Malcolm Lowry
posted by mjd 
in Reading | 16 Comments »
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Tim Esaias and I were having a discussion yesterday about this very similar kind of thing, using structure and grammar to imitate that which you are portraying. However, we were discussing Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which–after reading this post–I’ve decided you really need to read. Especially since you pay such close attention to grammar, structure, and style.
If you think it’s tragic now, wait until you get to the end.
Agreed on this point, as well as several of the points in the post.
It’s quite a book. I read it over a year ago, and I’m not sure if “like” is the right word for my feelings about it. I, too, was fascinated by the way he writes, and the Consul’s inner dialogue; also, the book describes the events of one day, but it’s sort of an eternal day. Um. You’ll see when you get to the end.
Hmm, so apparently it is only me who had never heard of this book or the author before.
I’m kind of excited for the end, actually. I know he’s going to die–but who will kill him! Oh, the suspense.
And yeah, I am aware that it is somewhat messed up for me to identify with the poor Consul so much given how hard Lowry works against himself to alienate me with his convoluted prose. But what can I say, I love existentialist brooding.
I haven’t heard of the book. Or the author.
You’re not alone.
Ha! It’s fairly obscure, have no fear. The fact that you and Pantlessjohnny appear to have read/be reading it doubles the number of people whom I know have read it, and that includes myself.
From what I remember, the Consul is a very sympathetic character, and I didn’t find the prose particularly alienating; in fact, I think I found it refreshing. There’s nothing in particular that I disliked about it, either, it’s just the kind of book that doesn’t bow to like or dislike–I had a much more complicated relationship with it than with most books, particularly those in the drab world of modern mainstream publishing. But don’t get me started.
I think I read this book right after I graduated college. One of my favorite cartoonists at the time, Jim Woodring, wrote about it in one of his comic-strips. It’s one of those books that has stuck with me and I think about everyday.
Quotes I copied out at the time:
“I have resisted temptation for two and a half minutes at least; my redemption is sure.”
“It was if, out of an ultimate contamination, he had derived strength.”
“How indeed could he hope to find himself, to begin again when, somewhere, perhaps in one of those lost or broken bottles, in one of those glasses, lay, forever, the solitary clue to his identity?”
Just finished it this morning, sitting out in my garden. I really love the random chaoticness of the ending. The Consul is kind of like a modern day King Lear. He is frickin crazy, damned by his own stubbornness–but also the universe really is mucking him about.
Great!
Did you catch the foreshadowing of the ending in the part where, hm, I think he’s looking at a picture in the library or something? I can’t remember exactly, but I remember there was a painting of a man or men falling down into the abyss, and a woman or women rising into the heavens, and, well. It foreshadows the ending. You probably caught that.
That’s a pretty fascinating Mexico he writes about.
I do remember the moment your talking about, when he’s in Larouelle’s house fuming at him and criticizing his decor–I didn’t think of it at the end, but yeah, now that you mention it I remember.
Something I was wondering about that same scene–Larouelle’s house is architecturally similar to the house “shared” by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, where it was split down the middle and joined by a single catwalk between two towers. And there’s a reference to Rivera in that same chapter. So I wonder if he’s just trying to evoke that relationship for us or if there’s something more there I’m missing.
I’m not sure about the Rivera/Kahlo connection. But talking about this makes me understand why, now that some time has gone by since I read the book, the painting that I described looks, in my imagination, like it was painted by Rivera. It’s very distinct, like I imagined it vividly from his description, but I don’t remember the description, just the image.
NOW I WANT TO GO READ IT AGAIN, DAMN YOU.
…and it was a library copy, too, with a weird black and white cover; not a beer, or anything else, in sight.
Yeah, this is one of those books I keep telling myself I should read again.
If only I had the time…
Exactly. If only I were reading a book instead of the damned internet.
Isn’t the last line something like, “And they threw a dog down on top of him”?
My copy had this Diego Riviera bar interior/Day of the Dead type picture on the cover. There was a man in a suit drinking while devils and peasants crowd in all around him.
Yeah. The last line before the coda is “Somebody threw a dead dog after him down the ravine.” Which Lowry kind of sets up from the beginning, actually, in the eerie repetition with which he keeps mentioning the abundance of stray dogs in the town: “pariah dogs”.
Your copy’s cover is way more kickass than mine. Not that I am particularly surprised, what with your superior, master angler’s eye for book bin shopping. My copy is just blue with gold writing and a hint of a Maya stonecarving around the border. At least it’s not the annoying modern Perennial Classics edition with the ethereal beer glass in the sky.
That sounds like an extraordinarily appropriate cover.
Right, I forgot about the dog. Meanwhile, there’s the horse, too, implicated in Yvonne’s destruction (right? Is my memory correct?). There’s probably some metaphor there. Dogs, horses…