Was it an achievement to wake up in a dive in El Paso and see the bartender [Carlos?] pulling up the shutters to let in urine-yellow light, which tumbled through the window and fell on the floor, relieving it of its uniform blue-black colour and revealing its true horrifying state? He rather thought it might be. Or perhaps the achievement was to wake up at all. Una cerveza, Señor? Carlos had taken his place behind the bar. [P] yawned, or grimaced. ‘Ah, what? A beer? Sí. Why not, eh?’ Sí? ‘Yes. It’s…’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s…’ His watch had stopped. ‘Say, what time is it?’ Que? ‘Ah, no Ingles? Never mind. Yes, si, un cerv…no, una tequila, por favor.’ Carlos produced a bottle of tequila. Pequeño? ‘No. Grande.’ Carlos poured a large shot. [P] got up from the sofa on which he had slept and joined Carlos at the bar, lowering himself onto a stool with exaggerated care and precision, as though he were disarming a bomb. ‘Cheers!’ he smiled, and drained his glass. ‘Last night…’ he started, but trailed off, for the bartender’s face had suddenly taken on a vibrant, fiery red colour. ‘Here, you’re looking rather red, Carlos. Your skin, I mean. Your head, Carlos, I hate to tell you, is on fire.’ Carlos stood impassive, despite the unmistakable flames rising from his head and hands and arms; indeed, he was so impassive that [P] wondered if it was, in fact, his own eyes that were on fire instead. He was about to give voice to this alternative theory, when the bartender disappeared, or perhaps ducked down to rummage under the bar, before reappearing, sans flames, with a book in his hand. Silently, he placed in front of [P] a worn Penguin paperback, the cover of which featured a horrible laughing skull. ‘Ah, oh, this is for me, is it? Under the Volcano. Gracias. A favourite of mine, I think. Another tequilas, por favor. Grande. It’s rather appropriate, you know – the book, I mean – Cheers! – what with us being in this bar here and it – the book – being about a man who likes a drink – too much, I guess you’d say – a man who, if we’re being honest, Carlos, is an alcoholic. Geoffrey Firmin.’ ¿Tienes un problema con la bebida? [P] could not with any certainty say whether this question had come from Carlos or from somewhere else, the vulture perhaps, for there was a vulture now, sitting at the end of the bar. ‘I regularly come across incredible, inspiring stories about people who have an immense desire to survive, or succeed, or make the most of their time on earth; these are the kind of people who no matter how tough life gets are prepared to stare it down and bring it to heel. I admire these people; I want to make that clear, you know.’ He couldn’t, either, say whether he was actually talking to the vulture or Carlos himself. ‘Yet for every one of that sort, for every fighter, there is another who has meekly fallen by the wayside, and is incapable, or unwilling, to pick themselves up. Like Geoffrey Firmin, I mean.’ The vulture stared at him, blankly, with eyes like well-polished snooker balls. ‘Some people fail rather badly at life, you know. Vida es dura. When I was younger, only when I was younger, mind you, there was a period, following a break up, when I lost myself in London, when I quit my job, took up smoking, drink, and drugs and generally gave the impression of being unlikely to make it through the next twelve months. Now that I have pulled through – I have pulled through, you know – I feel a strange sort of affection for those times, and that me, as though that version of myself is my naughty, errant, unruly son.’ El libro, Señor. ‘Yes, of course.’ [P] heaved a sigh and raised his glass almost in supplication. Grande. ‘Excelente.’ I’ve seen it written numerous times, he thought or spoke, he could no longer tell the difference, that the opening chapter is difficult or hard-going – which is not always the same thing – or simply slow and uninvolving. The general idea is that the book takes some time to warm up, and that the first 50 or so pages may put readers off. I find this more than a little surprising – sorprendente, you know – for I consider the first chapter to be not only the novel’s high-point – which is not to say the rest is poor – but one of the finest opening chapters ever published. Está babeando Señor. ‘Under the Volcano begins with Jacques and Dr. Vigil talking about Ex-British Consul, Geoffrey Firmin, who, we find out, is dead. It has, in fact, been one year to the day since his death.’ Carlos wiped down the bar. Una grande, por favor. ‘Rather than spoiling the rest of the book, or sucking the tension out of the story to follow, this way of approaching things actually increases the tension, draws you in, you know. To know about Firmin’s unhappy demise in advance means that the next 300 pages are imbued with a kind of hopelessness or terrible inevitability.’ Esto es el buitre, Señor? ‘Moreover, you are impelled to read on, because you want to find out what exactly happened to this apparently tragic figure, why, when it seemed as though he had got what he wanted with the return of his ex-wife, he still could not endure.’ The atmosphere is one of nostalgia, of looking back with tenderness and regret and confusion; it’s extraordinarily powerful stuff, like this tequila, amigo. There is also something eerie about it; Jacques is, as he wanders around the Mexican town where he and Geoffrey and Yvonne lived, chasing a ghost…he sees Firmin everywhere, in almost everything; he hears him in cantinas, and actually ends up with a letter he wrote that…I was reminded of Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Paramo, you know. As with that book there is a sense that Jacques is in hell, where strange apparitions – like the drunk man on horseback – and unsettling noises – coming, as I recall, from the mourners – and weird creatures – those birds that look like long insects, remember? – and devilish imagery abound. Jacques’ Mexico is, like a hangover, like hell, a kind of labyrinth, Carlos; there is a sense of walking and not getting anywhere….of going round in circles…and the weather is extreme…or unpredictable… lightning, you know. Por favor. Despierta, Senor! O let him sleep, Carlos. ‘What follows is a day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin. The last day, you know. Geoffrey is…’ Grande? ‘He’s, yes, monumental, you know. Like Ahab, or Lear. Unforgettable; supersized. He is, however, often self-pitying. How do you say, autocompasión? He’s a drunk though, of course. Muy borracho. He’s an extraordinary creation, absolutamente believable….lying to himself and lying to others…hiding tequila – yes, si, grande, por favor – in the garden…swinging abruptly between delusion and clear-sightedness….’ [P] stopped, for he noticed that one of the photographs behind the bar was actually of himself, and appeared to be moving and speaking, albeit silently. ‘Firmin pushes Yvonne, his ex-wife, who has returned, away,’ he continued, looking down, imploringly, at his glass of tequila, ‘pushes her away although he had prayed for her return; because alcoholics, people in general, you know, are proud and stubborn, are, I think, certainly in Geoffrey’s case, often unable to do what is best for themselves. Firmin is hurting himself, punishing himself, out of a kind of guilt, perhaps. You could say, I do say, that Under the Volcano is the most complete, most annihilating, most honest novel ever written about addiction. Hell surrounds the Consul too, by the way; those pariah dogs that follow him? The demons he converses with? We speak metaphorically of demons, you know, as in he had his demons, sí? but these are real demons, or real visions anyway. Life is hell, alcoholism or addiction is hell, I guess is the point; Lowry emphasises this by dropping his characters into what appears to be a genuine hell.’ Sweat showed on [P]’s brow, beads as big as golf balls, as though he had been playing a sport more aerobic than golf. ‘The world, Carlos, the word of Under the Volcano, by which I mean the 1930’s, of course, but our world too, amigo, is seemingly bent of destruction, is perhaps coming to an end, what with the war, Hitler’s war, a world war around the corner, and other wars too, already in progress, civil war in Spain, for example. The world, Carlos, is fucked, just as Geoffrey is fucked; the two mirror each other. That was intentional, of course.’ [P]’s head shuddered and rattled, his stomach leaped and dropped, as though he was undergoing complicated and painful dental surgery while riding a rollercoaster. Estás bien, amigo? Si, es nada. She is weak, the ex-wife; she comes back, after all. No tough love, Carlos; she is almost an enabler. Does she return out of a sense of guilt, as he – the Consul – destroys due to his? Si. A relationship-in-crisis novel of the highest order. Are you married, Carlos? Fumbling, awkward, wanting to say something nice or important or something that will bring a reconciliation, but being unable to. Striving towards each other, but never touching. And Hugh? He is muy interesante. A dilettante: a failed songwriter, seaman, journalist; a would-be hero. What links all three of these people – Hugh, Geoffrey, Yvonne – is a feeling of disappointment, or disillusionment, an awareness of not having got out of life what they wanted or expected. ‘A drink, Carlos, for Christ’s sake. Tequila, por favor!’ The bartender filled [P]’s glass and left the bottle. For the first time he was aware that the bar, apart from Carlos and the vulture, and the vulture, if truth be told, was asleep, was empty. El negocio es malo, Señor. A thin voice through a black cloud. And then: ‘The style, amigo, is possibly most impressive of all. Stream of consciousness, they call it, don’t they? Fishing from Joyce’s stream, usually. Lowry too, I’d say, was handy with a rod, but he did something new, something stunning with what he dredged up, especially in relation to Geoff, because he nails it, the feeling, the mind-set, of being muy borracho, so that you too feel intoxicated while you read…the sudden shifts of perspective and mood…the queasiness…the confusion of not always being sure of who is speaking, or whether the person speaking actually exists or is a hallucination…Geoff falling over in the middle of the road, his train of thought unbroken, so that it – the revelation, also in thought – is sudden and shocking, as though you yourself have fallen. A polluted stream; a diseased consciousness. There’s nothing else like it in literature, amigo.’ [P] felt tears come smarting to his eyes.‘Yes, some of the sentences are disgraceful, some even Faulkner would have rewritten; and, si, it is occasionally overwrought and unsubtle – the rock broken in two is a bit too in your face, you know – but to pick faults, to flaw-find, is a kind of ingratitude, like complaining that your wife has put on her best underwear for you, but forgotten to remove the tag.’ Memories assailed [P], awful memories suddenly leaped at him, like a gang of masked men in a dark alleyway. Go to the doctor’s, Greg had said, just don’t tell him everything. Or was that Carlos speaking? On a bus at 3a.m., travelling back to some girl’s place; both of you weeping heavily; she in sympathy; you…?. ‘Cinematic,’ he continued, in order to drive these unwelcome memories away, ‘it is the most cinematic novel I’ve ever come across, amigo. You see it, rather than read it. When you’re not inside someone’s head it feels as though Lowry is directing you – look here, look there, follow me down this road, around that corner.’ Estás cansado, Señor. Yes, Carlos, si. Una…the bar came up to meet his face, in a non-too-friendly fashion…’…is funny too,‘ he found himself saying, perhaps, ‘muy muy divertido. So many laugh-out-loud lines, like when it is said of the Consul that No one could tell when he was drunk. True he might lie down in the street, if need be, like a gentleman. This, maybe more than anything else, proves what a great writer Lowry was, that he was able to draw humour out of what is such an intense, unhappy subject; because life is funny, you know. Horrible too, obviously, but always humorous, absurd.’¿lloras? [P] could hear a sharp, loud buzzing, that, after a few moments, he realised was the sound of his own body shaking. Symbolism, he tried to say, is rife, on every page…the dying indian, the man in the devil mask, the bull in the arena….and the volcanos…two, like Geoff and Yvonne, but permanent, unlike them; explosive, destructive….’ For the first time he noticed the small copper-coloured scorpion at the bottom of the tequila bottle, encased in liquid amber. Is it dead, he asked himself, or really, really drunk? Muy borracho. Poor thing. He remembered once, at eighteen, drinking a pint of tequila, and nearly dying. He woke up almost twenty-four hours later, still drunk, in a room he didn’t recognise. ‘A masterpiece!’ he shouted, then fell off the bar stool; and the scorpion, through an amber haze, surveyed the scene: is he dead, it asked itself, or really, really drunk? The vulture, awake now, laughed cruelly. ja ja ja ja ja ja.
Disappointing, but CompellingI found it nearly impossible to care about the characters or the story (such as it was), but somehow, I couldn't stop reading this for some reason. The story is also very difficult to piece together. The book tells the story of alcholic British consul Geoffrey Firmin. It mainly consists of his drunken rantings, thoughts, and hallucinations, although there are also portions of the book told from the point of view of his ex-wife, beautiful former child film star Yvonne Constable, Geoffrey's brother, Hugh, and Jacques Laruelle, a French film director and boyhood friend of Geoffrey's.The story follows Geoffrey (and the other three main characters) on the day of the dead, November 2, 1938, in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac, where he lives. The title comes from the twin volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, which overlook the town.It's tough to care about Geoffrey. Like many alcoholics, he is narcissistic, cruel, vain, pompous, self-deluding, and full of delusions of grandeur. He keeps pushing Yvonne away, even though she clearly loves him. He seems to be incapable (and even terrified) of love, except in moments here and there. He loves only his Mezcal. The roots of his alcoholism are unclear, although perhaps his father's abandonment of his family in India were the start of it. Geoffrey becomes a young poet. When Geoffrey and Hugh are adopted by a British family, the Taskersons, a hard drinking lot, Geoffrey certainly learned to imbibe a lot of alcohol. Geoffrey's alcholism also may have been exacerbated by his World War I naval career in which he captured a German Q-boat and the German officers were burned alive in the boiler by his men. He was court martialed and then decorated. Apparently he was given the job of Mexican consul to get him out of the way. The most interesting thing about Geoffrey is his library of occult books. He seems to have had an interest in mysticism and Kabbalah at one time. He's been supposedly working on a book, but he appears to have made no progress on it. Geoffrey's only true love is mezcal. Mezcal is currently his life and his work as well.Yvonne has apparently had an affair with Hugh, and possibly with Jacques as well. For some inexplicable reason she still loves Geoffrey, although they are divorced and she hasn't heard from him since the divorce. She has returned to Mexico to get him back. Hugh is actually more interesting than Geoffrey. He's been to sea, and worked as a journalist--including in the Spanish Civil War-- as a cowboy, and as a singer-songwriter. He might be a former Communist sympathizer. He has a better relationship with Yvonne than Geoffrey does. He had Jewish friends at one time, but may have become a bit anti-Semitic as a result of being mistreated by a Jewish music publisher in London, who printed his songs but never bothered to publicize or distribute them. To exact revenge, Hugh has an affair with the man's wife. The music publisher threatens to haul Hugh into court for wrecking his marriage and plagiarizing American songs. Then, inexplicably, the publisher withdraws the legal charges.Jacques Laruelle, of whom we learn little, is about to leave Mexico. Yvonne may have acted in one of his movies.The story is very difficult to follow, as it is rendered mainly through Geoffrey's drunken thoughts and speeches.Some of the descriptions of Mexico are beautiful and there are lots of colorful local characters (policemen, bar men, whores, old women, petty criminals, bus drivers, etc.). Some of the renderings of local Spanish language film marquees and shop signs lend authenticity too (although it seemed to me John Lee, the audio reader, was butchering the Spanish. I couldn't be certain, as my own knowledge of Spanish is extremely rudimentary). I thought there was some purple prose as well.I really didn't care for John Lee's audio rendition of this. His French wasn't too good (I can't comment on his Spanish, but it didn't sound authentic either). John Lee is a mixed bag. Sometimes I like his readings (as in "Cloud Atlas") and sometimes I really don't like them, as here. In this case, John Lee's audio narration didn't make the book easier to enjoy. This book is considered a modern masterpiece, but I didn't like it all that much.
Do You like book Under The Volcano (2000)?
“You like this garden? Why is it yours? We evict those who destroy!” -- Under the Volcano, 1947, at 135On the Day of the Dead in 1938, Geoffrey Firmin sits in a bar in Mexico, drunk again on mescal. He has resigned his post as British consul to drink himself to death. “I propose to disintegrate as I please.” (57) This is his final day in the shadow of the volcano.On this day, Mexicans mourn their dead by holding mock funerals by day and partying at night. The early death of the consul’s parents, his court-martial from the navy, and the desertion of his wife last year all cause a great deal of grief in the consul's life: Though my suffering seems senseless I am still in agony. There is no explanation of my life. Please let me believe that all that is not an abominable self-deception. Deliver me from this dreadful tyranny of self. I have sunk low. Let me sink lower still, that I may know the truth. Teach me to love again, to love life. Where is love? Let me truly suffer. Give me back my purity, the knowledge of the Mysteries, that I have betrayed and lost. Let me be truly lonely, that I may honestly pray. Let us be happy again somewhere, if it’s only together, if it’s only out of this terrible world. Destroy the world! (300) Malcolm Lowry writes with lush evocative language in imitation of the riot of exotic vegetation. Each of the twelve chapters offers a different point of view that rotates among the main characters: the consul; his step-brother Hugh; and the consul’s wife Yvonne. Whenever the author uses the consul’s point of view, the story becomes harder to follow (as you would expect from a drunken man), and the consul's repeated hallucinations make it difficult to discern between reality and fantasy. One year earlier Yvonne left the consul, but today she has returned, proclaiming that she is there to save him. Yet, Yvonne spends most of her day with the consul’s half-brother, Hugh, who dreams of fighting in the Spanish Civil War, while the consul drinks mescal. In addition to alcoholism, the consul suffers from acedia, spiritual despair. “Without you I am cast out, severed. I am an outcast from myself, a shadow.”(379) Is he speaking of his wife Yvonne or of God? (379) Author Malcom Lowry, an alcoholic who died of an overdose at age 47, wrote that his novel was "principally concerned with the guilt of man, with his remorse, with his ceaseless struggling toward the light under the weight of the past, and with his doom." The air is stagnant and drips with portent. This novel is set one year before the outbreak of the Second World War, which metaphorically is the volcano under the shadow of which the town now lives. The drunkenness of the consul is symbolic of the drunkenness of human beings stumbling toward their destruction. “What was life but a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn? Revolution rages too in the tierra caliente of each human soul. No peace but that must pay full toll to hell.” (113)The novel has a strong sense of place regarding Quahnahuac (Cuernavaca)in south central Mexico which is traversed by mountains, valleys, plateaus, jungles and volcanos. “Wherever you turned an abyss was waiting for you around the corner.”(16) A plunging ravine, which reminds us of Dante’s Malebolge, features prominently in the novel’s landscape and plot. The ravines are rich with symbolism that will challenge the reader. “Read history! Go back a thousand years. What is the use of interfering with its worthless stupid course? Like a barranca, a ravine, choked up with refuse, that winds through the ages and peters out.” (323) Another challenge for astute readers will be the rich intertextuality and references to Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, and Baudelaire to name a few. Sophisticated readers agree that "Under the Volcano" is one of the finest novels written during the 20th Century. Though Lowry is not a household name like some of his contemporaries, The Modern Library ranked this the 11th Best Novel in English in the 20th Century and Time Magazine ranked it in the Time 100 Greatest Novels.Can the life and death of this shipwreck of a man somehow be turned into an affirmation of value? Says the consul: “to an Englishman it’s such terribly bad form to be a bona fide martyr.” (341) However, Lowry may have had a different idea if we are to judge by one of the book's epigraphs from Goethe: “Whoever unceasingly strives upward…him can we save.”December 19, 2012
—Steve Sckenda
"Collapse of man and ...civilization" is a great distillation. Then there was his own collapse. Quite a colorful character. You womderful photo makes him look like a mad visionary.This book had a lot of surprises for me, sort of like a cross between Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy, with a touch of Graham Green and Woolf.
—Lyn
This is an influential book; Bolano opens The Savage Detectives with an epigraph from it. Under the Volcano isn’t just a book about a drunk and a record of his drunken ramblings. Our protagonist, the British Consul, Geoffrey Firmin is not a classic hero in the Hemingway mould; craggy and square-jawed. Nor is he drowning his sorrows. His primary relationship is not with Yvonne, his estranged wife, but with alcohol.There are oceans of allusions and references here; the book is packed with them. The Faust myth was there in abundance with references to Goethe and Marlowe. The fall from grace myth also takes us to Paradise Lost. Dante’s Inferno is the backdrop to some of the more hellish descriptions. However the allusions that interest me relate to John Bunyan, I was brought up with Bunyan; “Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners” has an epigraph and it has been pointed out that Under the Volcano is a sort of Pilgrims Progress in reverse; although there is a redemptive theme. There are equivalent companions related to those who journeyed with Pilgrim at various points. That’s a line I would like to consider if I re-read; particularly the feeling of being enmeshed/tangled.The numbers are also important; the novel takes place on the Day of the Dead one year apart; there are 12 chapters; signifying 12 hours and 12 months. Books have been written about all this and many academic essays produced.It seemed to me that disintegration was one of the underlying themes; the world is beginning to disintegrate. It is 1938 and the world is almost at war. The alcoholic disintegration is also well written; Lowry had some experience of this! Alcoholics who drink long enough and hard enough develop a type of dementia (known as Korsakoff’s syndrome) and some of Firmin’s experiences feel a little like this and his conversation reminds me a little of people I meet with this condition (in structure rather than content). There are also contradictions here; redemption and loss, ascent and descent, identity and annihilation; I could go on. The atmosphere and heat you can cut and it exudes noir film of the 30s and 40s. If I live long enough to read this again I think I will read it with Bunyan to pick up more of the crossovers.
—Paul
