Customer Reviews

Under the Volcano

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Under the Volcano chronicles the last day in the life of the British Consul to Quauhnahuac, Mexico. The surface story recounts how his ex-wife, Yvonne, and his half-brother, Hugh, try to pull him from the alcoholic funk he's fallen into, and in the course of the day, they visit several locations in and around Quauhnahuac.

The descriptive prose makes the setting come alive, and you're left with the feeling of actually seen some of these places. The mini parks, the ruins of Maximilian's Palace, the cinema, the backyard of the Consul's house, and the great volcano, Popocatepetel, which keeps appearing and disappearing, growing and shrinking, as they wander around the landscape - all these things become very real under Lowry's brilliant examination.

Inspired by Joyce, Lowry's book has several parallels with Ulysses. Except for the first chapter, it all takes place in a single day -- November 1, 1938 (the Mexican holiday called "The Day of the Dead.") There are three principal characters, two male, one female, who wander around the landscape, etc. However, Ulysses is an extremely difficult read, and all the interesting parts are below the surface; Under the Volcano is an easy read, and quite satisfactory without looking deeper.

A lot has been written about the deeper meanings of the book, of course, but the most obvious seems to be the allegory to Europe on the edge of war. In this view, the Consul represents the old Europe heading to its destruction despite the efforts of idealists to save it. Or perhaps more accurately, the senseless decline of the Consul to his death parallels the senseless descent of Europe into the destruction of World War II. Likewise as the day proceeds the bright hope of the morning darkens as the sun declines into the hopeless dark and storms that come with the night. And the very first chapter - the one set exactly one year later - is darkened by a tremendous storm -- a storm which seems to represent the European war then already in full career.

A powerful book, thoroughly enjoyable, and meriting repeated reading.

Geoffrey Firmin, the former British consul to Mexico, is a prisoner of alcoholism. A victim of the shakes, he hears voices, talks to people who are not there, and hallucinates, though he is often able to hide the extent of his drinking. "True, he might lie down in the street, but he would never reel." On The Day of the Dead in 1938, his recently divorced wife Yvonne returns to Quauhnahuac, over which two smoking volcanoes loom, to try to persuade him to reconcile.

Coincidentally, Geoffrey's half-brother Hugh, with whom Yvonne apparently had a brief affair, also arrives that day, and the three share quarters, each hoping to recapture the past. When they take the bus to Tomalin to a bull-riding event, they see a wounded peasant dying beside the road, the peasant's horse with the number 7 branded on its rump, a tricky pesado, and a group of vigilantes, all of whom play a role in the climax which follows.

Rich with details, both of the external world of Quauhnahuac and the internal world of Geoffrey, the novel, first published in 1947, reflects Lowry's own experiences as an alcoholic. Geoffrey, a fully-rounded character, knows that he must stop drinking in order to function effectively, but he is unable to function at all without drinking. He both loves and despises Yvonne, wants to leave Mexico but wants to stay, and wants to find peace but creates chaos.

As Lowry reconstructs this one day in Geoffrey's life, the Day of the Dead, the pervasive symbolism adds to the feeling of overpowering doom--the smoking volcanoes ready to erupt, the "hideous pariah dog" that follows Geoffrey and Yvonne to the house, a barranca (chasm) which exists beside the house and which contains a dead dog, an Indian carrying "the weight of the past," vultures in the forest, Yvonne's release of an eagle in a cage, and sudden storms. All add weight and intensity to this powerful story of dissolution.

Despite the depressing subject matter and a frustrating main character who cannot or will not help himself during the novel's four hundred pages, the novel is breath-taking--elegant both in language and construction. Carefully plotted, filled with unique imagery, and enhanced by symbolism which brings it alive on new levels, it overwhelms the reader with its impact and approaches classical tragedy as the inevitable, doom-filled events play out. Though the novel includes peripheral political issues of the day--Mexico's instability and the philosophical conflicts between fascism and socialism--it is primarily a variation on the story of the Garden of Eden and the fall of man--full, rich, dense, and rewarding, despite its pervasive sadness. Mary Whipple

BEWARE this wretched edition of an otherwise unique novel. There are typographic errors on virtually every page. Some of them ("himse;f") suggest that an earlier text was scanned for this reprint. But if so, it's clear that the publisher didn't bother to have anyone proofread it. With some books it's easy to spot typos, but not _Under the Volcano_: in part because much of it is written from a perspective of maximum alcoholic intoxication, so you'd be justified in thinking the sloppy spelling is somehow meant to approximate that state of mind; but the typos are also misleading because the text is filled with obscure references and a medley of foreign languages. If you're really intent on reading Lowry's masterpiece, find an old hardback or look for the British Penguin edition. This one's a wreck.

Suddenly with a gun or slowly using other means, including alcohol, why does a man(I use the term generically) self-destruct?. Why was there virtually no suicides among occupants of Nazi concentration camps? Camus asserted there was only one important philosophical question and that was suicide. The protagonist in UNDER THE VOLCANO, Geoffrey Firmin ponders " Why am I here, says the silence, what have I done, echoes the emptiness, why have I ruined myself ....................." (p342) Suffused with superstition, mystery, bizarre activities set on the Day of the Dead in Mexico at the foot of a Volcano, with echoes of guitar music, and dead dogs, images reminiscent of an hallucinatory carnival from Alice in Wonderland, colour, horror, sounds, this is a novel rich in atmosphere. " A sound like windbells, a ghostly tintinnabulation reached their ears."(p324) "Three black vultures came tearing through the trees low over the roof with soft hoarse cries like the cries of love." p151 And telling and true insights like " It's amazing when you come to think of it how the spirit seems to blossom in the shadow of the ABBATTOIR".P91 A profoundly moving novel which must rank as one of the great novels of the 20th century so well is it crafted and so telling its story.

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Sorry, that was me banging my head against the keyboard. This was a painful book to read. The person who wrote the afterword claims to have read Under The Volcano more than 30 times, each time more and more pleasurable. Perhaps there are people out there like that, but my guess is that the average reader is not one of them. This is certainly great literature - don't get me wrong - but I wouldn't consider it eminently readable. It's a classic in the tradition of James Joyce - the kind of book that you have to work at, sometimes struggle with, in order to enjoy.

And it's not just the prose that is a chore at times, with its frequent meanderings and obscure literary references. The subject matter is difficult, also. Geoffrey, our main character, is searching for his identity and salvation amongst a thousand empty and broken bottles. He is so far lost in alcoholism that he has to drink himself sober each day simply to survive. So in a very real sense, his daily survival depends on his perpetuating an addiction that is not-so-slowly killing him. He is dsyfunctional in every sense of the word - physically, socially, emotionally. And his wife, Yvonne, and brother, Hugh, accompany him on this day-long journey which seems certainly headed for destruction, at times appearing to help him, at other times doing little more than enabling his drinking problem.

If you're going to give this book a try, be patient with it. Give it your full attention, read it closely and carefully, and don't expect the words to just jump off the page. You'll need to roll up your sleeves and go in there after each sentence, each paragraph, wrestle with them, and drag them out. If you do, this can be a satisfying read. But if you approach it casually, you could end up just staring at 300 pages of words that give you little satisfaction in the end.

Those books are rare indeed that get branded with the "masterpiece" label yet elicit such strong contrasting reactions among its readers; Under the Volcano is such a work - it seems one either loves it or hates it. Perhaps many readers are turned against the book by the convoluted and labyrinthian manner in which Lowry wrote the novel, embellishing a stream-of-consciousness technique with alcoholic hallucinations, interior-exterior dialogue, passages insinuative of Mayan mysticism as well as cabbalistic symbolism and numerology; or perhaps it is simply that the reader gets overwhelmed with the Consul's dipsomania and underwhelmed by the plodding nature of the book. But to those readers who consider this book a masterpiece, it is seen as one of a dozen or so of the most powerful novels ever written in the English language. It is a book that stays with you long after you have read it and one to which the reader returns to re-read passages simply for the beauty of the extraordinary prose.

Since the book has been reviewed over seventy times, there is no need to rehash the plotline; indeed, it might be argued that the plot is secondary in the total impact of the book. Seldom has a book invoked such a powerful sense of place and time. Mexico, the fiesta of the Day of the Dead, 1938 - one day - is re-created with such realistic attention to detail and flecked with phantasmic images and sounds that the reader is transported both consciously and unconsciously to the streets of Cuernavaca. It is a time of uncertainty: war is looming in Europe as the preliminary fight in Spain is coming to a close; even the inconsequential nation of Mexico is preparing itself for the coming struggle as the military carries on senseless gunnery practice, a sound, with that of thunder, which forms the bass line to the novel's soundtrack. Fascist instigators abound; newspaper headlines warn of the impending death of the Pope as well as political and military collapses in Europe; public signs warn of destruction and its consequences (!Evite que sus hijos los destruyan!); a wooden sign with a pointing hand shows the way (to salvation or hell?) - and over this nightmarish scene looms the two volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, presently dormant, but insinuating - almost leering - to the population below the trapped destructive forces which each contain.

The novel can be read on many levels. Lowry, in a letter to his publisher, remarked, "it is superficial, entertaining, and boring, according to taste. It is a prophecy, a political warning, a cryptogram, a preposterous movie." It is a purposefully complex work, one that requires the full attention of its reader. While reading, I was aware that much symbolism and allusion was beyond my grasp, and that the recurring patters of numbers, cabalistic references and myth were indicating an intricate foundation on which the novel was created. But being one who is ignorant of the Cabbala and does not know his Sephiroth from his Tzimzum, and even less understanding (or interest) of numberology, this was lost on me. Regardless, I was able to garner enough of value from this work to rank it as one of my most amazing reading experiences.

On the fiesta Day of Death in Mexico, Geoffrey Firmin, ex-consul, ex-husband, confirmed alcoholic and self-ruined man, is living out the last twelve hours of his life.

As his younger brother, Hugh, and his former wife, Yvonne, stand by, powerless to help, Firmin drowns himself in a sea of beer, tequila, mescal and self-pity.

The Day of Death (All Souls Day) is one of the Catholic holidays with decidedly pagan influences which defines the peculiarly baroque Christian spiritual culture of Mexico. Its symbolism digs into the very soil where the dead are lying, not consolingly, but with a brutal irony, for on this day, the dead hunger and thirst as the living do, but much more intensely, much like the unquenchable thirst of an alcoholic.

The fiesta Day of Death is the perfect backdrop against which to set one man's agonized journey towards Calvary, if indeed, the final deterioration of a drunk can be termed as such.

Lowry certainly wrenches terror from the bowels of hell in his description of Firmin's DTs, hallucinations and distortions extraordinaire. However, the book, like its main character, lacks a certain stability and coherence; on this, the Day of Death, the environment itself, not to mention Geoffrey Firmin, are hurtling towards destruction, violently out of control.

In telling the story of Geoffrey Firmin, Malcolm Lowry imposed upon himself a twelve hour time frame (shorter even, than the time span Joyce allowed himself for Ulysses). In such a condensed time scale, the leisurely, orderly and coherent unfolding of plot, not to mention character development, can present an enormous problem.

Lowry regarded each of the book's twelve chapters as a free-standing, almost poetic, structure with both verbal and symbolic coherence, belonging to one of the book's four main characters. As such, they feel geometric, perhaps even decadent, rather than dramatic. Lowry included passages from his own poems and from part of the Dantesque trilogy, The Voyage that Never Ends, which he did not complete.

Although the book can be (and almost always is) tortured and tortuous, Lowry did write in emphatically rhythmic prose. Many of the sentences are extraordinarily taxing to read, for example, the long, convoluted sentence that opens Chapter Three. Several of the novels passages are even more twisting and painful.

This is not the fussy elaboration of Henry James whose longest sentences still manage to retain contact with the speaking and feeling voice of each character. Lowry instead, uses syntax as architecture. Despite the prosody, Under the Volcano is not written in conventional, horizontal "flow," but in balanced, vertical units, stilled in time.

Much of what Lowry employs in Under the Volcano is unnatural in the novel: the long iambic runs, the elaborate time-schemes, switchbacks and gradual bits and pieces of information that cause the book to finally make sense.

Under the Volcano endures precisely because of its tortured and tortuous writing style. Lowry, like Theseus, used this one twisted thread to find his was out of the labyrinth. The language employed, with its root system of symbolic connections and counter-references, its constancy of tone, all contribute to the final weight of the book. Lowery seems to have endowed his book with as much organized complexity as that of his principal characters.

From the first page, Under the Volcano has a definitely "static" feel, no doubt due to the static being of its main character. Geoffrey Firmin is not engaged in a battle with alcoholism; he has already surrendered and is simply awaiting the inevitable. For Geoffrey Firmin, there is no epiphany, no moment of recognition. The whole book is really one long dénouement.

And therein lies the book's genius. Lowry was able to reconcile a supremely static character with a supremely static writing style requiring enormous concentration and effort. The problem is, Lowry needed to tell us so much more than we needed to know.

For Lowry, the creation of Under the Volcano was no doubt compelling and purgative; and, although the book has definitely attained a "cult classic" status, for the vast majority of intelligent readers, it has proven to be far less required.

Under the Volcano is an amazing novel of despair with some of the most stunning and evocative writing I had ever read. The novel charts a single day in the life of an alcoholic consul in Mexico who is beyond believing in the redemption of life, love or religion. The pace of the novel fits perfectly with its content, slowly tracing the unsteady steps of this incredibly insightful man. I was amazed by the beautiful writing and was transported by its vivid imagery. Stay with this book...it will stay with you.

This is the only book by Malcolm Lowry that is worth reading, but it is truly a masterpiece of 20th century fiction. It is an agonizingly intense story told with the most richly textured writing I have ever read. However, it is not an easy book. The subject is harrowing and the mood is very dark and existential. To anyone who admires this book, I would suggest renting a copy of the National Film Board of Canada documentary about Malcolm Lowry entitled "Volcano-an enquiry into the life and death of Malcolm Lowry." It captures the essence of the man and his masterpiece far, far better than the shallow Hollywood fiilm with Albert Finney. In the NFB film, there are excerpts from the book read by Richard Burton who is brilliant at evoking Geoffrey Firmin's mocking and self-mocking tone.

An excellent novel, and well deserving of its place among the top fictional books of the last century. Lowry's Under the Volcano is hindered only by the horrendous copy edit job done by Perennial Classics. I am not a grammar stickler, but it was jarring to see how frequently typos sneaked past the editor's desk. A major character, Hugh, is misspelled High several times, and there are other blatent copy errors, such as this one on pg 295 "He had himse;f". Clearly a slip on the keyboard to insert a semicolon for an "l" but these errors occur so frequently that it can pull a reader out of the haunting experience of observing the sun-baked squalor of Quauhnahuac. I strongly recommend the novel, but advise you to seek out a different edition. It is downright unprofessional, given Lowry is clearly keen (like his peer Joyce) on using prose and punctuation as a part of the portrait. Nothing worse than getting sucked into an interior monologue, only to suddenly feel the need to pull out the red pen.