Week 20/21: Lowry and genetic criticism tangents
Malcolm Lowry
Late of the Bowery
His prose was flowery
And often glowery
He lived, nightly, and drank, daily,
And died playing the ukelele.
(from 'Epitaph')
Links:
An in-depth look at the novel here, some trivia questions here,, and another, more serious study here. And, of course, Chris Ackerley's site here.
From a biography:
Lowry lived in London and then in Paris until 1935. He travelled to Spain with Aiken and met there the American writer Jan Gabrial. They married in 1934 and moved in 1935 to the United States. He spent some time in the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital in New York City. After writing the novel LUNAR CAUSTIC, publishded posthumously in 1958, he went to Mexico, which became the settings of Under the Volcano. In Cuernavaca and the nearby volcanoes he found the perfect landscape for his novel. The snowy peak of Popocatepetl was for him a symbol of aspiration, and the deep woods in the surroundings formed the opposite, lower depths.
In Oaxaca Lowry was thrown into a jail-he was considered a Spanish spy. Once he forgot the first draft of his manuscript in a bar. By the time Lowry left Mexico, his first marriage was in ruins. Later, in her book Inside the Volcano (2000), Jan Gabrial wrote that "He would drink anything. I had thrown out the rubbing alcohol I'd used to massage his back, but he gulped the contents of a bottle he thought contained hair tonic but which Josefina had refilled with cooking oil..." His second wife, the novelist Margerie Bonner, Lowry met in Los Angeles. He moved in 1939 to Dollarton, British Columbia, where he built for himself and for his wife a squatters shack to live. The hut burned down in 1944, but Margerie Bonner managed to save his manuscript from the fire.
After a short visit to Mexico in 1945, the Lowrys returned to Canada, where they stayed until 1954, then moving to England. During his last years Lowry planned a modern, "drunken Divine Comedy," a sequence of seven novels built around Under the Volcano, titled The Voyage That Never Ends. He had already written the "Purgatory" part, "Paradise" had been destroyed in the fire. Simultaneously Lowry worked on a number of manuscripts, unable to bring his plans to completion. Under the Volcano was for a short time on a best-seller list in the United States, but according to the author, the book sold in Canada only two copies. In France is was a critical success and hailed immediately as a classic.
"Neurosis, of one kind and another, is stamped on almost every word he writes, both neurosis and a kind of fierce health. Perhaps his tragedy is that he is the only normal writer left on earth and it is this that adds to his isolation and so to his sense of guilt." (from Hear Us O Lord heaven thy dwelling place, 1962)
By 1940 Lowry had written an early, unpublishable edition of Under the Volcano. He had sent it to his agent Harold Matson, but after twelve publishers had rejected the manuscript Matson returned it. The next five years he spent rewriting and deepening the magical and mythical elements, especially after meeting a Cabbalist, Charles Stansfield-Jones, spiritual son of Alesteir Crowley. The novel went through innumerable revisions, many with Margerie Lowry's help, and was eventually published by Jonathan Cape ten years after the author started to work on it.
Apparently, Lowry wrote countless revisions of Under the Volcano (hereafter Volcano) - I'd love to get a copy of [Asals, Frederick. The Making of Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1998.] - the author has assembled a kind of ur-text of the novel, based on notebooks and previous versions of the book.
Textual evolution is fascinating stuff - it's like recreating the thought processes that led to the construction of the text - as annotation mediates between the author and reader, study of textual evolution could potentially get closer to the author's true intentions for the text. Leaving aside the intentions of the text for a moment, textual history, using the "avante-texte" (correspondences, notes, sketches, drafts, manuscripts and proofs), can give an intelligent reader a greater glimpse into what was actually going on...
But isn't that what English study is all about? Well, scholars use letters and manuscripts and proofs et al frequently, but separately. I think that's what is key - genetic criticism seems to aim at framing a text in a precise context, but a context where the 'final' text isn't the main point - it's the revisions and the writing process itself...
For Lowry, though, I think what it does it remove the myth of him as a drunk who managed to pull together the pieces of a messy book into a readable work, and actually acknowledge his writing skills and obvious passion for both the book and the act of writing.
Late of the Bowery
His prose was flowery
And often glowery
He lived, nightly, and drank, daily,
And died playing the ukelele.
(from 'Epitaph')
Links:
An in-depth look at the novel here, some trivia questions here,, and another, more serious study here. And, of course, Chris Ackerley's site here.
From a biography:
Lowry lived in London and then in Paris until 1935. He travelled to Spain with Aiken and met there the American writer Jan Gabrial. They married in 1934 and moved in 1935 to the United States. He spent some time in the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital in New York City. After writing the novel LUNAR CAUSTIC, publishded posthumously in 1958, he went to Mexico, which became the settings of Under the Volcano. In Cuernavaca and the nearby volcanoes he found the perfect landscape for his novel. The snowy peak of Popocatepetl was for him a symbol of aspiration, and the deep woods in the surroundings formed the opposite, lower depths.
In Oaxaca Lowry was thrown into a jail-he was considered a Spanish spy. Once he forgot the first draft of his manuscript in a bar. By the time Lowry left Mexico, his first marriage was in ruins. Later, in her book Inside the Volcano (2000), Jan Gabrial wrote that "He would drink anything. I had thrown out the rubbing alcohol I'd used to massage his back, but he gulped the contents of a bottle he thought contained hair tonic but which Josefina had refilled with cooking oil..." His second wife, the novelist Margerie Bonner, Lowry met in Los Angeles. He moved in 1939 to Dollarton, British Columbia, where he built for himself and for his wife a squatters shack to live. The hut burned down in 1944, but Margerie Bonner managed to save his manuscript from the fire.
After a short visit to Mexico in 1945, the Lowrys returned to Canada, where they stayed until 1954, then moving to England. During his last years Lowry planned a modern, "drunken Divine Comedy," a sequence of seven novels built around Under the Volcano, titled The Voyage That Never Ends. He had already written the "Purgatory" part, "Paradise" had been destroyed in the fire. Simultaneously Lowry worked on a number of manuscripts, unable to bring his plans to completion. Under the Volcano was for a short time on a best-seller list in the United States, but according to the author, the book sold in Canada only two copies. In France is was a critical success and hailed immediately as a classic.
"Neurosis, of one kind and another, is stamped on almost every word he writes, both neurosis and a kind of fierce health. Perhaps his tragedy is that he is the only normal writer left on earth and it is this that adds to his isolation and so to his sense of guilt." (from Hear Us O Lord heaven thy dwelling place, 1962)
By 1940 Lowry had written an early, unpublishable edition of Under the Volcano. He had sent it to his agent Harold Matson, but after twelve publishers had rejected the manuscript Matson returned it. The next five years he spent rewriting and deepening the magical and mythical elements, especially after meeting a Cabbalist, Charles Stansfield-Jones, spiritual son of Alesteir Crowley. The novel went through innumerable revisions, many with Margerie Lowry's help, and was eventually published by Jonathan Cape ten years after the author started to work on it.
Apparently, Lowry wrote countless revisions of Under the Volcano (hereafter Volcano) - I'd love to get a copy of [Asals, Frederick. The Making of Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1998.] - the author has assembled a kind of ur-text of the novel, based on notebooks and previous versions of the book.
Textual evolution is fascinating stuff - it's like recreating the thought processes that led to the construction of the text - as annotation mediates between the author and reader, study of textual evolution could potentially get closer to the author's true intentions for the text. Leaving aside the intentions of the text for a moment, textual history, using the "avante-texte" (correspondences, notes, sketches, drafts, manuscripts and proofs), can give an intelligent reader a greater glimpse into what was actually going on...
But isn't that what English study is all about? Well, scholars use letters and manuscripts and proofs et al frequently, but separately. I think that's what is key - genetic criticism seems to aim at framing a text in a precise context, but a context where the 'final' text isn't the main point - it's the revisions and the writing process itself...
For Lowry, though, I think what it does it remove the myth of him as a drunk who managed to pull together the pieces of a messy book into a readable work, and actually acknowledge his writing skills and obvious passion for both the book and the act of writing.
posted by David | 5:27 PM
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