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Under the Volcano
Under the Volcano - Spine 2014
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Discussion - Week Three - Under the Volcano - Chapter 7 - 9
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We were waiting for Yvonne's chapter & we finally got it- how strange that a woman be narrating the bull throwing (!) event (though admittedly far easier reading than Hemingway's bull fighting arenas), yet it makes sense,the pointless cruelty & banality of this experience when contrasted with the hopefulness & beauty of her dreams,of far away,of a new life- it creates the uneasy feeling that all is not right in the Mexican world,a fact that was already hammered home in the earlier chapter via the roadside murder of the Indian.Chapter nine ended on a note of reconciliation yet somehow lines like " I love you,Yvonne" & so on lack the gravitas of his not-so-hidden resentment,of his rejection of Yvonne's advances earlier at Laruelle's house:
"And yet he was thinking all over again, and all over again as for the first time, how he had suffered, suffered, suffered without her; indeed such desolation, such a desperate sense of abandonment, bereavement, as during this last year without Yvonne, he had never known in his life, unless it was when his mother died. But this present emotion he had never experienced with his mother: this urgent desire to hurt, to provoke, at a time when forgiveness alone could save the day."
Facts meet fiction here: Lowry had always castigated his mother for her negligence towards her children,it was as if she wasn't there- both his wives felt that more than a wife;he needed a mother!
Thus the Consul ( a stand in for Lowry) equating Yvonne's abandonment of him to that of a mother's of her child shows that a reconciliation is impossible.
The Consul has rejected the love of Yvonne- he has chosen the Hell of Farolito & it's a very self-aware decision,the placing of the prohibitionist poster highlighting this irony.
Despite Yvonne's pleas,the Consul cannot forgive her infidelities & here he loses the divine grace- we forgive in order that we are forgiven.
The Consul's tragedy is not that there are no choices- there are but that he chooses wrongly.
The portrait of Yvonne is based on Lowry's first wife Jan who had left him in Mexico–Lowry had sought reconciliation but things didn't work out. Here the Consul rejects her! Fiction here compensating for reality.
And the idyllic life that Yvonne imagines in chapter nine is actually based on the Lowrys' shack in Dollarton,Vancouver.
* * *
"Elsewhere in Jacques’ room cuneiform stone idols squatted like bulbous infants: (...) One part of the Consul continued to laugh, in spite of himself, and all this evidence of lost wild talents, at the thought of Yvonne confronted in the aftermath of her passion by a whole row of fettered babies."
This is important: a fact going back both to the child (named Geoffrey) that Yvonne lost in her first marriage & the fact of their childlessness- perhaps a child could've brought them together?!
We know now the Consul's appeal for Yvonne– he is another version of her father; the only man she truly loved before meeting the Consul. Both these characters have daddy issues.
Chapter8:The death of the Indian & its significance to the plot- is it a moral test that the Consul has failed by not getting involved in it? But what was he to do? The bus wasn't their private vehicle that they could use it to get medical help.
The incident shows the lawless state in Mexico- anyone could get away with murder here. And we get the hands of Orlac reference here,I think:
"The pelado’s smeared conquistador’s hands, that had clutched the melon, now clutched a sad bloodstained pile of silver pesos and centavos.
The pelado had stolen the dying Indian’s money."
Mala wrote: "We were waiting for Yvonne's chapter & we finally got it- how strange that a woman be narrating the bull throwing (!) event (though admittedly far easier reading than Hemingway's bull fighting aren..."Am I the only one who considers Chapter 2 an Yvonne chapter?
Mala wrote: "And the idyllic life that Yvonne imagines in chapter nine is actually based on the Lowrys' shack in Dollarton,Vancouver."That was interesting, knowing he was writing the book up in Vancouver, giving the Consul an opportunity for a future.
Larry wrote:Am I the only one who considers Chapter 2 an Yvonne chapter?Reg.Chapter 9:Yvonne's chapter as in the sense of getting her backstory,just as chapter 6th dealt with Hugh's.
Structurally too,chapter 9 is hers cause the narrative voice is clearly Yvonne's.
Chapter 2 is like chapter 4 in that we get Hugh's voice but also third person narration which may not always be coming from his pov,likewise in chapter 2, we are taken inside her mind,then out towards various descriptions shifting from her pov to omniscient narration.
I've asked Samsa to focus on the narrative structure- let's hope he gets some respite from workload to resume his reading.
Mala wrote: "Larry wrote:Am I the only one who considers Chapter 2 an Yvonne chapter?Reg.Chapter 9:Yvonne's chapter as in the sense of getting her backstory,just as chapter 6th dealt with Hugh's.
Structurally..."
Dig.
Larry wrote: "Mala wrote: "Larry wrote:Am I the only one who considers Chapter 2 an Yvonne chapter?Reg.Chapter 9:Yvonne's chapter as in the sense of getting her backstory,just as chapter 6th dealt with Hugh's...."
As in, I dig.
I seem to be bogged down in chapter 7. I'm not sure why I am finding it so hard to get through, but having an Yvonne chapter to look forward to is encouraging.
These chapters are a bit subdued compared to previous chapters. Ok there's the dead Indian and Hugh's bull rodeo but internally the characters, even Geoff, seem a bit calmer. It's great seeing things through Hugh's and Yvonne's eyes, however my favourite bit in this week's reading was Geoff trying to escape from the young urchins by getting on the fair ground ride and getting his pockets emptied.
Jonathan wrote: "These chapters are a bit subdued compared to previous chapters. Ok there's the dead Indian and Hugh's bull rodeo but internally the characters, even Geoff, seem a bit calmer. It's great seeing th..."
That's the lull before the storm! It was needed & yes,Geoffrey's crazy turn in that ride was visually stunning,one of my fav scenes from this book.
Mala wrote: "That's the lull before the storm! It was needed & yes,Geoffrey's crazy turn in that ride was visually stunning,one of my fav scenes from this book..."I'll look forward to the fireworks in next week's reading. :-)
Casceil wrote: "I seem to be bogged down in chapter 7. I'm not sure why I am finding it so hard to get through, but having an Yvonne chapter to look forward to is encouraging."Ditto. Except I've made it to mid chapter 8.
Is anyone else waiting hopefully for Geoff to die? I feel slightly ashamed of how much I'm looking forward to it. I am also assuming, based on textual clues, that his death will involve an abyss of some kind. I will be disappointed if it doesn't.
I very much enjoyed the fair chapter, especially the scene where Geoffrey is cajoled to get on the INFERNAL MACHINE ride, with its little confessional cages, as it reminded me of my fave ride ever, THE ZIPPER:
David Foster Wallace has written about this ride but he's no fan because he's kind of a wuss about stuff like that. Geoff's constitution is easy to underestimate, something we shouldn't do if he could ride the infernal machine, drunk, without getting sick!
As a Geoff chapter it has more of the subjective intensity we associate with his point of view, but none of the book's chapters so far is strictly wedded to any single character's pov, as they all oscillate between character perspective and 3rd person narration; Hugh's has more of this than Geoff's, and Yvonne's more than Hugh's.
I've taken some notes on Lowry's use of alternating pov's, but they're stuck in my book which I don't have handy but I'll try to share my thoughts on that this weekend. One thing I really like about this book is how the step-brothers are very different from one another, without falling into that cliched device of having them be diametric opposites, each representing a type of man or standing for some larger opposition (like order vs chaos, or fun vs. responsibility).
Nicole, I agree about Geoff's death. I think we got a little preview when the bus went over that gorge and we saw the dog skeleton. I will also be disappointed if that was a red herring.
Oh, I forgot to mention something about Lowry's depiction of Geoff's "relationship" with alcohol. There's such a weird determinism to Geoffrey's drinking; all his trends of thought--even those about giving up alcohol--bend ineluctably toward more booze. All reasons to quit are either overwhelmed by qualifications or are themselves subsumed into the romanticism of his intoxication and become contrary reasons to continue, such as when he might admit that it would be best if he quit but doing so would be accepting defeat, as if he can't swim (like the story of Shelley drowning with his books and pride). I thought this was an inspired way to illustrate the paradox that this reluctance to admit defeat was itself going to defeat him, having more agency than The Counsel himself: " 'Yet I will not give in.' But who was I, how find that I, where had 'I' gone?"
Gregsamsa wrote: "One thing I really like about this book is how the step-brothers are very different from one another, without falling into that cliched device of having them be diametric opposites, each representing a type of man or standing for some larger opposition (like order vs chaos, or fun vs. responsibility)."I really liked that too. It felt like a real relationship.
Gregsamsa wrote: "I very much enjoyed the fair chapter, especially the scene where Geoffrey is cajoled to get on the INFERNAL MACHINE ride, with its little confessional cages, as it reminded me of my fave ride ever,..."Good that you brought up Geoff's constitution- time & again,he has been compared to a horse ( & then he fails to perform,the irony!). In fact,that reckless horse,branded with the number 7, who often turns up in different places,could be symbolic of unrestrained destructive force of id.
I remember that DFW Illinois fair essay! He didn't like that particular ride cause the guys at the controls were deliberately shifting the levers in such a way that his female companion's private area could be seen in an upside down position- he was no wuss!
And I also know the point of ref.to your step-brothers' example-(view spoiler)
Gregsamsa wrote: "Oh, I forgot to mention something about Lowry's depiction of Geoff's "relationship" with alcohol. There's such a weird determinism to Geoffrey's drinking; all his trends of thought--even those abo..."But Samsa remember that that particular para began with the sentence:"What if courage here implied admission of total defeat, admission that one couldn’t swim."
Anyway,great to have you back!
Mala I disagree with you re the wussness of DFW regarding The Zipper, as only a wuss would call it a "near death experience" (please), as it's not, nor is a zipline, the ride he was too scared to do.As for the quote "What if courage here implied admission of total defeat, admission that one couldn’t swim." I think it reinforces what I'm saying: obviously lack of courage is defeat; and what if courage equals the same thing? All his roads have the same destination. Mezcal has taken such control of his faculties that every perceived avenue of escape sustains itself by becoming a cul-de-sac. I think this was a brave way for Lowry to portray it, as the internal psychological mechanics of addiction are usually held within some uninterrogatable mystery box (please forgive that awful long word; I'm on my fifth beer and I just can't think of another), but, true to his Romantic heart (despite his being called a Modernist by nearly everybody), Lowry wants to explore the heart of this mystery, or the mystery of the heart.
And bless you Mala for getting my dig at Houellebecq *snicker*.
I've been thinking a lot about how Lowry's use of POV sharpens and complicates our understanding of the individuals and the whole scenario, but as I've only just started ch 10 I'm not ready to say what I think about the progression of them, but I may think of it in terms of an argument.
Anyone else see Geoff and Hugh as competing versions of Romanticism?
Gregsamsa wrote: "Anyone else see Geoff and Hugh as competing versions of Romanticism?"That's an interesting question. I can see Hugh as a version of Romanticism, but I have trouble seeing Geoffrey in that light.
Re comment 14 by Gregsamsa: " I think we got a little preview when the bus went over that gorge and we saw the dog skeleton. I will also be disappointed if that was a red herring." I finished the book last night, and that was indeed foreshadowing. I had forgotten about that scene until I reread your comment. Nice catch.
Gregsamsa wrote:Mala I disagree with you re the wussness of DFW regarding The Zipper, as only a wuss would call it a "near death experience" (please), as it's not, nor is a zipline, the ride he was too scared to do.I hope you wrote all that in levity cause otherwise I'd be annoyed >_>
The man killed himself,remember that. Some ppl might say that living requires more courage but sometimes taking one's life even more so.
But this thread is abt Lowry so let's keep it focussed on that.
Gregsamsa wrote: "Anyone else see Geoff and Hugh as competing versions of Romanticism?"Are you questioning this book's modernist credential based solely on this?
I shd say wait till you finish it.
Mod
Are you questioning this book's modernist credential based solely on this?
I shd say wait till you finish it."
I read Greg's question as being about the characters, not the book, which fits a general definition of modernism.
Certainly Hugh is a romantic, but I read The Consul as more of a Lost Generation-type, having fought in the war and such; maybe a kind of semi-nihilist, although that could just me the mescal and broken heart talking....
@Jim: I was also responding to this part of Gregsamsa's message number 19–"but, true to his Romantic heart (despite his being called a Modernist by nearly everybody), Lowry wants to explore the heart of this mystery, or the mystery of the heart."I see Hugh as a younger version of the Consul,already given to lost causes & a potential cynic (perhaps) at age 29. I think,Samsa is fresh from the reading of chapters 6-9,there is Hugh's involvement in the Spanish Civil War & then his desire to help the dying Indian & the Consul's world-weary response to that- perhaps that brought on this query.
(view spoiler)
Mod
Ah, okay, your message replied to #20.
In the final week's thread I posted what I meant by Romanticism, quoting a good deal of its usual check-list. I don't mean it only in the obvious sense in which Hugh was a romantic character, and I don't care really to get bogged down in an argument about the demarcations between romanticism and modernism as those sorts of discussions tend to devolve until everyone is acting like these are categories provided by Nature or something. It obviously boasts a boatload of modernist features, but the tormented genius whose brilliant potential is linked to altered states, that's a romantic trope from way back, sort of an inverted version of Hugh's, with how he romanticized his career before, during, and after, along with the idea of the man of action who can change the world. Yvonne's is more located in the realm of nostalgia, or her hope to one day play the role of the genius's wife. I realize that in a group like this one "Romantic" may be taken as a perjorative, but I don't mean it that way at all. Now where you might draw the line between just the characters' being romantic versus whether or not the novel can be described that way also... I dunno.After ch. 8 I was thinking of Hugh and The Consul as competing versions of romanticism, but then (ch 9) I learned that Yvonne offers us yet another version, perhaps the Hollywood version. I was going to share some stumbling amateurish efforts toward describing how I came to this structure of romanticism(s) idea, but then a little cursory Googling told me that this is very well-worn territory, and you might imagine how galled I was to have been so proud of myself to have (mis-)recalled an apt Sartre quote only to find it bandied all over this essay already, but I'll share it anyway: regarding the question of the role of all the hodge-podge mythology and mysticism, the kabbalic allusions, the oblique hints at some sort of truth beyond banal physical reality, I was reminded of something that perky old Jean-Paul called "the surreptitious wish to resuscitate the transcendent."
For some reason I had mis-remembered it as "suspicious wish...." Sartre called this a reaction against rational positivism and Enlightenment ideals, characterizing it as basically nostalgic and romantic (pardon my coarse reduction here).
Of course Transcendent Truth has that pesky quality of remaining--pretty much by definition--unrevealed. What points to its presence must also point out its absence (by which quickie philosophizing we've graduated from Sartre to Derrida). I had been thinking of the romaticism(s) as being structured to offer a sort of ongoing argument, the kabbalic references pointing to the Judaic idea of capital-T Truth residing in dialog, in the ongoing pursuit, rather than in a stabilized and static knowable "fact." In this way the Absolute is always deferred, and Lowry--deliberately or not--affects this in the way he uses such opaque and obscure allusions that, for readers reading 40 years prior to search engines, was often going to stand only for itself rather than call up a corresponding "key."
Speaking of this sort of "key," the references to Geoff's work on a book on world mythologies reminded me of Middlemarch's Casaubon, who was endlessly working on his magnum opus that was to provide a "key" to all mythologies, linking world religions past and present, all their divergences united with their common ancestor. It turns out to be folly, of course, and not that I spotted any Middlemarch references among Lowry's millions but The Consul's work seems similarly (if far less soberly) misanthropic, and this makes me wonder what sort of comment, if any, this makes upon the reader who attempts to master all the allusions in Volcano in one key.
The idea that you would read the whole thing with a this-means-that handbook at the ready (there are several out there!) so you can then be sure you "got it" all somewhat stymies the romance of the always-deferred Transcendent that defies articulation. I'm not at all saying that one's reading cannot be enriched by learning what those vague allusions and references actually are; I think that a particular rhetorical effect is produced by some of them being or becoming clear while many of them remain obscure: as they largely compose the world inside Geoff's head, if some of them are familiar, some less so, with others quite distant and mysterious, we are given a sense of limitlessness, as if Geoff's mental wanderings could continue on through these vistas of his mysterious inner world indefinitely, an illusion affected by the opacity of many of the allusions, like a stage-set backdrop painted with a horizon, the space beyond which we may imagine keeps on going.
Anyhoo, the reason I Googled in the first place was because I have little confidence in my reading of the first four chapters as it was quite hurried, and so when I got to the mention of Lee Maitland I was like "who the hell is that?" and assumed I had missed something. Apparently not. In this case I found the Lowry Project's annotation quite comforting: Lee Maitland "has not been identified with any certainty and is probably intended to remain a mystery."
@Mala: anything I write beneath the picture of an amusement park ride is meant in all levity.
Mod
Isn't this a general swinging back and forth over time between the rational and the romantic, and not necessarily restricted to the "Romantic" movement in art and literature? In other words, the search for truth (transcendent and/or capital-T) is the province of all art and philosophy from the cave paintings of Lascaux to the stencils of Banksy. Certainly the search for truth and nostalgia for the natural man were fore-fronted by the romantics, but they don't hold a copyright, do they?
Lowry explores existence much like a romantic would, but I don't see how this moves his book away from modernism. Wasn't Lily Briscoe's portrait of Mrs. Ramsay a searching for truth, transcendent or otherwise? In other, other, other words, Lowry's thematic concerns don't make him any less modern, that I can see.
Mod
I also steered clear of Ackerley, et al, so that UTV could stand on its own merits.
Gregsamsa wrote: "In the final week's thread I posted what I meant by Romanticism, quoting a good deal of its usual check-list. I don't mean it only in the obvious sense in which Hugh was a romantic character, and ..."Thanks for that comprehensive link- I read a couple of essays. I'd be returning to that for more.
In his intro to this book,Stephen Spender has marked out Lowry from the other modernists like Joyce and Eliot based mainly on his use of myths and symbols which unlike the latter duo's source of a cosmic consciousness & getting back in the hallowed traditions of the past, explores more of individual consciousness/interior life in the malaise of the here and now & he concludes that Lowry and his hero are romantics.
I think it would be hard to put works into water-tight compartments as some influence/overlap may be there,though it's said of Ulysees that it marks a complete break from romanticism,still,Hellenism remains a big part of the Romantic ideal.
The spiritual transcendence aspect we had already discussed elsewhere & we agree on that.
I'll take objection to your analogy of Casaubon – to me he is the most odious character in literature,the coldest fish,& the worst kind of example of an intellectual/academic & I was mentally yelling at Dorothea to run as far from him as possible. His was a project of extreme vanity whereas Geoffrey's half-hearted attempts at writing seem more of an effort to communicate his sense of transcendence to others (& thus justify his drinking) than a misanthropic endeavour.
I read somewhere that Joyce had said he wrote Finnegans Wake in order to keep the critics busy for a hundred years trying to decipher its meaning- Under the Volcano is no Wake but its deeply allusive nature makes it imperative that readers put in some effort- for example,much of the impact of the last chapter will be lost if the reader has no familiarity with the Divine Comedy.
One could, of course, do a surface reading & see the ending from a purely subjective pov of the Consul but then one would miss the brilliantly loaded irony that Lowry has taken so much care building up.
When the writer puts years and years of hard work in a book,shdn't the reader meet him halfway?Forty years ago in the absence of search engines; ppl would've gone to the libraries!
If there was no need of a "key"; there wouldn't be an Ackerley annotation,there wouldn't be a Malcolm Lowry Project!
It did help you with the Lee Maitland query,didn't it?
The Proust group read additional material,they are again doing supplementary reading with the Dante read- paucity of reading time and non-availability of such reading material might deter people but that doesn't mean they are superfluous. Knowledge still remains power.
I just finished writing a comment after reading the introduction you mention, Mala, which I plan to post in the final chapters thread, in which I mention Spender's take.I was not meaning to say that Casaubon was in any way similar to Geoff. I was only saying that their projects reminded me of one another and that they were misanthropic, Geoff's being so even if only for the end reason you state: to justify his drinking. The characters are otherwise nothing alike and I had the same reaction to Casaubon you did.
Mala I think you are taking my statements about supplementary material as being much more critical than they are intended. I never claimed they are superfluous. I'm not quite sure, though, that a current reading with the Lowry Project at hand is necessarily superior to a reading done by a Lowry contemporary who, even if he or she were an expert at library science, would not be able to even recognize all the allusions as allusions, much less locate them, prior to the advent of electronic indexing. When I spoke to you privately about some of my qualms, they were specific ones, such as how the explication of the term cabron might have been a stretch in that it stuck to the association of goat (the literal meaning) with Greek tragedy because of the use of goat costumes on stage, while it might have been just as helpful to note that it is Mexican slang for "jerk" (except more coarse). I would be interested in your ideas about the difference between annotations that are necessary because of the author's decisions, like with Joyce or Lowry, and those made necessary by the passage of time or cultural differences (Shakespeare, Dante).
I am the last person to believe that any one "school" or movement in lit or art has a "copyright" on any of their themes or methods, nor do I believe these terms are "water-tight" compartments. I think one can always find deviations from their supposed category because the categories are often somewhat arbitrary and rely on chronology and history as much as style and content, and my applying "romantic" as a label was not to claim that it had been miscategorized but to point out how it deviates from the current label; that's not the same thing.
I'm going to post/paste the thoughts I mentioned about the last two chapters in the final thread.
Jim wrote: "This discussion covers Chapter 7 – 9, p. 198 – 282Ch. 7: The happy trio go down to the depot to catch the bus to Tomalín but are way-layed by Laruelle who insists on un apéritif sur la tour. Dis..."
I too thought of those lines of Morrison's.
Mod
They do fit the feeling of the scene, don't they?
And I like the addition of some music to the narrative track.
Ch. 7: The happy trio go down to the depot to catch the bus to Tomalín but are way-layed by Laruelle who insists on un apéritif sur la tour. Disgusted at thoughts of Jacques’ Tab A in Yvonne’s Slot B, Geoffrey slips the waylaid postcard under Laruelle's pillow.
Yvonne’s scorecard: 1
Ch. 8:
“Indians scattered on dawn’s highway bleeding,
Ghosts fill the young child’s fragile eggshell mind.” – J. Morrison
In Lowry’s Mexico, even a bus trip to the next town is a dangerous adventure.
Ch. 9: Yvonne the Terrible trips down memory lane. El toro saunters ‘round the ‘rena ‘til Hugh makes him mooove. Yvonne and Geoffrey, with a little help from the habanero, plot their escape.
To avoid spoilers, please restrict your comments to p. 7 - 282