W L HISTORY briefly reconciled. They moved from New York, first to Los Angeles, and then to Cuernavaca in Mexico where they tried to salvage their marriage. They failed, however, and in late 1937, having been offered a job by a friend’ s agency in Hollywood, Jan finally left him in Oaxaca, south of Mexico City. They were divorced and never saw each other again.
Lowry continued drinking heavily: it can’ t have helped his mood that the main traditional festival in Oaxaca, celebrated at the beginning of November, is Dia de los Muertos( the Day of the Dead). His behaviour became so erratic that at one time he was suspected of being a Spanish spy and thrown into jail. Eventually he was released and deported, after which he returned to Los Angeles.
Most of Lowry’ s time in Mexico had been painful and disturbed, yet it was not without inspiration and insight. His pain and deep despair became the raw material of what was to be his literary masterpiece,“ Under the Volcano”, which he had begun writing in an on-and-off way in 1936. He wrote and rewrote the book three times, but he was still unable to find a publisher.
Shortly after arriving in California, Lowry met and fell for an American former child-star of silent films and aspiring writer, Margerie Donner. When Lowry’ s American visa expired he moved across the border into Canada and Margerie went with him. They were married on 2nd December 1940. For nearly fifteen years they lived in a squatter’ s cabin that they built themselves, on the stony beach at Dollarton on the Durrard Inlet near Vancouver on the West coast. The cabin burned down in 1944 and the manuscript of a third novel,“ In Ballast to the White Sea” was destroyed although other works in progress were saved. After some time living with friends, they returned to Burrard Inlet and rebuilt the cabin on the beach. They time that Malcolm and Margerie spent there was probably the closest that he ever came to being settled and content.
It was not until 1947 that“ Under the Volcano” was published, to great acclaim. It is the story of Geoffrey Firmin, the alcoholic British Consul in Quauhnahuac on the Dia de los Muertos in 1938. His alcoholism has overshadowed his whole life.( The reader may well conclude that there is a large element of
autobiography in the book). Firmin’ s wife, Yvonne, arrives in the town to rescue both him and their failing marriage. She has been inspired by a vision of how their life together could be away from Mexico and the circumstances that have driven their relationship to the brink of collapse.
However, Yvonne’ s mission to save her husband from himself is further complicated by the presence in Quauhnahuac of Hugh, Geoffrey’ s half-brother, and Jacques, a childhood friend. The elements of just one day unfold against a backdrop that powerfully evokes a Mexico that is both magical and diabolical. It ends with Firmin’ s murder and the contemptuous disposal of his body – and a dead dog after him – in a ravine.
“ Under the Volcano” is one of the most searing and yet poetic descriptions of the human condition and one man’ s struggle against the elemental forces threatening to destroy him. Lowry’ s tragedy and triumph was that, without his own demons and addiction to heavy drinking, it is impossible to imagine that he could have ever written such an unforgettable book.
His own death came on the night of 26th-27th June 1957, at the age of 47. He and Margerie had left Canada for England in 1954. On that June night, after they had quarrelled, he apparently overdosed on a mixture of gin and barbiturates and collapsed on the floor of the cottage in Ripe, East Sussex, where they were then living. Although there were rumours that Lowry had committed suicide, in an interview in 1975, Jan Gabriel said,“ His own experience, his own actions, fascinated him as much as anyone else. So everything went down [ on paper ]. So […] there is no way that I can conceive of Malc committing suicide without there being […] copious notes, letters, something to indicate why. He was not a man to slip away quietly into the night”.
An inquest returned a verdict of“ Death by misadventure”. Lowry himself had presciently written,“ The agonies of the drunkard find their most accurate poetic analogue in the agonies of the mystic who has abused his powers.”
Writing in“ The Guardian” in 2007, the poet John Hartley Williams said, [“ Under the Volcano”] for me at any rate, remains the single most potent novel of the 20th century.
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