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Under the Volcano

by Malcolm Lowry, William T. Vollmann (Afterword)

3.78 · rating details · 3,299 ratings · 416 reviews

Geoffrey Firmin, a former British consul, has come to Quauhnahuac, Mexico. His debilitating malaise is drinking, an activity that has overshadowed his life. On the most fateful day of the consul's life--the Day of the Dead, 1938--his wife, Yvonne, arrives in Quauhnahuac, inspired by a vision of life together away from Mexico and the circumstances that have driven their re

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Paperback, 402 pages

Published April 10th 2007 by Harper Perennial (first published 1947)

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Feb 25, 2011

Chris rated it

· review of another edition

Everything that takes place in Under the Volcano exists beneath the rarefied gaze of Popocatepetl, the towering volcano that dominates the south-central Mexican plateau. It is fitting that Lowry chose to make the volcano the omnipresent entity in his watercolor novel, since alcoholism, slumbering through filmy days and slurred nights, can erupt at any time into a furious outpouring of violent emotions, freed from the ruined tatters that constitute the remains of self-control. Such molten rivers ...moreEverything that takes place in Under the Volcano exists beneath the rarefied gaze of Popocatepetl, the towering volcano that dominates the south-central Mexican plateau. It is fitting that Lowry chose to make the volcano the omnipresent entity in his watercolor novel, since alcoholism, slumbering through filmy days and slurred nights, can erupt at any time into a furious outpouring of violent emotions, freed from the ruined tatters that constitute the remains of self-control. Such molten rivers are capable of burning to cinders those trying to penetrate the drunken mesh and reach the sober person trapped underneath; of seizing control of the alcoholic's mind and letting loose all of the primal demons bent on destruction and irrationality that gestate in the fires of the soul's own hell.

British consul Geoffrey Firmin is on the verge of this very eruption - exiled to the lush no-where of Mexico, spending his days drinking wherever he finds himself, amongst Mexican amigos who hopelessly try to steer him towards a drier future, and longing for the return of his ex-wife, Yvonne; a reunion he both desires and dreads, as he knows all too well the true destruction that will ensue from such a piebald fantasy. Enter Yvonne and, somewhat earlier, Firmin's half-brother Hugh, each having come to reclaim him and both of whom carry their own limiting secrets: Yvonne, that of an affair with Hugh; the sibling, the affair and a deep shame at having let down his side by failing to achieve socialist heroism in the Spanish Civil War.

All the ex-pats laden with guilt, then, Geoffrey's worst of all because, deep down, where the truth resides unshriven by the bottle's temporary falsehoods, he wants to probe the bottom of the abyss; he desires to remain unredeemed, to damn himself and wound those who love him as penance for making him let them down. Thus, when Yvonne presents Geoffrey with a cherished fantasy about leaving Mexico for Canada and creating a new life in the outlier forests of Vancouver, the consul accepts with alacrity, and does his best to remain dry for long enough to set up a glimmer of hope in his former spouse and current brother. Alas, delirium tremens is a very real and horrible master, a sender of nightmares and chimeras, a sere spirit that dries out the tongue and the soul. A nip here, a tuck there, and soon Geoffrey - as all knew inevitably would happen - absconds with hope and dreams in an effort to soar wildly and deliriously happily amidst the winds of irresponsible abandon.

Firmin is, more or less, the self-based portrait of the inveterate drinker author, and his character is painted in unflattering pastels and given an impressive varnish of truth. He garners little pity, but that isn't what Lowry wants. He is simply telling the tale of another lost soul in the twentieth century, lost and damaged and careless of damaging others. It is all done with superb writing, vivid portraits of a fantastic, earthy and magic-imbued Mexico, always under the brooding stare of the conical peak. A hallucinatory and, at times, exhilarating book, though ultimately hopeless, and worthy of the high praise it has received.(less)

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Mar 20, 2011

Abailart rated it

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Under the Volcano

I read the Picador Classics edition (1967) with an introduction by Stephen Spender. Unusually, I read the introduction first, then again after reading the novel, which I read in three sittings. I like Spender, and relate to his reading of the book.

Despite its dual reputations of being difficult and about alcoholism, it is neither. As for difficulty, it’s true that understanding Spanish would be helpful, but the saturated extratextual references to mythology,...moreUnder the Volcano

I read the Picador Classics edition (1967) with an introduction by Stephen Spender. Unusually, I read the introduction first, then again after reading the novel, which I read in three sittings. I like Spender, and relate to his reading of the book.

Despite its dual reputations of being difficult and about alcoholism, it is neither. As for difficulty, it’s true that understanding Spanish would be helpful, but the saturated extratextual references to mythology, mysticism, history and so on can be taken as fragments of a disintegrating mind in a disintegrating world: the central theme is of stability versus instability, fragments against ruins, and from this erupts the permanent psychological divisions between desire’s positivity and its demonic twin of destruction. The characters are all one character, the places all one place, the times all one time, though an impossible time – that of a moment that is an ideal locus without nostalgia for past or future.

Alcohol is central of course because the character of the novel is alcoholic, and best read, therefore by an alcoholic – which is most people, for Firmin and his alternatives are merely further advanced into descent and ascent than most which makes his expression approach the ideal moment. The refusal to accept love is not a failure but an affirmation for love is part of the dreadful entanglement of contingent dual actions of affirmation and immediate denial, and it is this tangle (the novel is thick with imagery of entanglement) which is transcended by final descent into the (literal) abyss. Obviously for it could be no other, a novel of immense contradictions, impossible antipathies, and the realisation of being as antithetical to identity.

It is easy to read when one accepts its imagistic concentration. Films, stills, photographs, paintings, advertisements, thicken every paragraph to a flicker that has the paradoxical potential to, like a hollywood movie, enspectre a counterpart to diegesis – a clean, pure, fluid, immensely joyful….. illusion.

It’s a wonderful, exquisitely awful and painful novel of redemption.

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Feb 08, 2008

Adam rated it

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Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano is a mad prophet’s dream of rising dangers, a masterpiece of symbolism (the animal imagery, Dia de los Muertos, the Volcanoes), a great intertwining of voices (radio, letters, movie posters, remembrances), an encapsulation of the era’s political thought and literature, a surreal, hypnotic journey into the night, and a breathtakingly beautiful book; a sad, half-demented augury. The last 50 or so pages are especially worth it. One the most chilling last lines I ha...more

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Jun 28, 2007

Chris rated it

· review of another edition

This seemed so promising (self-destruction! love triangles! Mexico!), but after about 150 pages I couldn't hack it. Certainly the most committed stream-of-consciousness study of alcoholism I've ever failed at reading, but in the end I just decided to not become an alcoholic and stopped reading.

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May 18, 2007

Matilda Lou rated it

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this book must be read more than once to understand it. the first time, the reader struggles through the alcohol, the hurt and mexico. the second time, the reader understands the alcohol, the hurt, and mexico. the third time, the reader (me) falls into the book, stays there and appreciates what lowry did as a writer, he let go of everything, understood that he is in no way like the writers of his time (joyce...etc.) and he just writes. His characters are completely flawed and are in no way looki...more

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Jan 15, 2009

Jimmy rated it

Shelves: fiction

Despite the fact that Under the Volcano has earned enough respect to be considered one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, it is still a dubious distinction among many critics. Some find its inherently autobiographical essence, reprehensible. Others see so much bombastic lyricism in the novel as to make whatever remains of a plot, completely unintelligible. Many see nothing more than a novel about an alcoholic, written by an alcoholic. Of course, such criticisms have not been ma...moreDespite the fact that Under the Volcano has earned enough respect to be considered one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, it is still a dubious distinction among many critics. Some find its inherently autobiographical essence, reprehensible. Others see so much bombastic lyricism in the novel as to make whatever remains of a plot, completely unintelligible. Many see nothing more than a novel about an alcoholic, written by an alcoholic. Of course, such criticisms have not been made without good reason. Yet Under the Volcano does have a lot more to offer.

I mention the history of the reception of Lowry's book because it is such an interesting case. When it was published in 1947, this sort of novel was nothing new. There are so many aspects of Under the Volcano that nod directly to the high modernist tradition that Lowry's novel occasionally reads like a zealous sort of homage to its predecessors. The most obvious example would have to be the fact that the story is set throughout the course of one day (Joyce's Ulysses). Lowry's third-person narration sporadically gives way to digressive internal monologues (Joyce and Faulkner). Time is lamented over, as well as distorted (Proust and Woolf). The sociopolitical backdrop (the Spanish Civil War) of the story is concerned with injustice and vulgarity of war (Man's Fate by Andre Malraux). Granted, many of these similarities are probably coincidental, but it does make one wonder exactly what is so unique about Under the Volcano. It's possible that Lowry's achievement resides in his ability to write such a hermetic account of an alcoholics' descent, while simultaneously looking out into the world. After all, Under the Volcano is essentially a projected expression of Lowry's own suffering. If it lacked the language and context that Lowry utilized so well, then it would have been nothing better than the average bowery tragedy.

So, it's a rather scatterbrained read. Even writing this makes my head hurt, and I can see how it's sort of a cliche that most people put it down after the first fifty pages. My lack of knowledge of the Spanish Civil War makes me sort of less than capable of saying anything too profound about this book. I'd rather leave that to William T. Vollman or William H. Gass. (less)

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Nov 24, 2010

Hamish rated it

Shelves: re-read-lit

Even better the second time through. The first time you read it you're aware the entire time that the Consul will die, but the mystery is how. The second time you read it, you know how the consul is going to die and you sit there and wonder at how you missed all that foreshadowing and wince at all of the signs of the inevitability of what will happen.

The irony of the book, though, is that the fate of the consul and Yvonne is not inevitable. Everything could have been so easily avo...moreEven better the second time through. The first time you read it you're aware the entire time that the Consul will die, but the mystery is how. The second time you read it, you know how the consul is going to die and you sit there and wonder at how you missed all that foreshadowing and wince at all of the signs of the inevitability of what will happen.

The irony of the book, though, is that the fate of the consul and Yvonne is not inevitable. Everything could have been so easily avoided if they would have simply said what they were thinking (or if the Consul were willing to stop Hamleting it up, even when facing his own death. Cowardice and inaction is another theme). Lowry is wonderful in his ability to paint their inner thoughts so vividly, and it's particularly painful to be aware of these thoughts and see that our heroes are so unwilling to express them. I would argue that this is the main theme of the novel.

Lowry is also particularly talented at creating mood and ambiance. And while he is very good at general descriptions, his principle shortcoming is his inability to describe specific things. I still have no idea what he was trying to portray at the end of chapter 11, the thing that Yvonne has to climb up. Nor was I able to make any sense of what Laruelle's house was supposed to look like. It all seems very clear in his mind, but he can't quite seem to make the image appear in the reader's mind. However, Lowry makes up for this with the life he imbues on his world. It is not simply a backdrop for the characters to walk across but a living, breathing entity. Everything inter-relates. Look at the way that the horse the Consul spooks in chapter 12 impacts Yvonne in chapter 11. Notice that when Laruelle watches a group of mourners walk down the hill at the beginning of chapter 1 and how he later passes one of them as she finally makes her way home when they both enter the town later on. It's this attention to detail that I think is the heart of great art. And whatever its flaws, this is truly a great novel that warrants multiple readings.

And it still has the greatest last sentence in all of literature (don't skip ahead to it though, you need to read the whole thing to get its full impact).(less)

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Jan 10, 2009

Ben rated it

· review of another edition

Purchase a large bottle of tequila and start walking from Ernest Hemingway's house to Vladimir Nabokov's house. As you're walking, take a drink for the sake of squandered love. Then take one for isolation. Take one drink for war, and two for peace. Take one for world-weariness. Take one for betrayal. Take a big one for fear. Take a bigger one for the allure of death. Take one for a chasm opened between lovers. Take one for connections that span oceans, continents. Take one for filthy, ...more

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Apr 18, 2008

Raegan Butcher rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: alcoholics and those wishing to be

A few years back I used to sit and drink myself quite senseless in this outdoor cantina in Cuernavaca (the inspiration for the fictonal town in Mexico here) and this novel was never far from my mind. Hallucinatory, feverish and suffused with doom, this is a heavy breakfast to tackle but worth it for the brave and interested.

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Jul 05, 2007

Michael rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: dead

let's get drunk and walk around.

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Dec 08, 2011

Jeremy added it · review of another edition

Shelves: british-literature

The premise of this is simple enough: we follow the last day in the life of an alcoholic british consul in mexico, his wife, half-brother and some of their acquaintances. Yet what an extremely dark, difficult book this is to work through. Lowry spins out a dense, tar-thick mixture of allusions and symbols which don't flow as much as they ooze and congeal through each other. On top of that, the narrative perspective shifts in a blink of an eye, one minute your in the skittering thoughts of a drun...more

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May 07, 2011

Evan rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: modern-library-top-100-list, __in-my-collection, booze, latin-america, men-behaving-badly, 2011-reads

Ah, Malcolm Lowry, you were a batshit crazy drunken nut of a novelist at the right time to be so: the mid-20th century -- a time of Jackson Pollock and atonal music and cut-up literary narrative and horrible black box skyscrapers; a time of an artistic aesthetic that, thank God, is dead -- and your obsessively overdescriptive novel in which even the non-drunk characters spout non-sequiturs showed your critically fashionable Joycean penchant for the stream of conscious and ample obscurantist refe...moreAh, Malcolm Lowry, you were a batshit crazy drunken nut of a novelist at the right time to be so: the mid-20th century -- a time of Jackson Pollock and atonal music and cut-up literary narrative and horrible black box skyscrapers; a time of an artistic aesthetic that, thank God, is dead -- and your obsessively overdescriptive novel in which even the non-drunk characters spout non-sequiturs showed your critically fashionable Joycean penchant for the stream of conscious and ample obscurantist references that send English majors into raptures that are usually followed by unfortunate attempts at symbolic analysis that make even less sense than the novel they are analyzing. This is not at all to say that Under the Volcano doesn't make sense; it actually does, very much. I found the stream of consciousness, the time shifting, the changing centers of interest, the flashbacks, the internal character monologues and the like all very easy to follow, even if I wasn't always sure what the hell they were entirely talking about. I'm not entirely convinced that Lowry did either. I was mostly very convinced that, for most of the way, I didn't much care.

Under the Volcano had its first iteration as a short story, which might be informative to read in light of the absurdly fulsome, interminable descriptions of flora and fauna that Lowry has added to pad it out to novel length. Sometimes the descriptions served a symbolic purpose -- as in the glowering, menacing, foreshadowing presence of the volcanoes dominating the setting -- but just as often I simply found them to be examples of Lowry showing off his descriptive chops to no good purpose other than to do just that. He played chicken with this reader's patience, and this reader conceded to him and skimmed through a whole lot of flora and fauna. On one end of the spectrum we have Hemingway, who described places a bit too sparely for my taste, and at the other end we have Lowry, who has writerly OCD in telling us so much about the setting that I never could grasp or visualize it. After contending with this for a number of pages I finally decided once and for all what the town and the surrounding environs looked like and settled for that in my mind and ignored the rest of Lowry's embellishments. Somewhere between Hemingway and Lowry there is a happy medium.

In Lowry's lush vegetal Mexican hell symbolic portents of tragedy are dolloped out to give the English majors plenty to write about as horses get loose, charging and frightening the innocent and disappearing into the night, dead dogs ooze life, scorpions sting themselves to death, lazy bulls drunk with happiness like Ferdinand are wrangled, made confused and goaded into rebelliousness and complacency, and a caged eagle is set free as an ineffectual gesture by the powerless Yvonne, the clingly enabling romantic interest of the alcoholic protagonist, Geoffrey Firmin. The symbolism all refers back to him and his self-fulfilling prophecy of personal doom.

The partisans of this book are probably right in calling it one of the great achievements of literature. I can't deny Lowry's herculean patience as a craftsman, his mastery of description, and his artistic integrity in creating a unique novel that is unlike any other. Despite the grotesqueries and disturbing contractions he reveals about the human condition and Mexico, his story is also imbued with compassion and wonder.

But, whatever the reason, and notwithstanding the tour de force that it may be, I found less to engage my heart in Under the Volcano than I have in other novels about western expatriates in Third World lands written by the likes of Paul Bowles and Graham Greene. I couldn't muster much sympathy for Geoffrey Firmin, the naval war hero/criminal turned diplomat, demoted over time from high to low posts in the British diplomatic corps because of his drinking, or for his hapless girlfriend, Yvonne, or for his globe-trotting leftist twit brother, Hugh. There are many flashbacks in this work that help us (to some degree) understand the characters, but the flashbacks I really wanted, to help me figure out why Yvonne and Geoffrey are so hung up on each other -- in which the nature of the couple's past relationship is clarified and fleshed out -- are virtually absent.

Having lived with an alcoholic for too long, I no longer have much patience for them or for people who tolerate their lies and manipulations and self-destructive arrogance. In romanticizing Firman to some degree (understandable, Lowry himself being alcoholic), particularly in the finale where he is seen as abandoned (rather than, say, being someone who abandoned everyone else), Lowry tries to turn Firmin into an uncompromising tragic hero of a sort, and I'm just not buying it.

I was remarking to a good friend this evening about how, as I grow older I find myself caring less about philosophy or agonizing over insoluble existentialist problems that nobody will ever be able to answer or solve anyway, but which always seem to fascinate the young (as they did me when I was discovering these weighty concepts). I think this change of priorities comes with the realization of having fewer years left, fewer years in which one will have a functional dick, for instance. Which all leads me to the following passage from Under the Volcano, which, for me, sums up my own criticism of the book, or, more precisely, why I find it more fun to live than to overthink enigmas or to read books that I do not love:

"But where does it all get you in the end?" The Consul sipped his strychnine that had yet to prove its adequacy as a chaser to the Burke's Irish (now perhaps in the garage at the Bella Vista). "The knowledge, I mean. One of the first penances I ever imposed on myself was to learn the philosophical section of War and Peace by heart. That was of course before I could dodge about in the rigging of the Cabbala like a St Jago's monkey. But then the other day I realized that the only thing I remembered about the whole book was that Napoleon's leg twitched—"
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Apr 12, 2008

Siobhan added it · review of another edition

Shelves: gave-up-in-shame

UPDATE: I GIVE UP.

The endless walk to the bus station! The endless portentous references to THE HANDS OF FATE! I CAN'T TAKE IT! GAHHHHHH111111!!!!!!1111!

It is taking me a long, long time to read this.

Not because it isn't good. Every time I pick it up I fall into this kind of weird, semi-amazed trance that makes me a.) wish I was drunk, b.) feel slightly drunk, and c.) feel like I haven't had a drink in years and could really use one RIG...more

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Nov 24, 2007

Trane rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: drunks, fantasists, modernists, beatniks, ex-pats, visionaries, wannabees

Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano is a cult piece of literature (if there can be such a thing) that I've been meaning to read for a long time. A friend's effusive praise convinced me to take the plunge, and after finishing the book I can say that the experience was one of long-drawn-out bouts of disappointment interspersed with brief, exciting, and instructive encounters with brilliance.

Part of the problem for me is that Lowry relies for a large portion of this book on the free indi...moreMalcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano is a cult piece of literature (if there can be such a thing) that I've been meaning to read for a long time. A friend's effusive praise convinced me to take the plunge, and after finishing the book I can say that the experience was one of long-drawn-out bouts of disappointment interspersed with brief, exciting, and instructive encounters with brilliance.

Part of the problem for me is that Lowry relies for a large portion of this book on the free indirect discourse of an alcoholic visionary — in other words, the reader is forced into the point of view of a delusional and confused main character who is constantly referencing Hindu mythology, Dante, the Bible, the Aztec deities, and etc., but never really makes any sense at all. It's a bit like being stuck at a bar next to a really smart guy who's been reading Carlos Castaneda and Hero of a Thousand Faces and insists on putting the two of them together as the central core of a theory of life, the universe, and everything that's centered smack in the middle of his 18th martini. I think we've all been there before, and had cause for regret.

The novel is primarily the story of Geoffrey Firmin, a former English Consul who is busy dying of alcoholism in Mexico. The central struggle of the novel is that between a transcendental idealism, on the part of Firmin (a sort of quest for Truth, with a capital T), and the deadening realities of life — including his inability to have a decent relationship with his ex-wife, his inability to write the book that will Explain It All, his own alcoholic debilitation, and the interwar rise of fascist sympathies in Mexico. Firmin's ex-wife Yvonne arrives to give him a second chance, and his half-brother Hugh, who is planning on sailing for Spain to help the Republicans fight Franco, also drops in. As you pretty much can guess from the beginning of the novel, tragedy ensues. Popular tropes include the Garden of Eden, the idea of a descent into the inferno, moments of absurdist madness, visions, and, of course, a bar that is named El Faralito (The Lighthouse).

Lowry can be a fantastic stylist when his prose doesn't get too far gone into the sodden consciousness of Firmin and there are superb jolts of perceptual clarity: "He [Firmin] was reaching the edge of the fair. Mysterious tents were shut up here, or lying collapsed, enfolded on themselves. They appeared almost human, the former kind awake, expectant; the latter with the wrinkled crumpled aspect of men asleep, but longing even in unconsciousness to stretch their limbs." That's nice, indeed. Several passages like this, where you can be given a nice perceptual jolt that really brings you inside the moment, are to be found in the sections that focus on the consciousness of Yvonne or the consciousness of Hugh. With Firmin, however, all too often we're lost in a confusion where myth, philosophy, whether it's 1924 or 1934, and whether or not he should have another drink all blend together. In fact, there are pages and pages where he agonizes over/justifies/rationalizes about the next drink. Maybe interesting if you've never known a true alcoholic, but really dreary if you have.

Okay — there are a few great sections in this book. The bull riding/fighting sequence rivals anything in Hemingway and the sequence where the bus stops and they try to help a dying peasant is unforgettable. These sections are as good as anything I've seen. But there is a lot of wading to be done to get to them. If you're a scholar of modernism, or just really like this sort of thing, then this book is definitely for you. It's an interesting book, just not for everyone. I definitely don't regret having read it, but I probably won't pick it up again.

Finally, this book has one of the most incredible final sentences of any novel I've read. It's shocking in its finitude. BUT YOU'VE GOT TO READ THE WHOLE THING TO GET THE EFFECT OF IT.

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Mar 17, 2009

Patricio rated it

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“Considera la agonía de las rosas”, frase que pertenece a los primeros capítulos de Bajo el Volcán, marca lo que será la novela hasta el final: una depresiva agonía del cónsul hasta su muerte. Ya sea por el tiro de un fusil o por los efectos del alcohol, el resultado final hubiera sido el mismo.
Es un libro donde hay que dejar fluir la lectura, en donde la trama se arma de a pedazos. A la manera de L. Durrell, cada personaje aporta su visión y su pensamiento. Posiblemente, uno denominador c...more“Considera la agonía de las rosas”, frase que pertenece a los primeros capítulos de Bajo el Volcán, marca lo que será la novela hasta el final: una depresiva agonía del cónsul hasta su muerte. Ya sea por el tiro de un fusil o por los efectos del alcohol, el resultado final hubiera sido el mismo.
Es un libro donde hay que dejar fluir la lectura, en donde la trama se arma de a pedazos. A la manera de L. Durrell, cada personaje aporta su visión y su pensamiento. Posiblemente, uno denominador común de los cuatro personajes centrales es que están impregnados de una atmósfera fatalista, quizás acorde con el momento histórico que vivían.
Con el cónsul, nuestro antihéroe, un personaje que me hizo recordar a los de Graham Greene, se logra una descripción muy realista de sus problemas, ansiedades y atracciones que ejerce el alcohol en él. No esta claro del todo si fue la bebida, lo que lo ha llevado a divorciarse con su mujer. Porque él parece amarla todavía, la ama todavía. Aunque el cónsul es consciente del daño que ejerce por sus problemas etílicos, no parece muy dispuesto a buscarle alguna solución. Hay un sentimiento de culpa en el cónsul, por sus excesos de alcohol pero también un resto de resentimiento ya que , en el fondo no le ha perdonado del todo las infidelidades de ella.
Hugh, en cambio, es el personaje para abordar los problemas sociales que aquejaban al mundo de esos días, la guerra civil española, la guerra mundial, etc. Representa al idealista. En algún momento ha tenido alguna relación con Yvonne pero al momento del reencuentro, reprime sus sentimientos hacia ella.
El primer capitulo es el de mas simbolismo. Ocurre el mismo día pero 12 meses mas tarde, el francés ( que también ha tenido algún affaire con la mujer del cónsul ) recuerda ese día, recorre los mismos lugares donde ocurren los posteriores capítulos, en el cine anuncian la misma película ( Las manos de Orlac ) y empieza y termina en una de las tantas cantinas que hay en el pueblo.
Creo que es uno de esos libros que se van decantando de a poco, no te atrapan en el momento pero que se ponen mejor al tiempo de ser leídos. Que cuando uno lo termina de leer, piensa que es bueno y listo, pero que con el pasar del tiempo, es un libro que se valora mucho mas, que uno se acordará de ciertos pasajes, de imágenes.
Por ejemplo, me pareció muy bueno el capitulo donde Yvonne, aburrida de mirar una corrida de toros, sueña con estar con el cónsul, en una cabaña en un bosque a orillas de un mar, en un archipiélago. Como el pensamiento de ella se traslada desde las tribunas hacia ese lugar ideal al que se aferra, aun sabiendo que es casi un imposible.
Y el volcán… el volcán es una presencia silenciosa pero permanente en toda la novela, aparece y desaparece en cada vuelta de la esquina, en cada paisaje, y la comparación con el alcohol es inevitable.
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Jan 15, 2009

eric rated it

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It's a little tough to rate this one. There are parts that I'd give five stars, and parts that didn't do much for me. But most of the uninspiring parts times are pretty short. Aside from the first fifty pages, which I had to really struggle through. I've started this book a couple times over the past few years and, before now, haven't made it past page 20 or so. Travel-related necessity helped push me farther this time, and I'm glad. On the whole, I really liked this book. Once you're past...moreIt's a little tough to rate this one. There are parts that I'd give five stars, and parts that didn't do much for me. But most of the uninspiring parts times are pretty short. Aside from the first fifty pages, which I had to really struggle through. I've started this book a couple times over the past few years and, before now, haven't made it past page 20 or so. Travel-related necessity helped push me farther this time, and I'm glad. On the whole, I really liked this book. Once you're past the initial 50 pages (which I really should re-read now), there are a few short parts that many people will probably find intolerably bizarre. But the vast majority is entirely comprehensible and is written is a very interesting fashion. On very rare occasions I found it tried a little too hard to be poetic, but on the whole it was great. Enough about the writing. The story takes place over a single, long day. The principal character is a decidedly drunk forty-something former diplomat in a Mexican mountain town in the early 1950s or thereabouts. Maybe I'm misremembering times. But much of the text explores the history of the three main characters, as remembered histories. It's all pretty fascinating. And at the end there are plenty of questions left unresolved, but that have subtly suggested resolutions. I'm not making myself clear, but all of this is good in my opinion. On the whole, it's a crushingly depressing read -- near the the top of my list of most depressing books ever. An unrepresentative but memorable example of the general mood (paraphrased): 'What is man but a bit of soul holding up a corpse?' Much of the depressing nature comes for the main character's inability to control his drinking despite much loving encouragement. Also, the couple's inability to communicate with one another effectively is a damn shame. All things told, this was pretty great book. Previously I would have given it five stars, but I'm trying to be a little more discerning. Maybe too discerning. (less)

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Oct 21, 2011

David rated it

· review of another edition

OY, i am so behind on these reviews/blog It is perverse. well not perverse.
but i have had plenty of book opportunities... trip to Italy, Buffalo, long waits, and well i will get to it. Especially the Coover book, as I was working on that trend of Accountants and fiction..hardly a burgeoning genre i suspect.

So why review this one? I dunno, quick one I suppose?

A good book. not fantastic, as pretty much all that I expected. i been meaning to get to it for a while. My kind ...more

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Aug 11, 2011

Chelsea Szendi rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

There are so many well phrased reviews and well considered analyses on this book already uploaded here. Since I'm more literal than literary, I took my joys and thrills from this book less from the effectiveness of Lowry's symbolism and more in how lightly he engaged such heavy themes. I have a weak spot for ridiculing tragedy, and also a kind of awed respect for committed self-destruction. And the dark slapstick of passages like this tickled me:

"...The Consul, an inconceivable ...more

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Aug 10, 2011

Ryan rated it

· review of another edition

Extremely dense and strikingly elusive, perhaps due to its allusiveness. The syntax is fractured and convoluted - like the thoughts of a drunk or (maybe?) the thoughts of a pretentious film maker (from the Malcolm Lowry Project, http://www.otago.ac.nz/english/lowry/con...):

"if we like, we can look at the rest of the book through Laruelle's eyes, as if it were his creation." – Malcolm Lowry, "Letter to Jonathan Cape".

Following up on this hint, Antony Kilg...moreExtremely dense and strikingly elusive, perhaps due to its allusiveness. The syntax is fractured and convoluted - like the thoughts of a drunk or (maybe?) the thoughts of a pretentious film maker (from the Malcolm Lowry Project, http://www.otago.ac.nz/english/lowry/con...):

"if we like, we can look at the rest of the book through Laruelle's eyes, as if it were his creation." – Malcolm Lowry, "Letter to Jonathan Cape".

Following up on this hint, Antony Kilgallin explores Laruelle's role as film-maker, emphasizing his controlling consciousness and discussing the various cinematic techniques brought to the novel: the internal allusions to other films; the close but unobtrusive parallels between Laruelle and Sergei Eisenstein, whose Que Viva Mexico! was to have been an epic representation of Mexico's history; and the particular relevance of the setting in the cinema, Ch. 1, where the luminous wheel turning backwards is, among other things, that of camera and projector as Laruelle prepares to shoot the film of his life.

I'm not sure the novel leads me to this reading, although there is a near obsessive fixation upon setting/location/direction which could be said to be cinematic. Lowry's prose is highly detailed and it is easy to become lost in a maze of detail, allusions, dependent clauses, and vaguely attributed dialogue.

Besides the first chapter (narrated by Laruelle), the narration shifts between the three primary characters (The Consul, Hugh, and Yvonne) from chapter to chapter. The voice remains consistent, which suggests a single over-arching narrator with the ability to enter, at any specific moment, a single consciousness and focus his narrative from that point of view. But the narrator can only occupy one consciousness at the moment and, therefore, his access to the other narrative minds is closed.

The initial chapter's action is situated on The Day of the Dead in 1939. The following 11 chapters explicate the conversation held between two men as they remember a friend on the one year anniversary of his death. These chapters follow the Consul, Hugh, and Yvonne through their day chronologically (with many analepses) except for the final two chapters. The temporal flop creates textual interdependence and is a lovely expression of one of the novel's central conflicts: the relationship between Yvonne and the Consul. Furthermore, the flow of the novel evokes the cyclical nature of addiction, life/death, and Lowry's primary theme: "the forces in man which cause him to be terrified of himself."

I felt, while impressive, the heavily allusive style had the tendency to bog down the plot and stretch out the action. What makes this novel so great, in my opinion, is the cultural consciousness possessed. 'Under the Volcano' is hyper-aware of the social and political climate of the era and even eerily prescient. The command of the historical events and the philosophies/reforms/revolutions preceding and following the setting is phenomenal and is what makes this novel so important.

*Goethe's Faust
*Tolstoy - War and Peace (Epilogue)
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Jun 03, 2011

Gavin rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: gifted

Malcolm Lowry on...

alcoholism- "...if our civilization were to sober up for a couple of days, it'd die of remorse on the third."

actions of the unsound mind - "The act of a madman or drunkard, or of a man laboring under violent excitement, seems less free and more inevitable to the one who knows the mental condition of the man who performed the action, and more free and less inevitable to the one who does not know it." (Tolstoy)

colonization -...more

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May 28, 2011

Vasha7 rated it

· review of another edition

I was initially quite disconcerted by the novel's style. Narration freely mixed with stream-of-consciousness, leaps in time, shifting points of view -- all this I quickly adjusted to, but what took me longer was the highly literary artifice of the language, the erudite vocabulary and diction, the omnipresent allusions and symbolism.

This comes to the fore most strongly when Geoffrey Firmin is the center of the narration. Each point-of-view character has a distinct style; it’s no wonder ...more

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Feb 22, 2011

Linda rated it

· review of another edition

Well, Christian, I keep forgetting to follow your advice and lost another great review!

I debated on the rating for this one and decided 5 was better.

I had avoided this book for years because I had an idea it was a James Joycish stream-of-consciousness type. It's definately not. Far from it. (I read some of the other reviews and couldn't believe they read the same book I did. I think one person got confused about what stream-of-consciousness is and another doesn't rea...more

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Feb 02, 2011

Andrea Blythe rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Living in Quauhnahuac, Mexico as a drunkard, Geoffry Fermin, former British consul, is surprised by the sudden arrival of his estranged wife, Yvonne, on the Day of the Dead. She's come back to him in the hope of pulling him back to her, of freeing him from that which has him trapped in a daze of liquor, of whisking him off, taking him away from Mexico to some other place, any other place, where they might once again be together and happy. But things are complicated with the inclusion of Hugh, th...more

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Dec 17, 2010

Julie at All Ears rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die, audiobooks, classics

I know I once said that I could listen to John Lee read the phone book. Although I'm not saying that listening to his narration of Under the Volcano is the same as listening to a recitation of a directory listing, I think I understood and enjoyed this book about the same amount. The story is the final day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin, the former British consul to Mexico. The day is the holiday, the Day of the Dead, and Geoffrey's ex-wife, Yvonne, has returned to Mexico to try to renew their...more

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Sep 16, 2010

Veronica rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to Veronica by: Modern Library's 100 Best Novels

I was hoping to enjoy Under the Volcano, but unfortunately I did not. My initial trepidation was fueled by knowledge that the author, Malcolm Lowry has been compared to his idol, James Joyce. This is an opinion we most certainly do not share.

It is obvious that Lowry was a talented writer, however, he decided to focus on copying a style rather than just on good writing and the result is a great story with interesting characters that the reader can barely get through. It is really a...more

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May 30, 2009

Chad rated it

· review of another edition

This was not an easy book to read. The main character is either quite drunk or suffering from delerium tremens throughout the entire novel, and Lowry goes to great pains to illustrate his fractured mind. Conversation is interspersed with internal dialogue such that it becomes quite difficult to tell who is speaking a line, if it is being spoken at all. At the same time, descriptions of the present flow seamlessly into recollections of the past and back again without so much as a para...more

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May 13, 2009

Mick rated it

· review of another edition

UNDER THE VOLCANO is one of the darkest, moribund, disturbing books I have ever read. It also is one of the most brilliantly written; Malcolm Lowry's masterful command of the written word allows him to tell this haunting, somewhat autobiographical story about one man's voluntary descent into his own demise. As aptly mentioned in the Introduction of this Perennial Classics edition, Lowry's masterpiece possesses a "self-consuming quality"; the author is presenting himself, as well as his...moreUNDER THE VOLCANO is one of the darkest, moribund, disturbing books I have ever read. It also is one of the most brilliantly written; Malcolm Lowry's masterful command of the written word allows him to tell this haunting, somewhat autobiographical story about one man's voluntary descent into his own demise. As aptly mentioned in the Introduction of this Perennial Classics edition, Lowry's masterpiece possesses a "self-consuming quality"; the author is presenting himself, as well as his story, to the reader. And what a story.

Taking place in just one day, the lugubrious Day of the Dead in Quauhnahuac, Mexico, UNDER THE VOLCANO is a bleak story about Geoffery Firmin, a former diplomat, known as the Consul throughout the region. The Consul has forfeited meaning in his life, opting instead for dipsomania; his reeling alcoholism only exacerbates his loneliness. During this day he is reunited with Yvonne, his estranged wife who has returned from abroad in an effort to save their relationship--and Geoffery. To further complicate matters, Hugh, the Consul's half-brother, has been staying with his older brother; Hugh and Yvonne had briefly had an affair. Hugh is the ultimate youthful ideologue (in fact, he represents Lowry in his enthusiastic youth); he is yearning to return to Spain, to take part in its violent civil war.

The story follows the three characters--their interactions, their backstories--until its dark, disturbingly maniacal ending. But where this novel makes its mark, and makes it well, is when the Consul becomes prey to one of his delusional binges. The writing takes on a chaotic disjointedness that is often difficult to read, yet at the same time conveys a brilliance--the Consul's brilliance, wrapped 'round by nonsensical delusion. Often these passages are humorous; yet the humor is always intertwined with symbolic tragedy. Words and phrases. . ."pariah dog". . ."pelado". . ."companero". . .take on very special meanings.

UNDER THE VOLCANO has been acclaimed as one of the most important novels of the Twentieth Century, and for good reason. It is fatalistic, it is disturbing, it is brilliant--it is self-fulfilling. That Malcolm Lowry's own turbulent life ended prematurely contributes all the more to the utter futility and tragedy of his literary masterpiece.
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Apr 10, 2009

Djewesbury rated it

· review of another edition

A strange and unsettling book. The British Consul in the Mexican city of Quauhnahuac, Geoffrey Firmin, is drinking himself towards a nasty death on the Day of the Dead, November 2nd, 1938, accompanied by his ex-wife, returned that morning after a year away, and his half-brother, who's about to depart to fight the Fascists in Spain. The ending of the book is never really in question, except for the precise details, so what Lowry concentrates on is the detail of the unravelling of individual lives...moreA strange and unsettling book. The British Consul in the Mexican city of Quauhnahuac, Geoffrey Firmin, is drinking himself towards a nasty death on the Day of the Dead, November 2nd, 1938, accompanied by his ex-wife, returned that morning after a year away, and his half-brother, who's about to depart to fight the Fascists in Spain. The ending of the book is never really in question, except for the precise details, so what Lowry concentrates on is the detail of the unravelling of individual lives, trying to understand what it is that binds us to one another and ultimately drives us apart. It's a very dark book, with a particularly bleak portrayal of human emotion and motivation, and no small personal understanding from Lowry of the mind of the alcoholic, but there's also some kind of oblique redemption offered, in that both the Consul and his brother Hugh are put forward by Lowry as elements of the same character; so perhaps in the death of one we are permitted to see the liberation or progression of the other.

Lowry took a decade to write this book, which is thick with textual reference and allusion (he suggested in correspondence that the events of the book may usefully be understood as the misremembered, florid imaginings - a kind of unreliable, overly detailed cinematic flashback - of the Consul's former friend and cuckold, Jacques Laruelle, a film director who, in the opening chapter, thinks back on the Consul's violent demise from exactly a year on). Despite warnings that it was a dense read and slow to start, however, I found I read it quickly - perhaps it's best to assimilate the main action of the novel first and then return to its baroque intricacies on a second read (ideally returning to the first page immediately after the last). There's much pre-figuring and thematising which isn't apparent to the reader just embarking on the book, but which becomes obviously significant upon returning to it. Lowry drew heavily on Melville, Goethe's and Marlowe's versions of Faust / Faustus, Shelley, Donne, Conrad Aiken and Dante, so whilst the plot may seem reminiscent of Graham Greene the style certainly isn't. In particular the jarring way in which Lowry, in those chapters narrated from the Consul's point of view, narrates his disorientation after a momentary blackout, trying to remember where he is, and what he's doing, is wonderfully effective.

I'd been meaning to read this book for some time. It's an important part of the pattern of modernist fiction of the mid-twentieth century, a fiercely experimental novel which deserves to be better known and more widely read. (less)

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Oct 29, 2010

Gayle rated it

· review of another edition

Sitting at the table with Margaret Atwood and her husband Graeme Gibson - as one does, Graeme remarked that this book was one of the most memorable he had read and an marvellous insight into alcoholism He was much more erudite than that but I forget.... So I got it from the Library and oh dear - its appears I'm a complete philistine as I didn't think it was good at all - and it nearly drove me to drink! Boring, flowery without any forgiveness for being so and I could appreciate the attempt to...more

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Aug 30, 2009

Will rated it

Of course I can't add much to the heaps and heaps of praise this novel has been getting for its 60+ years of existence; all I can do is confirm for myself that it stands up to its reputation. It is great in all aspects: in character, in plot, in atmosphere, in political and emotional significance. I am sure it will be lodged in my memory like few other books.

And who says no one ever learned anything by reading fiction? I learned a great deal from this book -- a great deal about polit...more

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About Malcolm Lowry

Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel, Under the Volcano.

Lowry published little during his lifetime, in comparison with the extensive collection of unfinished manuscripts he left. Of his two novels, Under the Volcano (1947) is now widely accepted as his masterpiece and one of the great works of the 20th century (number 11 on the Modern Library'...moreMalcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel, Under the Volcano.

Lowry published little during his lifetime, in comparison with the extensive collection of unfinished manuscripts he left. Of his two novels, Under the Volcano (1947) is now widely accepted as his masterpiece and one of the great works of the 20th century (number 11 on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels of the 20th century).[2] It exemplifies Lowry's method as a writer, which involved drawing heavily upon autobiographical material and imbuing it with complex and allusive layers of symbolism. Under the Volcano depicts a series of complex and unwillingly destructive relationships and is set against a rich evocation of Mexico.

Ultramarine (1933), written while Lowry was still an undergraduate, follows a young man's first sea voyage and his determination to gain the crew's acceptance.

A collection of short stories, Hear Us, O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place (1961) was published after Lowry's death. The scholar and poet Earle Birney edited Selected Poems of Malcolm Lowry (1962). He also collaborated with Lowry's widow in editing the novella Lunar Caustic (1968) for re-publication. It is a conflation of several earlier pieces concerned with Bellevue Hospital, which Lowry was in the process of rewriting as a complete novel. With Douglas Day, Lowry's first biographer, Lowry's widow also completed and edited the novels Dark as the Grave Wherein my Friend Is Laid (1968) and October Ferry to Gabriola (1970) from Lowry's manuscripts.

The Selected Letters of Malcolm Lowry, edited by his widow and Harvey Breit, was released in 1965, followed in 1995-6 by the two volume Sursam Corda! The Collected Letters of Malcolm Lowry, edited by Sherrill E. Grace. Scholarly editions of Lowry's final work in progress, La Mordida, and his screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night have also been published.

Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry (1976) is an Oscar-nominated National Film Board of Canada documentary produced by Donald Brittain and Robert A. Duncan and directed by Brittain and John Kramer.[1] It opens with the inquest into Lowry's "death by misadventure," and then moves back in time to trace the writer's life. Selections from Lowry's novel are read by Richard Burton amid images shot in Mexico, the United States, Canada and England.(less)

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Books by Malcolm Lowry

Dark As The Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid (Picador Classics)

Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place

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“No se puede vivir sin amar” — 7 people liked it

“How, unless you drink as I do, could you hope to understand the beauty of an old Indian woman playing dominoes with a chicken?” — 6 people liked it

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