David Gascoyne was a friend of Lawrence Durrell from their first meeting in Paris at 18 Villa Seurat in 1938.  In his preface to Gascoyne's Paris Journal, 1937-1939 (1978), Durrell recalls the then twenty-two year-old writer as "a sort of Rimbaud of precocity" (5).  Unfortunately, since 1950,  Gascoyne's relatively slim output, partially due to poor health, has kept him from gaining the public recognition that he deserves.  I would like to rectify this oversight and honor David Gascoyne's more than sixty years as a published author by discussing Opening Day as a type of meditation on the novel as a confessional form and then by reflecting on it in the light of Gascoyne's major non-fiction, Journal, 1936-1937 and Paris Journal, 1936-1939.

Deus Loci 1 (1992):  72-90.

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