Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
It took me three months to read this book. I’m not a slow reader, but I found Under the Volcano so dull, so ponderous, so boring, that I never felt drawn to go back to it. I nearly gave up, which I almost never do. (I also have been busy with work.) It was somewhat with a sense of duty to a novel that is widely acclaimed (numerous lists place it among the 100 best novels in English in the 20th century – published in 1947) that I forced myself through to the very end.
What’s so horrible? Basically, it’s the story of the last day of life for an alcoholic named Geoffrey Firmin. He drinks constantly throughout the novel. Well, not constantly, because there are pages where he merely thinks about drinking. Or he wonders what others think about his drinking. Or he thinks about giving up drinking. Or he thinks about how he can sneak a drink and whether anyone notices him drinking. Imagine the drunkest drunk at the barstool next to yours and how fun it would be to spend a day with that guy. That’s Under the Volcano.
Why is it so acclaimed? In the second paragraph of the introduction to the novel written by Stephen Spender in the edition I read, he compares the novel to Ulysses. Superficially, they are similar, but everywhere Lowry reaches for that comparison, he misses. Under the Volcano is in twelve chapters. Chapter One takes place a year after the main action, the remaining eleven follow methodically through a single day, dawn to dusk. The chapters alternate point of view among the characters, never with the same character featured twice in succession. Each chapter has its own setting. And, again like Ulysses, allusions to classical literature run throughout, principally in Under the Volcano, to the Faust legend and the Garden of Eden story. But where Joyce’s language is light and playful, if running to opaque at times, but always from richness of meaning not obfuscation, Lowry’s writing is always heavy, needlessly long-winded, and confused. Although the schema of Under the Volcano is tight, a single-day (except for that first chapter) and three main characters, the novel is also filled with discursions including long tellings of the backgrounds of each of the three main characters, which needlessly spread the novel out and lessen its cohesion. Where Leopold Bloom and Stephen Deadelus seem like people I know and could enjoy knowing, and their issues of love, fidelity, and resolving father/son relationships are relatable, Geoffrey Firmin’s anti-heroic quest for a drink removes him from my sphere of concern. I don’t like him, but moreover, I don’t care about him, which is death to a novel.
Stephen Spender defends Under the Volcano from this criticism by writing, “Under the Volcano is no more about drinking than King Lear is about senility.” Fair enough. But he also admits, “By the time we have finished this novel we know how a drunk thinks and feels, walks and lies down, and we experience not only the befuddleness of drink but also its moments of translucent clairvoyance, perfected expression.” Thanks for that, but that’s more than I want to know, and more than I need to experience in life or reading.
Chapter One. Dr. Arturo Diaz Virgil and M. Jacques Laruelle drink together at a hotel and remember the day exactly a year ago (it is “towards sunset on the Day of the Dead in November, 1939”) that their friend Geoffrey Firmin, the “Consul”, died. M. Laruelle then walks into town, Quauhnahuac, based on Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City. As he walks, he remembers a childhood friendship with Firmin in England. In town, he ends up in a cinema, and then a cantina. At the cantina the barman gives him a book that a year and a half earlier the Consul had loaned to M. Laurelle. From the book falls a sheet of paper, a letter from Yvonne to the Consul where she speaks of learning of the legal finality of their divorce.
Chapter Two. One year earlier, the morning of the Day of the Dead, 1938. Yvonne arrives back in Quauhnahuac and meets the Consul at a bar. He has stayed up all night after a dance, drinking. I knew immediately here that the novel was in trouble as the Consul, reconnected with his divorced wife who has come back to him unexpectedly after a year’s separation, greets her with no surprise or expression of gratitude, makes no statement of apology, nor a promise to begin again. The meeting is completely flat and matter of fact, as though they had never parted. It feels entirely false. “Yvonne hesitated but he made no move towards her; she slipped quietly onto a stool beside him; they did not kiss.” (p. 47). They leave the bar and walk to Geoffrey’s house.
Chapter Three. Yvonne and the Consul at the Consul’s home. He struggles to deal with Yvonne’s return, and struggles not to drink. When she leaves for the bathroom he flees outside where he falls in the street and is nearly run over by a car. He returns to the house.
Chapter Four. Hugh Firmin, the Consul’s brother, arrives. He’s been staying with his brother for a few days. Hugh and Yvonne go for a walk, then hire horses and go for a ride. There are hints of flirtation here, possibly a past affair.
Chapter Five. The Consul wanders through the garden of his home. He drinks from a bottle he has stashed in the undergrowth. The garden connects to a public garden with a sign that asks (in Spanish), “Do you like this garden, that is yours? Prevent your children from destroying it!” It’s a Garden of Eden from which the Consul is about to be expelled. The drunken Consul speaks with his disapproving neighbor, Mr. Quincey. Dr. Vigil arrives and warns the Consul of the health consequences of his drinking. Hugh and Yvonne return from their ride. The Doctor invites the group to accompany him to Guanajuato. The three decide to go to Tomalin, instead.
Chapter Six. Hugh recalls his youth. He played guitar and imagined he would be a songwriter. He signs up on a merchant voyage and sails as far as China. In the present, he finds the Consul, helpless, in the bathroom and helps him prepare for the day’s trip by giving his brother a shave. They set off for Tomalin and encounter M. Laurelle in the road who invites them to stop at his house.
Chapter Seven. M. Laurelle’s home. There’s an hour before the bus leaves for Tomalin so Hugh and Yvonne leave to visit a fair in the village. The Consul and M. Laurelle stay behind and then walk together into town. They drink together. The Consul rides a ferris wheel at the fair.
Chapter Eight. The bus to Tomalin. This chapter was originally a short story, written in 1936, also called, “Under the Volcano” that became the germ of the novel. As they ride to Tomalin they are accompanied on the bus by other characters, including a “pelado” meaning a disreputable person. From the bus they see a man lying under a hedge with his hat over his face. At first he seems to be sleeping. But when the bus stops and they investigate, he is in fact dead, or dying. No one helps him as there is a law that says anyone who touches him could be charged as an accomplice after the fact if in fact he dies and was found to be murdered. So they fret and fuss, and then the police arrive and they get back on the bus. It turns out the pelado from the bus has stolen the dead man’s money and uses it to pay the bus fare he avoided paying earlier.
Chapter Nine. They arrive in Tomalin and attend a show at an outdoor arena when men ride bulls. Yvonne recalls her earlier life trying to make it as an actress in the movies. For a moment, Yvonne is able to dream about a renewed future with Geoffrey. They have what amounts to the only tender moment in the novel, but it’s short-lived. Hugh rushes into the arena and rides a bull.
Chapter Ten. The three have dinner, and more drinking. Hugh and Yvonne go swimming. The Consul gets quite drunk and causes a scene. The Consul runs away into the forest.
Chapter Eleven. Yvonne and Hugh go after him, attempting to catch up with him. It’s nearly dark. They take the wrong path of two possibilities. A storm comes up. Yvonne is killed, for no reason, seemingly, than the cruelty of the author, trampled by a stray horse.
Chapter Twelve. The Consul has made it to a bar. He drinks more and more. He is abused by the local police who accuse him of not paying his bill and being a spy. The writing here gets increasingly confused, tracking the Consul’s declining mental state. Finally, the police hustle him outside and shoot him. Firmin dies.
I picked up a copy of the book in Ajjijic back in January. Jim and I had flown down to visit his mother. I read Pedro Paramo on the plane down and needed something to read on the way back. At a cafe where we had lunch there was a couple of racks of English books available, free for the taking. I picked this up having always intended to read it some day. I read a few chapters on the plane, and then most of it bit by bit over the next several weeks. I finished it nearly on the plane to Baltimore where I attended a conference last week, then read to the end in the bathtub at the hotel in New York where I am now. The old paperback fell apart in my hands. I kept the pages together with a rubber band.