Under the Volcano
A Novel
by Malcolm Lowry
Open Road
General Fiction (Adult)Long ago, a friend recommended this novel, so I started it, got stuck, restarted, got stuck. It's hard to state if it were the timing in life--full of its incessant demands and emergencies--or the words themselves. When I read that it was listed in Modern Library's Top 100 novels, I thought, well, it's time to give the novel a twelfth chance.
Now the ever cantankerous Charles Bukowski has a different take. He blames the words (see video--also intriguing for how we don't immediately see his interrogator and only sense interrogator's response by Bukowski's increasing insistence yet with paradoxical doubt in his own words), but was that my issue? Possibly. The novel does spin its wheels seeking narrative traction. Do we not ask ourselves why we are reading this, and can we supply an answer before reaching the end?
There are plenty of readers out there who just want a lot of pages. The thicker the book, the more pain it inflicts when accidentally stubbing your toe on it, the better. It's their sign of quality. Why not tack on two hundred more pages? A thousand? Yes, please. The more the merrier. Are these passages lovely? Absolutely. "Are all the pages necessary to tell the story" is a harder question to answer.
Some readers seek structure, a reason for the text to be there. These readers lack the time to swim or drown in a sea of words. Their eyes scan for purchase on the slippery banks of words. Say what you have to say and get out. How long it is doesn't matter, except make each page interesting. If it's a novella or short novel, then huzzah! We just want to know why we're here, reading this. If the story's short enough and rich enough, why, they can read it again if they want to keep wallowing in the writer's world. Do note that even those who claim to love it, spend little to no breath on the story's frame, the stones the cause the novel to submerge with its weight of words.
If you're this kind of reader, before tackling this novel, you might want to get a feel for the novel's structure first so know what you're reading for. This radio play from CBS's Studio One provides the central nugget (see Youtube video). I've only seen clips of the movie, which has its own successes, but the radio play felt a little more convincing.
The central story is fairly simple, taking place in Quauhnahuac, Mexico during the Day of the Dead as the characters hop from bars to bedrooms to bullrings. The Consul, Geoffrey Firmin, is a lush who has chased off his wife, Yvonne, who files for a divorce. She returns to him a year later to patch up the old wounds, but he has conflicting impulses to embrace her and push her away, to trust her and to give in to doubts about her worth. Meanwhile, Geoffrey's brother notes her worth, and Yvonne is pulled towards his brother. Geoffrey is his own hero and villain.
The novel seems to parallel and resonate with the author's own life--both equally tragic and perhaps equally evitable (depending on how one views one's personal fate)--which this lengthy documentary, Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry [the last Youtube video], details. My favorite quote here mixes the novelist with the novel's character. One interviewee, when asked what made the novel so sad, said, "The idea of man going so wrong.... Here's a man who could cope as long as he was drunk. The minute he got sober he couldn't cope with anything.... He couldn't get his ass into gear."
The novel dives into alcoholism, which has swung on a love-hate pendulum here in America. The above CBS radio play thought its treatment timely. One generation got sick of drunks, so they prohibited the substance, and then the next generation thumbed their nose at the previous generation's prissy teetotaling and kept well stocked liquor cabinets as a staple of social occasions. We suspend between our twin needs: to be freed of our inhibitions that keep us from engaging with society and to unleash ourselves from unhealthy addictions.
The novel requires more time to consider. In fact, this website delves into annotations for the text. There are some beautiful metaphors here--that of being under the weight and fires of the volcano, the flames of hell. Perhaps I will revise my experience of the novel. Meanwhile, we must press on. Life is short. I may return to linger and revel in the novel's motifs and themes... though due to the brevity of life, it may be as Frost writes in his poem "The Road Not Taken":
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
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