Brain Pain discussion
This topic is about
Under the Volcano
Under the Volcano - Spine 2014
>
Discussion - Week Four - Under the Volcano - Chapter 10 - 12
date
newest »
newest »
What's the narrative function of all these tourist places'descriptions that are interspersed in dialogues between Hugh & Yvonne with the Consul providing interior commentary from his "stoney" retreat. Some of them do provide humour:"Moctezuma on the bottle.”
"That’s all he is now—"
Speaking of humour, it's surprising that in a tale as bleak as this,there are moments of dry/black humour,mostly provided by the Consul. He really was a jolly good fellow. Mescal is dangerous indeed-after drinking it,people speak their mind!
The Consul's discussion of Tolstoy's War and Peace shows that he remembers far more than Napolean's twitching knee! And how cleverly he ties in the idea of free will to his own freedom of action:"I am referring, in case your mind has wandered to the subject of your own conversation, to the events of the afternoon—the causes, whether vicious or virtuous or what not, we ascribe, according to Tolstoy, a greater element of free will to it. According to Tolstoy then, we should have had less reluctance in interfering than we did.(...) “I was talking about interference in general, I think. Why should we have done anything to save his life? Hadn’t he a right to die, if he wanted to? ... Cervantes— mescal—no, parras, por favor . . . Why should anybody interfere with anybody? "
And again,when he says this:"Can’t you see there’s a sort of determinism about the fate of nations? They all seem to get what they deserve in the long run."–can't it be said by association that the Consul also got what he deserved?
The Consul's fate has an inevitability to it- the kangaroo court of the final chapter where his humiliation is stretched out- one knows that the result would've been the same even if Hugh's cable & card were not found on his person ( recall: his brother's jacket,his brother's gladstone bag...).
The Consul had a death wish throughout yet perhaps he was also hoping to live now that he had found Yvonne's letters ( which in a beautiful way answered his letter in chapter one or vice versa) or perhaps that "mute appeal" to the Chief of the Gardens was more towards clearing his name of the false allegations than anything else?!
The dude got his mescal ( I lost count of the number of drinks), he got sex ( what an irony! Yet there is humour too in his fear of the "stupid unprophylactic rejection"), he got the letters,and he got his death wish, yet he felt it was "a dingy way to die."
Throughout the book,the Consul's preoccupation had been with the volcanoes & the ravine whereas Yvonne's had been the stars ( she was a film star,after all), & after death,her spirit seems to be soaring high whereas the Consul's falls down into the lava of the volcano & then he literally gets thrown into the barranca like trash.
So did one get paradise and another hell**? Their lives seem to have been purgatory on earth.
What's with Dante's "A bell spoke out: Dolente ... dolore"? I thought I could avoid his Divine Comedy for another twenty years,looks like there's no escaping him- Western literature is full of him!
* At age five,Lowry was taken to a syphilis museum ( I mean srsly what kind of family takes their children to such places!?), & he developed a life-long horror of venereal diseases.( Recall his earlier justification of his erectile dysfunction as proof of his fidelity & the fact that he had no disease).
** M.Laruelle's divination in chapter 1, came to these lines in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus:
"Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough,
That sometime grew within this learned man,
Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall—"
The Consul,oh the Consul!Cliched though it may be; love him or hate him but you can't ignore him.
As long as he is on the pages,you can't turn your eyes away from him.
He has the sanity of the madman,the wisdom of the holy fool- no wonder we think of him in terms of those great Shakespearean tragic characters- King Lear and Hamlet.
But has Lowry manipulated our sympathies? We see Geoffrey's manipulations,his lies,his cruelty ( the plain speaking at the end of chapter ten left me shaking!),& yet we continue rooting for him- we want a happy ending for him & Yvonne despite all evidence to the contrary. It is cause we know he was great once & just as Lear becomes magnificant in his madness; the Consul achieves great tragic heights in his downfall.
We know that the writer has invested the Consul with his own personality- even Hugh & Laruelle are Lowry's fragmented selves.
Lowry has presented the Consul as a Christ figure- is that a writer's narcissism or is there a deeper truth to that?
Ultimately,Under the Volcano seems to be about the tragedy of human isolation,of lack of communion- symbolised by missing letters, mutual distrust, spiritual apathy– the unexpected arrival of Yvonne ( which seems like an answer to Geoffrey's prayers to the Virgin Soledad but we know that Yvonne must've boarded the ship to Mexico long before that.), yet he feels:
"Nothing is altered and in spite of God’s mercy I am still alone. Though my suffering seems senseless I am still in agony.
There is no explanation of my life."
The explanation lies in his ambivalence:the Consul is a moral actor but he refuses to act- how to reconcile this dichotomy ?
By the end,we may or may not be sure about the Consul's redemption but there is absolutely no doubt that Lowry's whole life was redeemed by this one book.
Well, I finished reading Under the Volcano, which now makes me in some sense (I hope) an honest member of this august reading group.(I read most of it on a round-trip bus ride between Woods Hole MA and New York City. Which seems appropriate.)
I'll give it three stars. I liked it.
Here are some observations, unsorted & unfiltered & un-thought-through.
Someone, I forget who, said about Philip Seymour Hoffman, "He didn't die because he was a tortured artist. He died because he was an addict and it was a day of the week ending in 'y'". I feel the same way about the Consul. We can do all the analysis we want of the Consul's motivation for drinking, but in the end his motivation was exactly the same as any other person's with advanced alcoholism: he drank because he couldn't not drink. It's worth noting, I think, that before Bill W & Dr. Bob stumbled upon the "12-step" methodology of AA, few people ever escaped the tailspin. Once you got as far along as Geoffrey, you were pretty much gone.
A friend of mine finished drinking himself to death last October, an intelligent man almost as well-read & witty as the Consul. He had gotten 3 sober months a few years ago while his sister, who abused him, was in jail for assault & battery. He started drinking again the day she was released, saying to some of his friends that he didn't have enough courage to fight the disease. He was more afraid of going without a drink than he was of dying. So I think Lowry has done a great job of showing what goes on in the mind of someone in the grip of this affliction, and it's really harrowing. It's very well done -- the progressively disorganized thinking, the internal arguments trying to fight off the urge to take the next drink, the blackouts and temporal confusion, the occasional moments of lucidity, the impulsive "irrational" actions -- like getting into a mechanical carnival ride designed to scare you out of your wits and make you puke as a way to avoid being pestered by street urchins. It's entertaining reading, by some definition of "entertaining".
I guess I'm saying that there may have been reasons why Firmin turned to alcohol as a young man, but none of those reasons matter by the time Under the Volcano takes place. Analyzing his motives is futile. By the Day of the Dead in 1938, he has lost his capacity for self-directed action.
The things I liked about the book are similar to what other Brain Painers liked about it. First, I like the Consul, however much he exasperates me. I like the depiction of ex-patriots in exile, and how well the feeling of alienation, of belonging but not belonging, is conveyed. I like how that same feeling is somehow emblematic of the whole of Mexican history, with the story of the doomed Emperor Maximilian at the very center of the book, with his castle literally in the center of town. I loved the conversations between the Consul & Dr. Vigil.
Here's some of the things I didn't like. At the top of the list is all the coincidences. Childhood friend M. Laurelle showing up next door. The post card arriving just at the precisely right/wrong time, etc. And worst of all, the horse that runs by magic to its fated encounter with Yvonne. Cringe.
I know that things like this happen in real life. I have myself experienced coincidences as improbable and as consequential as these. But not all in one day! If you're going to get your readers to buy into this kinds of chance, or fated, occurrences, you need to do a better job selling them than Lowry does. I just didn't buy them, which made it hard for me to go along completely with the story.
But the deal-breaker for me, the thing that bumped this book from 4 stars to 3 was the Yvonne chapter -- don't remember if it's 10 or 11. Her whole life history is melodrama, and it's given to us as melodrama. Reading that chapter I felt like I was watching an extended flashback from a really awful 1930's movie about a troubled movie star. Yes, I know, that may have been Lowry's intention, but the key word is "awful". Yvonne is an interesting character. The reader does of course want to get to understand her, how she came to be who she is, why she's so in love with the Consul, why she came back to him despite his year of silence. Lowry tries to give us answers to those questions. He fails. It's bad writing.
I very much liked the afterward by Vollman (which isn't in everyone's copy, I know), in which he gives very useful information about the political situation in Mexico in 1938. More interestingly, he tells us about the many associations with the word "Consul" in 1938 Mexico. We all know that diplomats are eyes and ears of their home governments, but Vollman points out that Mexico itself used its network of consuls (mostly in the US) not only to gather intelligence on US activities, but as a virtual secret police operation. There's a disconnect between what "Consul" means to Firmin and what it means to the average Mexican.
Lowry could have given Geoffrey Firmin any occupation he chose ( movie maker? walnut grower? doctor?). He choses to make him a cut-off diplomatic emissary of a declining empire (an orphan from India, no less!). Why? I don't know, but I think it's an interesting question. The Vollman essay is illuminating with respect to this whole line of inquiry.
Anyway I hope this isn't too much of a ramble. I'm glad I finally read "Volcano" and I'm very much enjoying reading your comments.
Mod
(I read most of it on a round-trip bus ride between Woods Hole ..."
Thanks for sharing your views John. I haven't finished the book, but to respond to your question about Firmin's occupation as diplomat; I'd say that Lowry chose to make Firmin as unstable as possible to reinforce his escape into alcohol. Firmin is an orphan, first when his mother died, then his stepmother died, then his father went missing (I think that's the correct sequence). Firmin is a perpetual outsider - a foreigner living in India as a child, a "foreigner" in England having grown up in colonial India, a misfit in the Taskerson family where he's not able to keep up with their drunken, 30-mile pub crawls, and so on. Later, as a Consul, he is again a foreigner in Mexico. As a perpetual outsider/misfit, it makes it easier to accept his turning to alcohol for solace even long after it's clear he should give it up. If he were a doctor or walnut grower, he would have potentially had more to live for, and so his total alcoholism might have been harder to accept for the reader. I'm not saying that doctors and farmers aren't alcoholic, but only that Lowry's choices help to reinforce the character traits that might lead a man into the bottle.
And yes, I also thought the coincidences and multiple deus ex machinas were a bit too much...
John wrote:Here are some observations, unsorted & unfiltered & un-thought-through. Wow! If your "unsorted & unfiltered & un-thought-through" observations could be this good,I wonder what the opposite would be like!
Pls don't mind but your three stars seem kinda harsh to me cause I focussed on the great stuff & the deficiencies,if any,were not that visible to me but to each their own.
The way I can rationalise the "coincidences" is that the fatalism of the Mexican character seems to envelope these characters too & there's a psychological truth to it– we often come to harm by the things we most fear,these fears that perhaps reside in the unconscious mind & come to the fore via dreams, prognostications,etc have been shown in the dreams & inherent fears of the various characters- Yvonne,for example,was always terrified of being trampled down by horses,a residual feeling from a movie shoot & here in the nightmarish world of the Parian forest, this fear is realised.(Could there be a Freudian analysis of this place? Lowry has given so much space in chapter 11 to its detailing).
Also there's something going on with the Kabbalistic number 7 here.
In a way,there is a sense of circularity here,a cosmic wheel that is turning– so the horse (& its rider) that was seen from her happy morning ride into the woods,in the fair,on the road to Tomalin near its murdered owner,finally turns up in Parian– the sense of the inevitable tying all of them together. At least,that's my reading of it.
And M.Laruelle wasn't just first seen on that day! He had been the Consul's drinking partner during the long period of Yvonne's absence so that rules out the coincidence of it all happening in one day.
As for the "awful" Yvonne chapter– she was no match for the intellectual Consul- they don't meet on that level. Remember,when the Consul starts reading her letters in the Farolito,his first cynical response is- has she been reading the love letters of Abelard & Heloise!
She was a B grade movie star & her reminiscences are such- for all we know,Lowry may have been rehashing his first wife Jan Gabrial's life here! A lot of personal stuff is getting worked out here in this book. He did quote from her personal letters to him.
Like the Hugh chapter,Yvonne's too is lightweight when compared to the overwhelming Consul-centered ones but that perhaps was intentional.
Anyway,I've enjoyed your post.
Mod
Et tu Mala!? This is a comment I would expect in a YA group from two teens arguing over which vampire has better pecs, Damian or Christien...
I haven't finished the book, but unless things change drastically in the closing chapters, it's a 3 star book for me too. I liked it, but it is inconsistent, burns hot and cold, and has the kind of miraculous coincidences I'd expect from a B grade writer. It's a good book, but far from a great book.
I hate you! You gave three stars to The Royal Family & now this!You guys must be stone-hearted- I know it now.
Anyway,I got Herr Gass & Vollmann on my side...take that!
Mod
You guys must be stone-hearted- I know it now.
Anyway,I got Herr Gass & Vollmann on my side...take that!"
ROFL! Infinity....
In general, the site would be better with no star ratings and just reviews. I won't speak for John, but in my own reading life, UTV goes on the shelf of "books I like". The story is interesting, there are magnificent passages, but on balance, it's not at the peak of books I've read. Lowry is a clumsy writer who shows his cards like a drunk playing poker - every time he reaches for another glass, he tilts his hand and we see his cards. For me, that diminishes the experience enough to keep him off the shelf where I store the better modernists like Joyce and Proust and Woolf and Faulkner.
As for Herren Gass und Vollmann and all their double consonants, they are their own men with their own opinions, and whose own work doesn't make it to the peak of literature either, no matter how hard they try. Interesting work and opinions, but their talents are forced rather than natural, and it shows in their work. Not everyone can be the king/queen of the hill, nor do they need to be. I've enjoyed endless numbers of 3 and 4 star books and count them among my favorites.
PS. Damian's pecs are hella hotter!!
Jim wrote:Damian's pecs are hella hotter!!I'm absolutely clueless abt this Damian ( & also that Christien guy & vampires in general), but you know abt them!
I think you are more of a teenager at heart :-)
At least I made you laugh- be grateful for small mercies!
And somebody pls show that Gass & Vollmann related paragraph to NR. Pronto!
Mod
I'm absolutely clueless abt this Damian ( & also that Christien guy & vampires in general), but you know abt them!
I think you are more of a teenager at ..."
Way-Off topic, but I had this review in mind re: teen vampire books (view spoiler)
Back to Lowry - that the book is a major work of modernist literature is clear to me. My primary critique is with some of the structural problems with coincidence and deus ex machina events. The passages inside Geoffrey's drunken skull are awesome and I enjoyed Hugh and Yvonne's morning horseback ride as well. Which aspects of the book were most meaningful/enjoyable for you?
The most "enjoyable" moment of the book for me came during the horseback ride, page 121 in my copy, when Yvonne asks Hugh point-blank if he thinks there's any hope for Geoffrey.For the entire book until then, it seems to me, nobody, I mean nobody, comes out and says directly what's on their mind. It's all feints and hints and evasions (and in the case of the Consul, compulsive word-play and irony). And there was so much dancing around "things that must not be spoken" between Hugh & Yvonne. So when they finally had an actual, you know, non-dysfunctional conversation it was like a giant itch being scratched.
(Yes, I'm joking, I enjoyed other things more, the more virtuoso passages, etc. But it really was a relief when they finally talked about the proverbial elephant in the room.)
Mala, I think Yvonne is interesting enough; I don't think she's a dummy. I just don't think her story is told nearly as well as is Hugh's or, of course the Consul's. (A few years ago my wife gave me a copy of Heloise & Abelard for Christmas. That was an amazing story. And indeed, that woman could write a letter!)
I like the star rating system here, for two reasons. One is that there's less grade inflation than there is at, say, Amazon, so you can get a reasonably accurate sense of what people thought of the book. And secondly, its a great way for you to find other readers with whom you're likely to enjoy a conversation about any given book.
Jim wrote:Back to Lowry - that the book is a major work of modernist literature is clear to me. My primary critique is with some of the structural problems with coincidence and deus ex machina events. The passages inside Geoffrey's drunken skull are awesome and I enjoyed Hugh and Yvonne's morning horseback ride as well. Which aspects of the book were most meaningful/enjoyable for you?To me the biggest achievement of this book is that it made me care for a hopeless character- Lowry had taken a big risk here; making a drunkard the pivot of his tale-all his bad traits are shown,there is absolutely nothing cuddly about him. It is a nightmarish recreation of what it's to live from one drink to the next,what are the emotional costs for the people involved- it doesn't flinch from showing any of that & yet he enables us to see the humanity of this lost soul- from occasional snatches of brilliance,his wistfulness,a longing for what might've been.
If a book is able to connect with you on emotional level,I'd say that it has succeeded.It was a very delicate balance.Just imagine the opposite:suppose Lowry took this character to such grandiose tragedy as to make him ridiculous & make us snicker? It didn't happen. Not even once.
Of course, intellectual nitpicking comes later.
For that matter,people also find faults with that other book about addiction- IJ,and Wallace had taken 1000pages to tell his story,Lowry makes do with 377.True,he has less characters to deal with & that single-minded focus was needed for this increasingly claustrophobic tale of one day.
Also the marriage that went wrong- somehow,I didn't really get the impression that Yvonne was the bed-hopping sort & it feels sad when things turn sour between two well-meaning people.
So basically I responded to the emotional content.
Of course,there was politics too,in the background as a menacing presence.
I haven't said anything about the prose & that's cause I'm not too fond of ornate prose,to me the important thing is how well a writer tells their story & Lowry has told his story well.
In the fatalistic world of Mexico ( and India too),where things are mostly seen as fated,deux ex machina perhaps doesn't seem as strange as it would in a highly rational world. But where is rationality in the Consul's mescal hazy world?
The most enjoyable moment? Hmmm,the Consul's crazy ride in that infernal machine where it goes topsy-turvy & all the things keep falling from his pockets. It was such a crazy moment & so typical of him that it felt amazing.
There's a lot happening here in the symbolism of one getting divested of one's worldly possessions- in the Eastern tradition it would be interpreted as one getting ready for journey to the next world.
But what's touching here is his earlier mistrust of the urchins & how they restore all his things to him one by one. It touched upon the theme of isolation & distrust & how things could be different if one only reached out- Lowry plays on it with loaded irony in the last chapter.
Final comment on the modernism/coincidence connection. In books like Ulysses, we accept the that story of Leopold Bloom is a retelling of the story of Odysseus, and since it's thus officially in the land of myth we accept improbable things because that's what myth is about.
But Under the Volcano doesn't really establish that it's a mythic story; it's supposed to work as a literal tale, I think. Hence my objection to the reliance on coincidence, etc.
There's one series of books were the tension -- "is this supposed to be literally true, or is this supposed to be mythic?" -- is extremely subtle: Anthony Powell's 12-novel series "A Dance to the Music of Time." Over the course of the book the same people keep bumping into each other in unlikely but not altogether implausible ways. And what you realize, or what I *think* is going on, is that Powell is taking themes and repeating them & reworking them in a way directly analogous to how musical themes and tonalities are repeated and reworked in a complex piece of music, such as a symphony, all while telling a long and subtle story about a whole bunch of very real people. So it's literal and metaphoric at the same time. Or something. In general I think a lot of what Powell was up to was over my head & I should go back & re-read the whole series. But 12 novels is a pretty big time investment, so who knows.
Wow, that was some digression. I now return this thread to its regularly scheduled programming.
Mod
In books like Ulysses, we accept the that story of Leopold Bloom is a retelling of the story of Odysseus, and since it's thus officially in ..."
Good points about mythic versus literal. Even though we know that fiction is fiction is fiction, we do sometimes have expectations about a certain level of credibility/believability. When the postman just happened to hand the Consul a postcard that had been lost in the mail for nearly a year, and just happened to happen while on the road after just happening to run into Laruelle, blah, blah, blah, you just want to roll your eyes and sigh...
Jim wrote:When the postman just happened to hand the Consul a postcard that had been lost in the mail for nearly a year, and just happened to happen while on the road after just happening to run into Laruelle, blah, blah, blah, you just want to roll your eyes and sigh... I read that portion again & it seems to me that the postman's difficulty in retrieving this particular postcard shows that it wasn't a freshly arrived one- he just happened to hand it over that day- tie it with the Day of the Dead symbolism & it seems long gone people & long gone stuff are turning up.
Is that a long stretch? But you surely can't deny its dramatic flair?
Well how abt this: in the narrative,the letters play a very important part- the first one,accidently *discovered* by Laruelle,the second one,on the road in a tragic-comic way & the Consul's reaction to that was interesting- he saw it,showed it to Hugh & later left it under Laruelle's pillow.
The third one,the missing bundle of letters that literally cost him his life- so whatever may be our reactions to their placement in the story,their relevance can't be denied.
I take it that you've no objection to the handling of the first & third? How would you've placed the second mail in the book?
And John if you are still following the posts– as a writer,where,when,& how would you place the second letter?
Jim wrote:Ch. 10: Dark clouds form around the volcano Geoffretepetl, shaken by tectonic thrusts of mescal and memory, time slips in and out of phase, sounds form inside and outside the crater, until finally the elemental forces erupt from the consul’s mouth with the pyroclastic flow of pent-up anger and resentment aimed squarely at Hugh and Yvonne.Wow! What an introduction!
Whatever may be your feelings abt this book,it sure made you eloquent.
I'm tempted to steal your lines again...
Mod
Whatever may be your feelings abt this book,it sure made you eloquent.
I'm tempted to steal your lines again..."
I have my moments...
5% of gross receipts if you use my lines, LOL!
Regarding coincidences - sometimes if a coincidence or a metaphor or a deus ex machina is too obvious, it sticks out like a hangnail scraping the grey matter... the flow of the prose gets interrupted by the scratching sensation... It's not a deal killer, but it makes one a little peeved at the author for striking a discordant note.
On balance, I'll likely rate this 4 stars for the good parts and leave the whining behind ... ok, I'll probably whine a little bit in the review.
Mala,In answer to your question I have no answer, at least not without a lot of thought. Sometimes it's easier to spot a problem than to provide a solution.
[Aside: I worked with an editor once who was really good at spotting problems. (In particular, he hated coincidences & deus-ex-machinas!) I had to fix whatever problem he saw because he was my agent & wouldn't send the book to publishers until he was happy. The thing was, I only disagreed with him once or twice about his diagnoses. But his proposed fixes were always wrong.]
The problem of Yvonne & the horse presents more obvious solutions. Maybe she can even still get trampled by it, but in town closer to the action, so the horse doesn't have to track her down in the forest primeval.
Anyway, shouldn't go on so much about the problems; the good stuff is really good and, irony alert sobering end irony alert. It's a book of very big ambition that nearly achieves it. The poor doomed Consul is a major literary creation. This book will stay with me, I'm sure.
Mala wrote: "I hate you! You gave three stars to The Royal Family & now this!You guys must be stone-hearted- I know it now.
Anyway,I got Herr Gass & Vollmann on my side...take that!" HAHA
Its chapter 10 and i'm now feeling something for the Consul. The scene at the end of chapter 10 where he finally shouting out his pain and frustration at Hugh and Yvonne's inaction was key for me.
Mod
It was inevitable that eventually the volcano would blow...
@ Mekki: I was dismayed by your silence on this book,thinking that perhaps you too had given up but this short post is encouraging!Do share your impressions in detail when you finish the book,okay?
Someone threw a dead dog after him down the a ravine. I rate via the enjoyment I received and I'd give this a fiver in that department. Ironically I enjoyed it more with agave based liquor in my hand. Method reading. It wasn't perfection but I'll definitely read it again.
I finished UTV yesterday and also have mixed feelings about the book. I felt that chapters 10 & 11 were largely superfluous and could quite easily have been condensed down to a single chapter. But this is probably because chapter 10 contains a lot of the Joycean tricks & gizmos that just annoy me when I'm reading. By this I mean all the extraneous texts that presumably Geoffrey is reading, the train timetable etc. The chapter finally comes alive at the end when they're all arguing and Geoffrey finally says what he's thinking.Maybe these chapters would improve on a second reading though.
Chapter 12 is a fitting finale to the book. Geoffrey must be extremely drunk now as the stream of thoughts is very confused especially as the bar fills up with people. I may have liked this chapter more as I had a drink to hand when I was reading it. :-)
Although Geoffrey is obviously lying when he's confronted by the dodgy officials. They accuse Geoffrey of being a communist, a spy, a Jew and a thief. Do they shoot him because of any, or all, of these reasons or just from a sadistic pleasure?
Mod
I think it's for all of those reasons. A few patrons try to warn him, but he's too far gone to understand the danger.
I'm finished! I was going to give it a similar rating to Jonathans but after re-reading chapter 1 I felt that I have a better connection to the book. Initially chapter one was a little confusing but after reading it again after the last chapter it feels like Malcolm Lowry actually put the epilogue at the beginning of the book. I believe this for the following reasons:
- The letter that was delivered to the consul and the letter that he fails to send in the chapter 1
- Lauruelle's arguing ghosts from chapter one make more sense:
"Let us be good and constructive and make ourselves worthy of it!" Or there were ghosts quarrelling: "No, you loved yourself, you loved your misery more than I. You did this deliberately to us." "I?" "You always had people to look after you, to love you, to use you, to lead you. You listened to everyone save me, who really loved you." "No, you're the only person I've ever loved." "Ever? You loved only yourself." "No, it was you, always you, you must believe me, please; you must remember how we were always planning to"
- The horse that nearing runs laurelle over, etc.
I did have a problem with the untranslated Spanish phrases...I didn't really see the poin, especially when most of the characters understood spanish. I wished lowry let me into their head and translated some of it. I found my self just skipping those..This book probably could have been tighter with a little trimming..
Mekki wrote: "I'm finished! I was going to give it a similar rating to Jonathans but after re-reading chapter 1 I felt that I have a better connection to the book. Initially chapter one was a little confusing ..."
That Epilogue idea is an interesting one. I think several readers have felt that way. And as for the use of Spanish portions- frustrating though that may be for a non-speaker,it does lend authenticity to the narrative. Imagine a book set in a particular region of India & no one utters even a word of native language!
Mala wrote: "That Epilogue idea is an interesting one. I think several readers have felt that way. And as for the use of Spanish portions- frustrating though that may be for a non-speaker,it does lend authenticity to the narrative. Imagine a book set in a particular region of India & no one utters even a word of native language! "After the recent comments here I think I'll have to re-read chapter 1 as soon as I get the time. After all, the first chapter takes place a year after the events in the rest of the book.
I thought the Spanish (and German and French) phrases added a certain atmosphere to the book. I quite like things like that that add a certain colour to the narrative. And as we are often in Geoffrey's head we get to see him processing all this info. I found that a lot of the Spanish phrases were more or less translated in the following narrative anyway.
@ Jonathan: Yeah,I thought abt that one year gap too & that's why I didn't mention the epilogue point in my comments.I think,it's more telling of the tendency of those who are left behind to try & find a sense of closure & Laruelle is doing that here.
And that poor horse is still wandering...!
That drunken rider on it,in the first chapter,has been compared to/symbolic of the memory of the Consul in the Akerley notes.
I share your views regarding the multiplicity of language usage.
And I really liked the last chapter; it was quite surreal what with all the different characters from the day's processions coming in to the bar and it all being filtered through the drunken eyes of Geoffrey. The last chapter made me think of William Burroughs' writing, most probably because of the Mexican connection and the drink/drugs theme. Does anyone know if Burroughs was at all influenced by Lowry?
I had to force myself to finish, but I managed. Finally.I really did not like this book. I suppose the upside is that working through what I did not like about it was a useful exercise for me. Still, two stars seems generous.
I am just now starting chapter 11, and I'm ENRAGED at you all for spoiling the end for me. Kidding, of course, I don't care about spoilers unless it's a whodunnit or something with more weighing upon the withholding of information. And it's not like we didn't know he was going to die.I agree with Mala about the portrayal of The Consul; it was ambitious of Lowry to actually do two things that many other authors either cheat on or execute badly:
1 Portraying an addict by including the motivations and rationalizations that make up the impulses of addiction. In many other such portraits the addiction is nothing more than an irrational need which seems sufficiently sensitive to narrative context as to pop up at just the right moments. Lowry's depiction of how Geoff's mind twisted every avenue of escape (figurative or literal) back toward the bottle was, I'm sure, much more difficult than it looked.
2 We get a character who is described as brilliant and then this is made believable. I'm really tired of pretentious pseudo-literary crap novels (such as The Hours) which assure us a character is "brilliant" or "genius" and there is either no evidence or, worse, the evidence refutes the claim.
I wasn't bothered by any gods or ghosts in the machine (but loved the Infernal Machine) because, as I've said before, the determinism of Geoff's life was pretty thoroughly established as a theme, and the other coincidences (that I've read so far) were not situated on load-bearing plot posts, which makes them more forgivable than those found in, say, Dickens, where they are often major hinge-pins.
Throughout this discussion and in criticism elsewhere this book is called Modernist, but I think this is a superficial designation. I don't mean that it's a designation made from superficial reading, but I think that while it has a lot of stylistic features common to modernist works (such as the free-association, the tourist-brochure inserts), I think in it's deepest volcanic heart it is Romantic: the extraordinary fanciful metaphors and conceits; the connection of addiction to genius; the omens, portents, and signs; the frenzied subjective states of a tortured soul; flirtation with the mysteries of the supernatural, myth, miracles; heightened emotions over reason; the exotic locale and the flashbacks of adventure, glamor, and nostalgia. I will go into this a little more in the thread on the previous chapters, if that's OK.
I foresee a rating of 5 stars myself, unless something unforgivable happens in the final two chapters. My least favorite one was Yvonne's where we got her background; it seemed like a rushed summary a little awkwardly wedged in at the rodeo rather than being as submerged in and enmeshed with the whole as all the other chapters seemed to me to be. That's a small flaw, and it's flawedness is arguable. I can't speak to the other languages, but the untranslated Spanish was often immediately reiterated in English. This is a book I will definitely re-read, and I don't do that a lot.
Mod
What genius did you perceive in Geoffrey?
Gregsamsa wrote:I wasn't bothered by any gods or ghosts in the machine (but loved the Infernal Machine) because, as I've said before, the determinism of Geoff's life was pretty thoroughly established as a theme, and the other coincidences (that I've read so far) were not situated on load-bearing plot posts, which makes them more forgivable than those found in, say, Dickens, where they are often major hinge-pins.I'm glad you feel that way cause most of the opposition here to this book stems from the deux ex machina & coincidences. I really don't understamd what huge difference it would've been had (view spoiler)
Throughout this discussion and in criticism elsewhere this book is called Modernist, but I think this is a superficial designation. I don't mean that it's a designation made from superficial reading, but I think that while it has a lot of stylistic features common to modernist works (such as the free-association, the tourist-brochure inserts), I think in it's deepest volcanic heart it is Romantic: the extraordinar fanciful metaphors and conceits; the connection of addiction to genius; the omens, portents, and signs; the frenzied subjective states of a tortured soul; flirtation with the mysteries of the supernatural, myth, miracles; heightened emotions over reason; the exotic locale and the flashbacks of adventure, glamor, and nostalgia. I will go into this a little more in the thread on the previous chapters, if that's OK.
Lovely.
The moment I read of the chasm and the addiction,I thought of Coleridge, and then I thought of Keats in the characters' melancholia,Byron in the Consul's fiery outburst- suffice it to say that Lowry's themes are romantic at heart but they have been expressed in a modernist way- the fractured consciousness conveyed so beautifully via the SoC,the free-flowing indirect narration,temporal shifts,Joycean devices- sometimes the form does end up overwhelming the content. Thematically,Under the Volcano is a simple tale; what makes it outstanding is the telling of it.
Lowry saw himself as a poet first & his lyrical prose also adds to the romantic feel.
But the spiritual ennui that the main character suffers from,the breakdown of meaningful communication when words are no longer adequate to convey/bridge one's isolation, the Freudian elements,etc are typically modernist responses to the big war.
I think you could write a paper on it,doing a comparative analysis.
Elsewhere Zadignose has given an interesting first impression of Argall in which he sees it as more of a throwback to the early 20th century psychological novel then the perhaps groundbreaking work it's taken to be. New insights are always refreshing.
Jim wrote: "Gregsamsa wrote: "the connection of addiction to genius.."What genius did you perceive in Geoffrey?"
I think Samsa is referring to the heightened states of consciousness which is reached via mystical experiences of meditation,narcotics,etc.Literature is full of it- Coleridge and De Quincey's opium addiction,the Beat poets,and there is Huxley's famous The Doors of Perception.
The addiction may even be to a concept- there is Keats and his love-related troubles,Shelley and Byron with their ideals of heroism- Volcano famously references Shelley in one of the key passages.
Samsa hasn't specifically referred to Geoffrey as a "genius" but the idea of a misunderstood,lonely,brilliant man is a typically romantic one. There are indications throughout that the Consul was a remarkable man who had distinguished himself in his chosen fields before the alcoholism took over his life.
Mod
Are you his attorney?
Jim wrote: "Are you his attorney?"I laughed. Like, out loud.
Mod
I laughed. Like, out loud."
Like, I can totally appreciate that!
So what about the dead dog punchline? High Art?
Jim wrote: "So what about the dead dog punchline? High Art?"I hate to admit it, but I spent the last three or four chapters looking forward to Geoffrey's death. The dog was just icing.
If it's any consolation, I saw no genius in the Consul, either. I suspect a little bleeding between the identities of Geoffrey and Lowry; those of us who see genius in Lowry are apt to transfer that judgement to the Consul as well. For the two-stars among us, perhaps not so much.
I'm looking forward to Doris Lessing, though.
First let me say that this whole page is one of the best I've ever read on GoodReads, from Jim's excellently compact intro, to the startling way John can off-handedly dole out some text superior to what takes me quite a bit of thinking and futzing about in WordPad, and then the back and forth throughout the conversation, including those from my counsel, Mala, to Nichole's hilarious taste in icing. Mekki has me making a mental note to re-read chapter 1, and I agree with Jonathan on the similarity to Burroughs, but for some reason I thought of him during Yvonne's final chapter when she started hallucinating. I didn't mean to claim that I thought that Geoff was a "genius" in fact I dislike the word in general, but I thought he seemed like that type of character common to Romantic lit but before I waste one more word on the "R" label, let me paste what I already done wrote:
My assertion of Volcano's being Romantic was challenged on here as I was chided to finish the book. I have now, and as I did, I felt my assessment further confirmed, partly from passages that seem like they could have been inspired by Blake:
"...and some would watch with a sense of fleeting, yet feeling their diamonded brightness gleam an instant on the soul, touching all within that in memory was sweet or noble or courageous or proud, as high overhead appeared, flying softly like a flock of birds toward Orion, the beneficent Pleiades."
but especially with chapter 11's dramatic thunderstorm-accompanied (naturally) ascent of Yvonne and Hugh where it got positively gothic:
"Yet the sight that met their eyes as they emerged on the road was terrifying. The massed black clouds were still mounting the twilight sky. High above them, at a vast height, a dreadfully vast height, bodiless black birds, more like skeletons of birds, were drifting. Snowstorms drove along the summit of Ixtaccihuatl, obscuring it, while its mass was shrouded by cumulus. But the whole precipitous bulk of Popacatpetl seemed to be coming toward them, travelling with the clouds, leaning forward over the valley on whose side, thrown into relief by the curious melancholy light, shone one little rebellious hilltop with a tiny cemetery cut into it."
Wowzers, is that an image or what?! Keep in mind that I mainly use the word gothic with esteem and affection; I think the above reads more like Hawthorne or Poe than Beckett or Joyce. Then in the final chapter I was pleased to come across an old cherished trope which sadly lives on now mostly only in slasher movies: the ominous warning , in the form of the old woman in the Farolito:
"Then he realized she too wanted to help. 'No good for you,' she whispered. 'Bad place. Muy malo. These man no friend of Mexican people.' She nodded toward the bar, in which the Chief of Rostrums and Sanabria still stood. 'They no policia. They diablos. Murdereres. He kill ten old men. He kill twenty viejos.' She peered behind her nervously, to see if the Chief of Municipality was watching her, then took from her shawl a clockwork skeleton. She set this on the counter before A Few Fleas, who was watching intently, munching a marzipan coffin. 'Vamanos,' she muttered to the Consul, as the skeleton, set in motion, jigged on the bar, to collapse flaccidly."
I loved that so much. I don't really care for horror movies, but I adore "the warning" ("Crystal Lake? Oh, no. No, you don't want to go up there!").
I usually make it a habit to read introductions and afterwords only after I have finished a novel, not because of spoilers but because I often find them irritating or reductive and I don't want them to condition my reading.
I must say that I am much less interested in my Romanticism idea now that I realize it is much less original and controversial than I had thought. Stephen Spender, in his introduction to the 2000 Perennial Classics edition, writes "We finish Under the Volcano feeling that the Consul with all his defects is the cosmos--and that he is also Malcolm Lowry. This is perhaps a way of saying that Malcolm Lowry and his hero are romantics." Later, he adds "The Ferris wheel, the barranca--the deep ravine called the Malebolge--the riderless horse and so on, are the machinery of his tragedy, itself a machine. They are the Consul, that late romantic, almost Byronic, self-dramatizing figure."
Well that sure took the steam out of "my" idea.
Anyway, I am curious as to whether any of you guys were surprised by what I found shocking about the ending or, I should say, the Consul's end: it wasn't caused by his alcoholism.
His death could have happened to a tea-totaller.
This was not the death I was expecting at all. I had guessed that he would either stumble drunkenly into a ravine accidentally right after an important revelation, or that in despair at the knowledge he would always be a torment and burden to Yvonne he would throw himself into a ravine. I was betting on the ravine & dog carcass image from the bus trip (confirmed by Casceil in the previous thread) where, I realize in retrospect, we saw a lot of things accumulate before a death--of the Indian--later to also reappear before the Consul's: the bus driver, the vigilantes, the horse with the 7, the fascists, the "pigeon." I did not, however, anticipate that the Consul's death would also involve a dog carcass. How rude.
Was anyone else surprised at how little agency Geoff had in his own demise when the whole novel had made it seem like it was going to be the product of his life's work?
Gregsamsa wrote:I did not, however, anticipate that the Consul's death would also involve a dog carcass. How rude.The Dog Factor:
When the horse number 7 turns up so many times during the course of the narrative,is it any surprise that the pariah dog,one of the Consul's familiars,would also turn up? After all,a dog is a man's most faithful friend.
Rewind to chapter 5 where the Consul is having a dream-nightmare. It begins:
"Behind them walked the only living thing that shared their pilgrimage, the dog. And by degrees they reached the briny sea. Then, with souls well disciplined they reached the northern region, and beheld, with heaven aspiring hearts, the mighty mountain Himavat."
The reference here is from Mahabharata's Book 17 which describes the Pandavas ascent to heaven along with a dog. Do read it,it's a very interesting story.
This is a forshadowing of what happens in the last chapter but what is remarkable is that there's a Mexican myth in which a dog accompanies its master in his journey to the next world cause the way to afterlife is very dark & the dog runs ahead & secures the path!
So you see there is a richness of myths here from two different cultures- it was not at all a rude ending!
Was anyone else surprised at how little agency Geoff had in his own demise when the whole novel had made it seem like it was going to be the product of his life's work?
No,Geoff did have a hand in his tragedy- he remained self-destructive till the very end & the mescal did get the better of him.
In his sozzled state,he couldn't rightly judge the dangerousness of his situation. The irony was that he was as distrustful of the fascist police as they were of him & everything that he did or didn't do in the Farolito,piled up as incriminating evidence against him.
There is an excellent analysis of the last chapter in a link called The Consul's 'Murder' that I've shared on the resource page. Do check it out.
His drunkenness surely had a hand in his misjudging the situation, or even his passivity (then again, his inebriation might have had him overestimating his chances of escape which he thinks are pretty good a couple times), but it wasn't the cause. Geoff's cable was. Those guys were. Politics beyond anything he'd done were. I'm sure it didn't help that he called himself Blackstone but "Firmin" wold have been worse. It still could have happened if he were sober or if it'd been his first time drunk. I'm not complaining; I'm just saying that it was a surprise to me because I thought the mezcal would kill him in a more literal sense.I'll check out that essay.
The number 7 horse.I didn't really see this at first but more and more I started to see the intentional use of the numbers 7 and 666. These numbers have been used in Christianity to symbolize God and the devil. The 7 horse, God or maybe fate, shows up a few times and when it does someone usually winds up dead. The number 666 is seen more frequently, including once upside down as 999 while the consul was on the ride to escape the urchins. And without rereading the whole novel I believe it is only when the consul is drunk. I am still working it around in my head but I think the use of these numbers either represent the struggle within the consul of “good and evil", to drink or not to drink; or it is more fatalistic and basically God and the devil are in their own ways acting against the consul. The devil keeps putting drink in front of the consul. God kills off Yvonne before she can find him and perhaps save him from the fascists at the end.
Tim wrote: "I believe it is only when the consul is drunk. . ."By my definition of "drunk" (although not by the Consul's) the Consul is drunk from the first page of the novel to the last. He's already on his 3rd or 4th whiskey at breakfast when we meet him, after a night of heavy drinking. Shortly later he's lying passed-out in the street.
If I ever start drinking like that & insist I'm not drunk, I hope my friends here will stage an intervention!
True. And even though I don't think he went a whole hour without a drink he still cycles between DT like symptoms, feeling tight, and being a bit sloppy depending on the timing and amount of his alcohol consumption. His self medicating just seemed exhausting.
Wow, you tore through that pretty speedily!
Brain Pain
Books mentioned in this topic
The Hours (other topics)The Royal Family (other topics)
The Royal Family (other topics)
The Royal Family (other topics)
Conclusions/Book as a whole
Ch. 10: Dark clouds form around the volcano Geoffretepetl, shaken by tectonic thrusts of mescal and memory, time slips in and out of phase, sounds form inside and outside the crater, until finally the elemental forces erupt from the consul’s mouth with the pyroclastic flow of pent-up anger and resentment aimed squarely at Hugh and Yvonne.
Ch. 11:
Over el rio and thru la jungla,
To grandmother’s house we stumbla.
The horse knows the way,
To carry the…. ummm…
To carry the…… hmmmm……….
Uh, yea, maybe we shouldn’t talk about the horse.
How about we sing the theme from Yvonne’s World?
Twinkle, twinkle, little estrella,
Life with Geoffrey sure was hella.
Pounding mescal ev’ry night,
Spending hours tot’ly tight.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
Now I float to where you are.
Ch. 12: Mescal from a gourd… rabbit eating corn… A Few Fleas and his comics… Old woman with tequila… The Consul soaked in Mescal… the Sky kjzrn lmj… Chief ojn skfné’… kzne_ç _à jzenjncj zj21jkh,**….iijznioan jsbzawjogfb@@@bj…. {|`lkj…. nnjohzxw…. Peptetal… dead dog