Thomas intended Adventures in the Skin Trade as the successor to Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. The latter was a fictional rendering of his childhood in Cwmdonkin Drive, Swansea, the former as a version of his first attempt to break free by going to London in 1933. In real life the key element of his first London life was participation in the Surrealist Exhibition at the Burlington Galleries in 1936. The fictional version never gets that far. The discontinued fragment that came out in 1955 - this Aldine paperback - is limited to three chapters covering the day of departure, arrival, and immediate descent into dissolution.
Dylan's fictional alter ego is Sam Bennett, intended to be a passive character whom things happen to. Thus he stays in the station cafeteria until someone offers to take him home. The someone is Donald Allingham, a dealer in secondhand furniture, who takes Sam to his three rooms in Praed Street, every room of which is crammed with furniture, thus making rooms within rooms. There is no water or cooking facility so Allingham takes Sam to Mrs Dacey's informal cafe, where Sam ends up naked in the bath without the company of Mrs Dacey's amorous daughter Polly. Then it's everybody off to the progressively seedier nightspots - "the Gayspot first, then the Cheerio, then the Neptune."
It is surreal in its way, and colossal fun, but how I wish Thomas had been able to take us to exhibition and finding the spanner to get Dali free of his diving helmet. Nevertheless, Adventures in the Skin Trade is an essential for anyone interested in the Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive.
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