Publisher's Synopsis
Literary Nonfiction. Edited and introduced by Roger Scott. In 1941 David Gascoyne planned an anthology of prose extracts, The Naked Eye, which was to include a LETTER TO AN ADOPTED GODFATHER. The anthology itself was one of the poet's numerous abandoned projects, but the letter to Henry Miller did survive in typescript and is here published for the first time. LETTER TO AN ADOPTED GODFATHER is an eloquent, moving and naked piece of writing, almost shocking in the excoriating honesty of Gascoyne's rigorous self-examination. This epistle chimes with the most memorable extended entries in the Journals where he indulges at times in masochistic introspection and records, as here, periods of acute emotional and spiritual crises.