Malcolm Lowry's Volcano: Myth, Symbol, Meaning

by David Markson, Sven Birkerts (Foreword by)

In Malcolm Lowry’s Volcano, originally published in 1978, David Markson extended the pioneering work of his 1951 Columbia University master’s thesis—the first substantial study of Under the Volcano. In the years between thesis and book, Markson became Lowry’s close friend (see the invaluable reminiscence at the end of the book) and an accomplished novelist in his own right. His critical reputation has only grown in the past two decades.

Markson’s holds Under the Volcano to be the greatest English language novel after Ulysses—and very like it in ambition and method. While acknowledging that the novel’s primary pleasure is its literal, dramatic story, he argues here that Lowry’s book is a Joycean endeavor, both in its reliance on the mythic and in its allusive texture. Far from being incidental to the story—bits and pieces of learning merely stuffed into the text, as Lowry’s one-time mentor Conrad Aiken thought them—the dense web of reference is an intrinsic part of Lowry’s plan, and demonstrates his mastery.

Working through the novel chapter by chapter, Markson conducts “an inductive investigation,” of the mythic dimension of Lowry’s great tragedy: “The guilt of the protagonist is that of Adam after the expulsion, his agony that of Christ at Golgotha, his frailty Don Quixote’s,” Markson writes. Lowry’s hero becomes, for example—through analogy, allusion, and metaphor—Faust, Dante, Prometheus, Oedipus, Judas, Hamlet, Prospero and Macbeth, as well as Scrooge and Peter Rabbit.

Malcolm Lowry’sVolcano is more than just the first and most trenchant analysis of this great novel. It reveals the mind of a gifted contemporary novelist confronting the work of one of his own early masters. For, if Under the Volcano is a modern masterpiece, it has become increasingly clear that Markson is a master as well. Ten years after the appearance of this, his only non-fiction work, he published Wittgenstein’s Mistress, a novel that David Foster Wallace has called “pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country.”

Praise for Malcolm Lowry's Volcano

“A tour-de-force of literary detection.”

—Sven Birkerts

“An important addition to the Lowry canon.”

—Chicago Tribune Book World

“A major achievement in scholarly sleuthing, the sine qua non for apprehending Lowry’s great work.”
—Fort-Worth Star Telegram

238 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

David Markson was an American novelist, born David Merrill Markson in Albany, New York. He is the author of several postmodern novels, including This is Not a Novel, Springer's Progress, and Wittgenstein's Mistress. His most recent work, The Last Novel, was published in 2007 and received a positive review in the New York Times, which called it "a real tour de force."

Markson's work is characterized by an unconventional approach to narration and plot. While his early works may draw on the modernist tradition of William Faulkner and Malcolm Lowry, Markson says his later novels are "literally crammed with literary and artistic anecdotes" and "nonlinear, discontinuous, collage-like, an assemblage."

Dalkey Archive Press has published several of his novels. In December 2006, publishers Shoemaker & Hoard republished two of Markson's early crime novels Epitaph for a Tramp and Epitaph for a Dead Beat in one volume.

In addition to his novels, he has published a book of poetry and a critical study of Malcolm Lowry.

The movie Dirty Dingus Magee, starring Frank Sinatra, is based on Markson's first novel, The Ballad of Dingus Magee, an anti-Western. He wrote three crime novels early in his career.

Educated at Union College and Columbia University, Markson began his writing career as a journalist and book editor, periodically taking up work as a college professor at Columbia University, Long Island University, and The New School.

Markson died in his New York City, West Village apartment.

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exhaustive, obsessive; authoritative and passionate - an inspiring extended thesis on symbolism and literature from an avid Lowry fan and an intelligent, gifted and stylish writer in his own right. Markson's love of Under The Volcano is matched by his articulate and rigorous writing and insight -

'Markson holds Under the Volcano to be the greatest English language novel after Ulysses'...

[Juan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a somewhat dry, exhaustive elucidation of the mythic and symbolic structure of Under the Volcano. The fact that such a staggering amount of references and allusions are uncovered (Vedic literature, the Kabbalah, Dante, Goethe, Marlowe, Marcus Aurelius, Virgil, Lucretius, Aztec/Mayan codices, Lewis Carroll, the Bible, etc., etc.) actually hinders rather than helps interpretation. Markson has been thorough in his investigation, but by apparently going too far in his sometimes rather casual associations, and by attributing equal importance to anything he finds, he also brings the whole enterprise into question. One is left wondering if the Under the Volcano's strangeness, attributable at first to Firmin's dipsomania, is not really due to Lowry's obsession with literary allusion and the distortions it brings to dialogue and plot; as well as whether many of these should not just be ignored in favor of a couple symbolic vectors that really seem to have bearing on the actual meaning of the work itself.

One is grateful for the work this book must have taken to write, but i found it really hard to finish. The Reminiscence at the end of the Lowry's one week stay with Markson in the 50s has the charm and pathos of personal recollection, but also a vague taste of lamented voyeurism, of things seen that unfortunately cannot be unseen.

[Dionysius the Areopagite]

Packed with masturbatory, encyclopedic knowledge. The best part of the book was after having forgotten it existed for five years, picking up an edition untouched since 1978. The reader, admirer, fanatic of a text such as Under the Volcano is going to find his mythology, symbolism, meaning, and doesn't necessarily need a guide. Still, a great collegiate prose-bud piece for fans of Lowry and, to an extent, Markson. The closing pages, entailing Lowry's post-Volcano life, are brief enough. In a biography such as Pursued by Furies, one with any sense of sympathy for our beloved, posthumous = terminal alcoholic one-hit wonder, w/ abnormally small penis to boot, in that case will get to wondering just what is the price of critical literature? What is it? A mediocre book can move mountains if the proper tragedy's involved. Lowry approved of this book and soon after befriended Markson. Markson was far from the books our ghosted underground shall remember him by, and Lowry was beyond sanity and reason. Where does one go after the Volcano? When one has poured his soul simultaneously through gallons of gin at a time, liters of ink distributed through the pen, the typewriter, the telegrams. Markson knew Thomas and Lowry, both who died several decades, and prematurely, [and] suspiciously - before him. If Markson had went along with these legends, would he too have been anthologized? And is it worth it? That is up for you to decide. Sustained work, studies, little-known books and extended health - or, swing like a grand piano through sky-light into life, pour out the Inferno of one's unrelenting, lyrical soul, perishing too soon, and go down immortal? The choice is yours.

[Pete Simons · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent companion piece to the novel.

[Moira]

AUGH WHY DON'T I HAVE THIS


ETA 6/22 NOW I DO MINE MINE MINE. ahem.

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