Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog is a collection of short prose stories written by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, first published by Dent on 4 April 1940. The first paperback copy appeared in 1948, published by the British Publishers Guild. All of the stories are autobiographical and all are set in the writer's native Swansea in South Wales. Written over a number of years, the often comic stories show glimpses of his life, from early childhood up to his teens as a young reporter for the "South Wales Daily Post".
Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man many of Pota's ideas and drafts of possible stories, such as the sexual biography of his wife, or of Hera's trouble with Zeus. The title is evocatively similar to James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". The main character's name "Pota" is possibly the abbreviation of the phrase "Portrait Of "The" Artist". Critical reception to the novel was mixed. Michiko Kakutani, chief book critic for The New York Times, judged that "skills Heller did possess in abundance at the height of his career are also sorely lacking in this novel", and called it "a sad coda