Read-along – Malcolm Lowry

1909-1957

Dear Volcano readers,

Our real-time read-along of Under the Volcano is taking place next Friday 1 and Saturday 2 November. All the details are here.

In the meantime, here is a brief biography of Malcolm Lowry.

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Lowry was born on the Wirral in 1909 and went to sea after finishing school, working as a deckhand and coal-trimmer on a ship bound for the Far East, an experience that became the subject of his first novel, Ultramarine (1933).

Ultramarine (1933), first edition

After barely graduating from Cambridge University, he moved to Paris, where he married his first wife, and then to New York, where he concentrated on literature and drinking alcohol, having arrived, according to legend, with just one football boot and a copy of Moby-Dick.

Malcolm Lowry aged 27, with his first wife Jan Gabrial (1936)

In 1936 he travelled to Mexico, where he drank mescal and his marriage dissolved. He wound up in British Columbia, where he married again and lived in a squatter’s shack on the beach outside Vancouver.

Under the Volcano (1947), first edition

After the shack burned down, Lowry travelled the world. He wrote an unfinished novel and several short stories about a character called Sigbjørn Wilderness, a ‘drunk of gargantuan proportions’, a writer who can’t write.

He had a vision of all his writings eventually forming a semi-autobiographical magnum opus under the title The Voyage That Never Ends, with Under the Volcano as the centrepiece.

Lowry aged 37 (1946)

Sadly he choked to death in his sleep, at the age of forty-seven, two years after returning to England.

He wrote his own poetic epitaph, which was not inscribed on his gravestone in Ripe, East Sussex:

Malcolm Lowry, Late of the Bowery, His prose was flowery And often glowery, He lived, nightly, and drank, daily, And died playing the ukulele.

Volcano (1976), dir. Donald Brittain

In 1976 he was the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary by the Canadian filmmaker Donald Brittain: Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry. You can watch it here.

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What else should we say about Lowry before we read Under the Volcano? Please do share any comments below.

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Also, as promised, for those who are planning to drink along to Under the Volcano, here is the drinking schedule.

For the drink-along, you will require: anisette, Scotch whisky, sweet quince wine,¹ Irish whiskey, mescal, dark German beer, tequila, Mexican lager, gin, vermouth and habanero.²

As I say, I do not intend to match Geoffrey Firmin’s quantities of the following and I wouldn’t advise it . . .

Friday, sunset an anisette at the Hotel Casino de la Selva [this drink is for completists only because Chapter 1 is in a different time-frame]

Saturday, 7 a.m. a ‘long shuddering’ whisky at the Bella Vista bar

7.30 a few slugs of sweet quince wine in a small shop on Calle Tierra del Fuego

9 a.m. a ‘long draught’ of Burke’s Irish whiskey on Calle Nicaragua

9.45 half a tumbler of mescal and a ‘fierce’ drink of Johnnie Walker

10am a foaming tankard of dark German beer [again, only for completists – this is a memory]

10.30 a long, deep drink from the tequila bottle

11.30 at least two bottles of Carta Blanca beer

12.30 ‘a stiff drink’ from a bathroom toothmug, and then another

1.30 one cocktail, the remains of three others and the rest of the shaker at Jacques’s house

1.50 two glasses of tequila at the Paris Café

2.10 three glasses of tequila at the Terminal Cantina El Bosque

3.15 a ‘short drink’ of habanero on the bus to Tomalin

3.45 the rest of the bottle of habanero at Arena Tomalin

4.30 two ‘small mescals’ and at least one beer at the Salón Ofélia in Tomalin

6 p.m. six mescals, the rest of bottle, two more mescals, and then ‘everything in sight’ at El Farolito, Parián

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If you’re not planning to read Under the Volcano, you can choose to opt out of our Malcolm Lowry conversation. Just follow this link to your settings and, under Notifications, slide the toggle next to ‘Under the Volcano’. A grey toggle means you will not receive emails relating to this title.

1. I couldn’t find quince wine, so I’ve found some pear dessert wine instead.

2. I have Ancho Reyes, another chili liqueur.