past and to come – Sunday Telegraph article, 1970
Review by Alwyn W Turner