Under the Volcano (Penguin Modern Classics)

Loading up the syllabus in may feed an instructor’s ego…but does it serve the student or text? My reading list for “The Psychological Novel” remains amusing and alarming. Can anyone really come to terms with Mrs. Dalloway and Ulysses in one semester? I didn’t and won’t pretend that I do now.

Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano is probably on many summer reading lists or will be come fall semester. No doubt the 1947 novel was one of my “Psychological” readings that sophomore year because it was an easy fit. Just as it was for Clarissa Dalloway and Leopold Bloom, Volcano is a day in the life of Geoffrey “the Counsel” Firmin. As in London and Dublin, uneasiness hovers over Quauhnahuac, Mexico, which is magnified tenfold because it is The Day of the Dead. Social gatherings of varying success are prominent in all three. Similarly to Woolf and Joyce, Lowry’s literary and historic references can fill pages of an essay, exam, final project, or lexicon. Then there is the autobiographical appeal: The Counsel’s alcoholism didn’t require research on his creator’s part because it eventually killed him. Woolf’s mental illness and Joyce’s ego were equally destructive.

Since my unsatisfactory reading, Under the Volcano became something more than an English department convenience. In 1984 John Houston directed a definitive film version of Volcano (http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=410). The novel also appeared on “100 Best Books of the Twentieth Century” lists by, among others, The Modern Library (http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html) and Time (http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html). The author’s scarce output was anthologized in 2007 by NYR Books in The Voyage that Never Ends (http://www.nybooks.com/nyrb/book-search?q=malcolm+lowry.).

I didn’t need a movie or list to know that I missed something. The time was right to go back to Under the Volcano. I’m glad I did. Anyone who remembers every detail of a “memorable” bad day will relate to Volcano.

The easy comparisons are all there but there is more. Under the Volcano takes place over 24 hours but is not a fast read. Otherwise, Lowry’s masterly time shifts would be missed and his characters’ interior monologues unappreciated. The “old” and “new” worlds bisecting in 1938 Mexico becomes a metaphor for the nuclear age, which Lowry thoroughly constructs. The Counsel, his wife Yvonne, half brother Hugh, and best friend Jacques are hateful – but you’ll want to know more about them than the author generously provides.

Lowry’s many references are ironic; I had to look up a few to appreciate his gallows humor. They also appear on almost every page and grow tedious. However there are two worth mentioning because they are of personal interest. The Counsel is keenly interested in the Faust legend, putting Lowry in the same 20th century literary company as Thomas Mann and Boris Pasternack. Bad things or feelings surface when a horse appears. Almost every Andre Tarkovsky film has horses symbolizing a conflicted world.

Mann or Pasternack came long after college. So did seeing and loving Tarkovksy’s films. I don’t know if rushing through difficult texts in the classroom is a good idea: it depends on the instructor and the enthusiasm of each student. Still, if those four years are supposed to set up the future, then re-reading Under the Volcano is the valuable lesson it was originally intended to be.