In Ballast to the White Sea (Canadian Literature Collection)
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In Ballast to the White Sea is Malcolm Lowrys most amb...)
In Ballast to the White Sea is Malcolm Lowrys most ambitious work of the mid-1930s. Inspired by his life experience, the novel recounts the story of a Cambridge undergraduate who aspires to be a writer but has come to believe that both his book and, in a sense, his life have already been written. After a fire broke out in Lowrys squatters shack, all that remained of In Ballast to the White Sea were a few sheets of paper. Only decades after Lowrys death did it become known that his first wife, Jan Gabrial, still had a typescript. This scholarly edition presents, for the first time, the once-lost novel. Patrick McCarthys critical introduction offers insight into Lowrys sense of himself while Chris Ackerleys extensive annotations provide important information about Lowrys life and art in an edition that will captivate readers and scholars alike.
('Staring out at the river his agony was like a great lidl...)
'Staring out at the river his agony was like a great lidless eye' In this stark, compelling and greatly autobiographical novella, Malcolm Lowry tells the story of Bill Plantagenet, a piano player and ex-sailor who has lost his band and his mind drinking in New York. As Plantagenet commits himself to a Psychiatric hospital to suffer his recovery, Lowry writes with eloquent ferocity on the delusions of madness, and the true meaning of sanity.
The Voyage That Never Ends: Fictions, Poems, Fragments, Letters
(A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL
Notorious for a misspen...)
A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL
Notorious for a misspent life full of binges, blackouts, and unimaginable bad luck, Malcolm Lowry managed, against every odd, to complete and publish two novels, one of them, Under the Volcano, an indisputable masterpiece. At the time of his death in 1957, Lowry also left behind a great deal of uncollected and unpublished writing: stories, novellas, drafts of novels and revisions of drafts of novels (Lowry was a tireless revisiter and reviserand interrupterof his work), long, impassioned, haunting, beautiful letters overflowing with wordplay and lament, fraught short poems that display a sozzled off-the-cuff inspiration all Lowrys own. Over the years these writings have appeared in various volumes, all long out of print. Here, in The Voyage That Never Ends, the poet, translator, and critic Michael Hofmann has drawn on all this scattered and inaccessible material to assemble the first book that reflects the full range of Lowrys extraordinary and singular achievement.
The result is a revelation. In the lettersacknowledged to be among modern literatures greatestwe encounter a character who was, as contemporaries attested, as spellbinding and lovable as he was self-destructive and infuriating. In the late fictionthe long story Through the Panama, sections of unfinished novels such as Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid, and the little-known La Mordidawe discover a writer who is blazing a path into the unknown and, as he goes, improvising a whole new kind of writing. Lowry had set out to produce a great novel, something to top Under the Volcano, a multivolume epic and intimate tale of purgatorial suffering and ultimate redemption (called, among other things, The Voyage That Never Ends). That book was never to be. What he produced instead was an unprecedented and prophetic blend of fact and fiction, confession and confusion, essay and free play, that looks forward to the work of writers as different as Norman Mailer and William Gass, but is like nothing else. Almost in spite of himself, Lowry succeeded in transforming his disastrous life into an exhilarating art of disaster. The Voyage That Never Ends is a new and indispensable entry into the world of one of the masters of modern literature.
Selected Poems of Malcolm Lowry: City Lights Pocket Poets Number 17 (City Lights Pocket Poets Series)
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While famous for his celebrated novel, Under the Volcan...)
While famous for his celebrated novel, Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry always considered himself a poet. First published in 1962 and long out of print, Selected Poems of Malcolm Lowry is the only comprehensive selection of his poetry to be published, and it remains the perfect introduction to his extensive poetic canon. Edited by Lowry's good friend, renowned Canadian poet Earle Birney, with the assistance of his widow, Margerie Lowry, the selection includes extraordinary poems written during Lowry's stay in Mexico, many of which are closely related to his novel. This new edition includes a "Publisher's Note" from Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
"These poems would be worth keeping in print, if for no other reason, for their illuminations of Under the Volcano: 'See mind's petal / torn from a good tree, but where shall it settle / But in the last darkness and at the end?' Sometimes, as the images of "For Under the Volcano," they become 'palm-of-the-hand' versions of that masterpiece. Lowry is a poet of struggle?with life, and with the creative process. Here are his struggles fruits: guilt, alcoholism, hopeless, self-deriding quest for salvation, which seems to be love, and, above all, self-destruction?but always accomplished with self-knowledge, enriched (in order to further torment itself) with compassion for all the beings that the poet, and us with him, are failing. His words are always sad and often beautiful."William T. Vollman
Malcolm Lowry is best known for his one and only masterpiece, an autobiographical novel entitled Under the Volcano.
Background
He was born in Clarence Malcolm Lowry in Merseyside, England, United Kingdom on July 28, 1909, the fourth son of moderately wealthy parents - Arthur Osborne Lowry and Evelyn Boden Lowry.
His father was a wealthy Liverpool cotton broker who provided Lowry with a conventional English upper-class childhood.
Education
He was sent away to boarding school when he was eight years old and later briefly attended a public school where he wrote poems and stories for the Leys Fortnightly, the school magazine.
He worked as a seaman on a freighter to China before entering Cambridge University.
Lowry was particularly influenced by American writer Conrad Aiken and his 1927 novel, Blue Voyage.
Precipitated by a fan letter, Lowry moved to Boston in the summer of 1929 in order to learn from Aiken.
This apprenticeship financed by Lowry's father.
Lowry was also very interested in the Norwegian writer, Nordahl Grieg, and his dark novel about a young man's adventures at sea entitled The Ship Sails On.
In the fall of 1929, Lowry attempted to placate his parents by enrolling at Cambridge University.
His career as a student was unspectacular.
He remained remote and aloof, spending most of his time working on drafts of his first novel Ultramarine.
In his first term, he was deeply shaken by the suicide death of his roommate, Paul Fitte.
Although the details of their relationship are unclear, Lowry was long haunted by the death.
By the time he graduated from Cambridge in 1932, Lowry had earned a reputation as an excellent writer and a heavy drinker.
Career
Lowry published only two books in his lifetime and was virtually unknown at his death.
Ultramarine, the first of two major works published in Lowry's lifetime, appeared in 1933.
Lowry was 24 years old.
It tells the story of an educated young man, Dad Hilliot, and his psychological and social development during his voyage to the Far East.
Because of his upper-class background and sexual inexperience, Hilliot is rejected and ridiculed by the crew.
Nonetheless, he is able to win their approval, after weeks of loneliness and internal anguish.
The story is supposedly based on Lowry's experiences on the S. S. Pyrrhus, although he never achieved the level of acceptance his character did.
The reviews of Ultramarine were less than enthusiastic. According to critics, the main problem was a narrative line that could not sustain itself over the course of the novel.
An additional problem was that Lowry attributed an undue significance to Hilliot's experiences.
He also received criticism for his perfunctory treatment of the ports and countries encountered by Hilliot, preferring to focus on the inner psyche of his character.
Although some critics saw evidence of Lowry's potential for extraordinary writing, Ultramarine was for all practical purposes a failure.
Of the 1, 500 copies printed, only half were sold.
Later, Lowry would concur that the novel was not exceptional.
In April 1933, his restless spirit took hold and he began traveling through Europe with friend and mentor Aiken.
Lowry also wrote a 1, 000-page manuscript titled "In Ballast to the White Sea, " a story with psychological overtones about a Cambridge student and his relationships with those around him.
Already suffering from deep emotional and mental turmoil, Lowry sank deeper into despair.
His drinking went unabated, and Lowry was jailed in Oaxaca.
When he was ultimately deported in July 1938, he returned to Los Angeles.
Although his time in Mexico had been exceptionally painful and disturbed, it was also a time of inspiration and insight.
His anguish became the subject matter for his one and only masterpiece, an autobiographical novel entitled Under the Volcano, which he began working on in 1936.
After completing three drafts, Lowry was still unable to find a publisher.
In 1944 the shack, where he lived with his wife Margerie Bonner, burned down, and the manuscript of "In Ballast to the White Sea" was destroyed, but other works in progress were saved.
On Christmas Eve in 1944, Lowry finished his final draft of Under the Volcano.
It tells the tragic story of the last 12 hours in the life of Geoffrey Firmin.
The entire novel takes place on November 2, 1938, with the exception of the first chapter, set in 1939.
An alcoholic consumed by his vice, Firmin had been the British consul in Quauhnahuac, Mexico, but was removed after Britain severed diplomatic relations in 1938, over the oil crisis.
His crumbling life served to reflect the political upheaval in Mexico at the time.
The scene is further complicated by the arrival of two of Yvonne's ex-lovers, Firmin's half-brother and one of his friends, a French film director.
Yvonne, Firmin's ex-wife, returns unexpectedly, but their attempts to reconcile are undercut by Firmin's continued drinking and abusiveness.
Firmin spends the last hours of his life drinking and reflecting on his life.
At the climax, Firmin is gunned down by a Mexican fascist who mistakes him for a criminal, and Yvonne is trampled to death by a runaway horse.
Under the Volcano weaves together themes of alienation, love, political idealism, and myth.
Lowry spent the next year drinking heavily while awaiting word from the publishers about Under the Volcano.
He and Bonner took a trip to Mexico.
Lowry wanted to show his wife the places he wrote about in the novel and he wanted to renew his friendship with a previous drinking companion.
The trip did not go well.
Lowry received unflattering comments from the publisher, and he discovered his old friend had been killed several years earlier in a barroom gunfight.
Once again in the depths of despair, Lowry attempted suicide.
Finally, the couple was deported from Mexico when Lowry refused to pay a small bribe to an immigration official.
Although he continued to write and rewrite previous manuscripts, Lowry would not be published again during his lifetime.
Still drinking heavily, he traveled with his wife extensively from 1946 to 1949.
Finally returning to Canada, Lowry decided to try his hand at writing screenplays even though he had no experience.
He completed a 455-page script based on Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night.
It was the first manuscript Lowry had actually finished in almost six years.
By 1954, Lowry had been released by his publisher, Random House.
One of his last unfinished works, October Ferry to Gabriola, takes place in the mind of unemployed lawyer, Ethan Llewelyn, as he journeys from Dollarton to Gabriola Island, just off the coast of British Columbia.
Despondent over the termination of his contract, Lowry sought psychiatric treatment in 1955, but it seemed to do him little good.
In February 1956, Lowry and his wife settled in Ripe, on the south coast of England.
Many of Lowry's unfinished and unpublished works were edited and published under the direction of his widow. Hear Us O Lord From Heaven Thy Dwelling Place, published in 1961, is a volume of seven short stories.
Two of the stories drew attention: "Through the Panama" and "The Forest Path to the Spring, " a recounting of Lowry's time in Vancouver, were heralded as Lowry's best work since Under the Volcano.
Dark As the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid, (1968), is an autobiographical novel of Lowry's return to Mexico to look for his friend Marquez.
Lunar Caustic, (1968), also autobiographical, is based on the time Lowry spent in Bellevue.
Named for silver nitrate, the substance once used to treat syphilis, the novella is a shocking story of alcoholic Bill Plantegenet's time in Bellevue Hospital and his encounters with three other patients.
His unfinished novel October Ferry to Gabriola, (1970), was considered thin and much more a remembrance of Lowry's time in Vancouver than a complete novel.
Despite his unrelenting drinking, coupled with self-doubt, detachment, and despair, Lowry had a charm and a charisma that drew others to him, particularly in the barrooms.
Connections
While in Spain, Lowry met American writer Jan Gabrial and, after a brief romance, the two were married in Paris on January 6, 1934. However, the relationship was marked with conflict. Eventually Gabrial left Lowry in France and returned to New York. He published two stories about their tumultuous marriage as "Hotel Room in Chartres" and "In Le Havre. "
In 1936 Lowry and his wife reconciled. They moved to Los Angeles, where they lived briefly before moving to Cuernavaca, Mexico.
By 1937 Lowry's obsessive drinking had fractured his relationship with Gabrial for good; she left him and they never saw each other again.
In the midst of his struggles, and shortly after arriving in California, Lowry met and fell in love with Margerie Bonner, an aspiring American writer and former child-star of silent films.
When Lowry moved across the border into Canada after his American visa expired, Bonner went with him.
For nearly 15 years, they lived in a squatter's cabin at Dollarton on the Burrard Inlet, near Vancouver.
They were married on December 2, 1940. For nearly 15 years, they lived in a squatter's cabin at Dollarton on the Burrard Inlet, near Vancouver.