Ninety-Nine Novels: Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

this is 99 novels a podcast by the

international Anthony Burgess

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foundation in 1984 the writer Anthony

Burgess selected his 99 favorite novels

in English since the outbreak of the

second world

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war never short of an opinion about

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idiosyncratic and invites closer

attention so we've invited some of the

leading Scholars critics and writers to

tell us more about each of the 99

novels so read along with us as we

explore a reading list created by one of

the most original literary voices of the

20th

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century

in this episode we're heading to Mexico

to discover Malcolm Low's Under the

Volcano with poet translator editor and

literary Titan Michael

Schmidt Under the Volcano traces the

protagonist Jeffrey furman's last day

Ferman is the ex- British console of

quan wak also known as

quaka a Mexican city in which the

British have very little political

interest

Ferman spends his time drinking in the

local bars and Cantinas thinking about

his estranged wife who may have had an

affair with his brother

Hugh the novel is set on The Day of the

Dead Festival in November

1938 during which Ferman is visited by

his wife and his brother who offer the

possibility of Salvation from his

alcoholic

decline as the trio spend the day

together their uneasy alliances

threatened by furman's drinking his

suspicions and his desire to vanish

deeper into the Mexican

Countryside as events unfold in the

shadow of the volcano papata petal it

quickly becomes apparent that Ferman has

no interest in Saving

himself Malcolm Lowry was born on the WL

Peninsula near Liverpool in

1909 at the age of 19 he left home to

work on a freighter which inspired his

first novel ultramarine which was lished

in

1933 after gaining a degree in English

from Cambridge University he spent time

in London where he met Dylan Thomas

after the breakdown of his first

marriage he crossed the Atlantic and

explored the United States Mexico and

Canada throughout his life Lowry was

plagued with alcoholism and eventually

died from related causes in

1957 Michael Schmidt born in Mexico City

is a poet literary historian translator

and editor his most most recent book of

poems talking to Stanley on the

telephone appeared in

2021 his major critical undertakings

include lives of The Poets the first

poets the novel a biography and

Gilgamesh the life of a

poem Michael is the founder editor and

managing director of carinet press and

general editor of PN

review he is currently a professor of

poetry at the University of

Manchester for all the relevant links

and a list of all books mentioned head

to the description of this

episode I'm grahe Foster and I spoke to

Michael Schmid at the offices of

caronnet press in Manchester in

September

2023 thanks Michael for joining us on

the 99 novels podcast uh today we're

talking about Malcolm Low's Under the

Volcano a novel that that you have

plenty to say about I'm sure but first

we we like to get you to sort of

describe the novel for people that might

might not have read it so what's this

novel about basically uh it's about a

host of things I think it it is um it's

a novel which isn't sure whether it's

going to be a novel or a poem and uh the

language waivers between a kind of

realism and a kind of uh poetic

involvement and complexity which reminds

you a little bit of Dylan Thomas at his

least

clear H it's a novel about alcoholism

it's a novel about Escape it's a novel

about love

uh and it follows the life of one

particular character really through to

to the end it's not a novel that ends

cheerfully and it's not a novel that

progresses very cheerfully in fact it's

it's quite a depressing book and I can't

for the life of me remember why I loved

it as much as I did when I read read it

early

on um but it's I it's a very Mighty

novel very powerful and and it's I'm not

surprised that bur just chose chose it

yeah certainly unique I mean I've not

read anything like it at all really well

the thing it reminds me of in retrospect

is something like oddly enough like Moby

Dick um it's a novel which is always on

the brink of going allegorical on you

also a lot of it is written in and M

dick was as well is written in I Amic

pentameter which is really weird because

you're reading along and you suddenly

think oh I've straight into a jacoban or

even Elizabethan drama and uh obviously

when m when when Melville was writing M

dick he'd suddenly discovered

Shakespeare he there was a new edition

of Shakespeare enlarged type and he'd

read him at school in very tiny type

those little two two column editions and

he wrote to hathor and said at last you

can see why Shakespeare Shakespeare the

wonderful musket of the tea across you

know the top of the tea across the um

the foot and uh he just he was totally

obsessed with shakespare almost the

whole of Mobi dick is in a kind of

sprout r i Amic pentameter just

wonderful run and there's an awful lot

of that in Lowry but there's also an

awful lot of joy in Lowry and the more

you read him I mentioned D and Thomas

the more you find that oh ah low must

have been reading this at this

particular point so the end of chapter

four I guess it's you're in the

territory and in the rhythm of Joyce's

uh the you know the dead in in in in

Dubliners it's just amazing how how much

he he is parting other right ERS so I

think if you know your English

literature you'll you'll get an awful

lot more out of this book and it won't

necessarily be positive because you

think my God he's he's um he's parting

he's not uh he's not imitating you

know's perhaps we'll we'll speak a

little more about about the the sort of

literary links yeah of the novel a bit

later on when Burgess was writing his

list in 1984 what was the novel's

reputation at that point it's hard for

me to say um it is a novel which I read

in 1969 and it was given to me is a

birthday present by a dear friend of

mine at at har at Oxford um Gareth

Reeves and I think Gareth Reeves's

Father James Reeves the anthologist and

poet May well have known uh Lowry at

some stage I think Gareth gave me the

book because it tied in with my own

childhood in in in quaka quak in in

Mexico and um

so it it had a kind of cult following in

in the late 60s certainly early 70s and

I would imagine it it had had it I think

it must have continued I think it still

has a bit of a cult following I know

that there are academics in Liverpool

who dedicated their whole imagination

imaginative space to it um but I don't

think it has quite the

same po as it did in ' 84 because it is

such a hard novel to read I suppose in

1984 as well the film had sort of

freshly come yes that's right yes of

course and that may have been why burges

the the the the is something b b burgy

about it in terms of the inventiveness

and the fullness of the language I mean

it's it's clearly a novel it's invested

in language uh and everyone was talking

about it because of the film which was a

tremendous movie it's also it's also a

novel where a British writer is writing

about other cultures which is sort of

cnip for bires really guess so you you

briefly mentioned when you first read

Under the Volcano in 1969 what did you

first make of it when when you first

read it well what surprised me is the

the past just set in kavaka where I

spent a lot of my childhood um I convol

there from rheumatic fever for a long

time and was the absolute correctness of

the description I don't mean that it was

accurate but it really evoked the center

of of gaka the the dip you know the

valleys and the and the architecture of

the Town um and and in my later years

having a partner from Waka the the later

scenes set in Waka were similarly uh

real in terms of the actual geography of

the place as I knew it of course both

kavaka and Waka are now much changed um

and but some of the places that Lowry

went you know survived until quite

recently um Fact one or two of them may

still surviv in quak I've not been back

there recently so I think the first

thing that's that um it did to me is it

it opened up my memory to areas that I

hadn't thought about nearly enough for a

long time and you've written about Under

the Volcano

Lots uh throughout your life you've

returned to the novel for for example

the 1999 penguin modern Classics Edition

you wrote the introduction for that and

in your 2014 survey of the novel the big

the big book entitled the novel how did

revisiting the book at these intervals

compare to your first reading uh I think

each time I've reread the novel um I've

become more and more impatient with it

and I think the impatience has to do

with the fact that there were so many

things in Low's own mind that were

unresolved as he wrote it and I don't

think he ever really felt that he'

finished it I think it was so many

projects that were in a way coupled

together and uh brought under the under

the cloud if you like of this this one

particular character so I think

it's the kinds of failure that it um

that it achieves are also very

ambitious so you know it had a huge it

had a huge um mouthful and and never

quite either spat it out or or swallowed

it

um so yes I've I've become more and more

impatient with it I think it's the word

yes also what really strikes me about it

sentence by sentence is that it doesn't

seem to have been properly edited you

know there are sentences I I was just

looking through it this morning and

there was one sentence that leapt out at

me and at the top of the page I written

what does this mean and the sentence is

the console had now finished his glass

of flat beer he sat gazing at the

bathroom wall in an attitude like a

grotesque parody of an old attitude in

meditation so all sorts of things are

going wrong syntactically in that

sentence which I think an editor would

have said Lowry probably didn't like to

be edited in fact I'm sure he probably

hated being edited but if somebody said

to him this is nonsense um he would

possibly have responded to that but um I

mean Lawrence who was also in Mexico uh

enjoyed being edited I think he he

accepted a lot of well I enjoyed it's

probably the wrong word but he accepted

a lot of editorial work on his books not

just cutting out bits that were a bit

dicey in terms of the sensor but just

bits that he realized were were

Superfluous I don't think I mean I think

maybe Under the Volcano is a book of

Darlings which really should have

been killed or some of them anyway you

know that example that you read there's

loads of those sort of things throughout

throughout the book and you could sort

of generously interpret it as he's

trying to dramatize what the alcoholic

mindset is with all these sort of non

sequitors and the syntax and and that

sort of thing but it struck me as as

Lowry is not a writer that flows onto

the page it's it's a very anxious novel

the words seem sort of placed a great

sort of struggle is happening in Larry's

mind and and you can see that as you

read the novel your your mind is sort of

fighting against the words on the page

and a lot of the time but but one of the

the things that we both talked about is

that it's renowned as a very difficult

book difficult to read difficult to

understand we we touched on this briefly

but what do you think is the core of

what makes it so difficult I think if if

you compare it with Joyce Joyce I think

always knew what he was doing what his

relationship was to the language and

what his relationship was the the

narrative elements in the language and

my sense is that is that low was never

quite sure and this uncertainty is

manifested you you were talking about uh

that particular sentence that I read

being in some way characteristic were

the novel told as it were spoken in the

voice of the protagonist rather than in

the voice of the narrator those things

would work drama ically they would be

you know they would be uh embodiments if

you like of his state of mind but but it

seems to me that the the subject of the

novel is not his characters but is the

author himself and maybe that's the

unresolved thing that he made somewhere

along the line well probably very early

along the line though he redrafted so

often that he had chances to change his

mind he took the wrong narrative rote in

choosing the third person narrator you

know it might might conceivably work

better with a first person narrator or

with two or three uh first person

narrators you know telling it together I

guess people love once you've had a

really difficult novel like you know

ulyses or even more finegan wake you

know it's probably exciting to come on

another one that's really challenging

but with those you can resolve the

challenges or you can you know you can

go deeper into the challenges and they

keep they keep yielding whereas this one

you go the deeper you go the more

confusing it becomes it is funny when

you look at the Great modernist when you

look at when you look at uh gerud Stein

for example the more you look at three

lives or whatever it happens to be the

the deeper you go and the more you

understand her understanding of the

challenges of language and and the whole

mimetic process of language um uh maybe

maybe larri needed a week with Gertrude

and Alice in Paris instead of instead of

a long time in a bar in Waka in quaka

yeah or an island can yes in Canada yeah

it's the the narrative style strikes me

as a sort of Mrs dooway type of thing

where the the third person narrator is

sort of jumping into different

characters to narrate scenes from

different points of view but it's not

quite as clear as as Mrs delaway is you

you don't often when you start a new

chapter you don't often know who's

speaking until sort of the third or

fourth page in that chapter so um

there's a lot of work that you have to

do as the the reader the comparison with

with um Virginia wolf is interesting

because there's a real Clarity of

conception with her isn't there uh in

all the work except for the waves I

always think the waves is a she let

herself go in the waves in a way which

is structurally disastrous did did um

Burgess choose the waves as one of his

there's no the the wolf novels all

appear outside the timeline of oh I see

it's

1939 the first year yeah again I I think

probably um the thing that ultimately

tells against Under the Volcano is the

fact that it is an incredibly literary

experiment is so deeply rooted

in uh in modernisms different modernisms

uh and uh in the voices of the great

writers who wrote before him and I would

imagine that some of his frustration as

a writer is the sense that he's not on

he's not going to be able to achieve the

scale that they achieved in their

writing the scale of accomplishment and

closure I think the death of his his

protagonist is is a real you know it's

it's basically throwing up his hands and

saying you know I'm

not worthy as it were yeah I I I think

in terms of reading the novel when you

compare it to some of the the more

well-known modernists you're right in

this doesn't seem to be as crisp as as

some of their writing even Joyce is

sort of more sentence by sentence more

more of a a sort of precise writer than

than L I think Joyce is always hearing

voices as well I mean voices of people

people who have accents and who have and

there's not is there I mean I I should

really reread the book again though I

don't think I ever will be able to do

that um uh is there a differentiation of

dictions between the different

characters obviously you have the

characters who are Spanish speakers and

speak in kind of uh Spanglish or

whatever they call it these days um but

with the primary characters do you get

this sense

of differentiated certainly certainly

not in the narration no um because the

first chapter is narrated by a Frenchman

um but in the dialogue his dialogue is

sort

of different you can tell he's not a

native English speaker in his dialogue

but the console the consul's brother

and Ivon the the console's wife all

speak in the same way which you can

understand with the brothers but the

wife is from America not not uh the

northwest of England as the brothers are

yes so you know you would expect her to

have a different a different way of

speaking but she doesn't no really which

is when you look at Lawrence he does

differentiate the addictions of his

different characters and also in

Lawrence you get a very strong sense of

class distinction which again I don't

think you particularly get in in Lowry

they're all sort of

Posh well they're they're all yes lapsed

Posh yeah yeah yeah this is something we

may have may have uh touched on before

but but you've said in in your

introduction to the penguin edition of

lowry that he struggled to find his

style and in the act of writing the

novel struggled sentence by sentence do

you think those struggles are are

evident in the finished novel um we've

talked about that briefly I suppose but

but how how do they manifest in the in

the WR the writing well often he will um

he he will start with a metaphorical

construction and then within the

metaphorical construction he'll do a

like so this metaphor is like another

metaphor like that passage that little

tiny passage I read where you have it

looking at like somebody is who was like

something else and uh you move away from

The Real World or from even the

experience of of the person in the real

world in in a in a distressed State um

you and as you were suggesting maybe

this is moving further and further into

the consciousness of alcoholism maybe

this is how you move out but again if

the voice isn't assigned and if you're

if you're watching someone doing if

you're watching someone going into a

deeper and deeper alcoholic uh State you

would probably not describe them in

those terms it would be their experience

rather than your experience of them I

don't know it's um I think that's the

this the struggle never resolves I I

there are there are those little moments

of repose in the book like when when

Perman is looking out and he sees the

volcanoes um he

sees calls him the perfect marriage or

something like that and that's actually

a moment of great clarity and of real

beauty of observation also it's ironic

because of course they are not a couple

it's the story about them uh that that

entres him um but those moments are not

numerous there there are some very clear

pieces of description that sort of leap

out the text there there's a point where

they're on a bus journey and they they

find a an injured Mexican by the road

and the bus stops and they all get out

which is described very very clearly and

subsequently there's a a sort of bull

fight scene the fight where the

console's brother sort of what can only

be described as surfs on the back of a

bull um and and they're very very

astutely uh dramatized in the novel I

suppose and I wonder if if the clear

points are things that Lowry himself has

witnessed in Mexico that's interesting

so that when when when it's not his

imagination at work but when it's his

observation at work he

achieves that a kind of clarity that's

not present in the other that's that is

likely yes I guess that is probably

likely also those moments occur when

he's not particularly when when

drunkenness is not the main theme I

guess I think the kind of concern with

alcoholism or with with with the

alcoholic a person and the

alcoholic the effect of alcohol on

Vision uh in both senses of vision not

only sight but also uh having a vision

um that concern uh overwhelms those

moments of of Lucidity that are are

really very powerful that I think

probably asking when going back to an

earlier question you asked um you know

what was what is was my initial

impression I think when I first read the

novel probably my excitement was at

those moments of great clarity there's a

description of a of a a place in the

center of guaka where we we is when I

was a little boy we used to go there and

have meals and it's very very accurate

description of how it was when I was a

little boy of course I was a little boy

probably 25 years 20 years after he was

there so it won't have changed very much

because things didn't change that fast

in Mexico at the time but um and in Waka

too when you walk in the center which is

still

much I mean tourism and and

gentrification have um have had their

effect but it's still much as it was

when he was there certainly the lay out

of the streets hadn't changed and some

of the old buildings that he he

frequented haven't changed you could go

to the bar that he went to uh until

recently the Fara was was still open but

it's not now I was sad to see when I

last visited um so in a way those those

places still remain real and uh

accountable if you like against the

novel okay I mean you mentioned your own

experiences of Mexico and and for

British

readers I suppose this is one of the big

two novels about Mexico that they would

they would approach first um before any

any sort of Mexican literature perhaps

which which are the other ones um the

power and the Glory by Graham green

there's a plume serpent by Lawrence of

course and Lawrence as well yeah and

there were a couple yes I think you may

be right yes that's right yeah if if

Under the Volcano is is one of the first

books about Mexico that British readers

would experience um does the novel

accurately represent the Mexico that

that you you saw in your youth

particularly

quaka um and

Waka specifically and the Mexican

culture more more

generally I I think probably it it

reflects what a foreigner imagines to be

the culture I don't think he gets very

close into the actuality of of the

cultures Waka is an amazing State and an

amazing City where there are a

Confluence there is a Confluence of

different indigenous peoples and it's a

diverse in in our contemporary sense of

the word state where everyone may look

alike but they have tremendously

differentiated backgrounds and often

differentiated languages I mean there's

still 11 12 20 I don't know how many

languages of sabot mistc bits of Na and

Spanish spoken in within within you know

20 miles of each other Villages that are

sapot VES are mistc and different

dialects of those languages he doesn't

get close to I don't think that

diversity and that is the nature of Waka

and and the other thing that you get in

the power and the glory that you don't

get in Under the Volcano is of strong

sense of the religion um the the

religious coloring in Mexico is found

everywhere um you you have the

revolution of course which tried to

expunge it and he was there after the

revolution but you still had this really

strong Catholicism um which obviously

green went for that's what he one of the

things that really intrigued him um and

way it's one of the things that that

attracted and repelled Lawrence about

Mexico as well this the this the

continuing presence despite the

revolution of the church um and in a way

you don't get too much of that do you in

Under the Volcano I'm just trying to

think of church churchy bits aren't any

it's not very religious novel although I

mean Lowry has said that he he based it

on D's Inferno yes so perhaps that's

where his

religion eyes in Hell rather than in

churches there is a wonderful phrase

they still use in in Waka which is um

drink until you see the cross and that's

because they used to serve Mescal in

little glasses which were the glasses

that Dev votive candles were in and each

one has a little cross on the bottom so

you drink your poisonous mcal you know

your out of these little glasses and

when you look at the bottom of the glass

you can see the cross so it means knock

it back drink till you see the cross I

think that actually does occur doesn't

it someone in the no I somehow remember

somebody saying that to him I may just

be adding that in as a kind of a l

adjunct I don't I don't remember myself

if I had read it I probably wouldn't

have know what it meant in terms of

literature about Mexico in totality by

Americans by British people by Mexicans

themselves where where do you think

Lowry fits in in his in his descriptions

of Mexico and and Mexican culture I I

think he probably is one of the people

who's created some of the the lasting um

I I don't want to say cliches CU that's

degrading I mean one of the lasting

archetypes of Mexican culture I think

the notion of the Mexican as a a very

heavy drinker I mean many Mexicans are

the notion of a culture that is torn

between extremes um I think that that is

pretty well uh borne out by um or indeed

um yes augmented by by the nature of his

writing

and it may well

be that what I was trying to talk about

earlier the the kind of parting of

styles the kind of use of such diverse

Styles Mexico is obviously a country

which was colon first of all was very

diverse and then was colonized by the

Spanish and is laterally been semic

colonized by the Americans you know and

and the French of course invaded and

conquered it and and were thrown out um

uh it's that sense of diversity and that

sense of uh of confused cultures or some

of them enriching and some of them

impoverishing native cultures um that's

somehow embodied in in his own strangely

confused and confusing practice of

writing and

psychologizing um I don't think that was

his intention but I I I do think that if

you read the novel if you read it

innocently without without too much

stylistic expectation you you'll get a

huge amount out of it uh and it will it

it's a landscape of dreams and a

landscape of um well nightmares um and

hangovers that's a friend of my John

John MCCA said to me this morning he

said you could almost taste the

hangovers when he when he read the book

you know it was um yeah this the scene

where he's sort of hung over and

drinking strick to to try and get to

stop drinking again is is uh it's scary

sickening yes it is yes we we've talked

uh about

the the difference the different sort of

methods of of how Lowry uh tells his

story and the novel strikes me as very

elusive particularly when it comes to

other works of literature which we we've

talked about briefly before do you think

in some ways this is a novel that that

is primarily in conversation with other

novels well you mentioned D it I think

it's a novel that's primarily in

conversation with other literature I

think it's in in conversation very much

with uh the apocalyptic poetry of of of

his period was his perod wasn't it and I

think it's also a novel written by a a

man who was probably instinctively much

more a poet than a novelist when I have

that you probably have that little

selection of Low's poems um they're not

very good poems I don't think I I I know

there are lots of people who disagree

with me about that but they do belong

very much to that that period and in a

way it may be the great novel of the

Apocalypse do you think of the of the

English apocalyptic period can you think

of any other really superlative novels

from that period which would be the F

the first half I guess of the Burgess

period given more time I probably could

but but certainly as apocalyptic novels

go this is this is probably the most

apocalyptic I mean it ends with a dead

dog you don't get much more apocalyptic

what's neat about it too being as an

apocalyptic novel is that there is no

huge scientific or technological

apocalypse is there it's it's it's all

Psych ological cultural uh it's all

man-made if you like not um not

generated by machines or science it is

yeah and and this the sense of

Doom right from I mean in the the first

or the second chapter I think it is he

gets run over by a car because he's

drunk and crossing the road and from

then on the sense of Doom in the novel

is just overwhelming and I don't

particularly want to ruin it but you're

sure

that the alcohol is going to kill him

the amount that he's drinking and that

may not be the case when you get to the

end of the novel but he will he will

survive forever because he'll be pickled

won't he yes he'll be discovered

discovered as a totally totally

preserved like some of those strange

Saints in Naples you know Burgess says

that the Under the Volcano belongs to

the tradition which began with ulses

which we've talked about before the the

sort of modernist period you obviously

agree with him um but do you think Lowry

can be viewed as an experimental

novelist in the same way Joyce can no I

think Joyce was a Joyce was utterly

Lucid in his relationship to Forum and

L's struggle draft after draft after

draft with his books means to me that he

never really got clear in his own head

what the structure of the novel was

going to be there is one of he's got

these three epigraphs at the beginning

and and they there there's one is I I

can't can't remember what the other two

are there's um there is one by um

Sophocles and one from Gerta but the

middle one is from John bunan from uh

Grace abounding for the chief of Sinners

and it seems to me we talked about the

absence of

religious uh content if you like but

there is a strong sense of damnation and

F of course is there as well isn't he um

but this passage is really really

astonishing it says now I blessed the

condition of the dog and Toad yay gladly

would I have been in the condition of

the dog or horse for I knew they had no

soul to perish under the Everlasting

weight of Hell or sin as mine was like

to do nay and though I saw this felt

this and was broken to pieces with it

yet that which added to my sorrow was

that I could not find with all my soul

that I did desire

Deliverance I could not find with all my

soul that I did desire Deliverance not

not unlike fa um and um I think that's

really really powerful and I think that

does

inform the the as were the deeper levels

assuming there are deeper levels in

Under the Volcano this this really

strong sense of a man who understands

his damnation and pursues it um you know

he could he could withhold he could um

he could fight against it but he doesn't

he pursues it and I guess maybe maybe

that's why I I though I lose patience

with the book I I I still you know I

still can it's very much there in my my

own memory as a as an experience um it

it runs

against against the moral the moral

current that it it actually proposes

rather like that wonderful passage I I

suppose that that's uh kind of made

clear there's there's one tiny little

possibility of redemption when Ivon his

estranged wife tells

him we should go and get a house by the

Sea and live our days there with no

booze and you know we'll be in love and

and Jeffrey the conso sort of says yes

that sounds good let's go now and that's

just before everything go

shaped yes yeah yeah and of course that

is in a way the life he achieved in

Canada wasn't it when he was when he was

there working out on partly on this book

yeah see it is funny I wonder if it's

true that he really did believe that you

know follow that passage in in Grace

abounding we're sort of reaching the end

of our conversation about about low what

what do you think the legacy of Under

the Volcano is today and and uh do you

think Lowry in general his fiction his

poetry has resonated with any writers

working today there are writers like cor

M McCarthy who I think um I mean he's

he's so many stages beyond beyond Lowry

but in a way the the horrible roads that

he travels down are Lowry roads and

they're in that in that kind of

psychology as well and I think there are

writers who write Beyond as it were

beyond the extremes that we normally

expect a writer right that that have

learned from lar um I just wish that

Under the Volcano had um had proposed a

style maybe the fact that it doesn't

propose a style makes it a resource for

writers who who have the style so there

are I think a lot of people have learned

from him uh I think probably some of the

Latin American Writers possibly like

well maybe even F this but certainly

marus and people like that uh almost

certainly have learned from him and if

there were two traditions and Marcus was

one

aspect and uh bores was the other aspect

you know the

Marquez aspect would be indebted to

lowri and the bores would be repelled by

low but then the bores is the more

European in a curious way yes I guess

maybe one of the things Larry was trying

to escape from was the weight of uh

English tradition and confinement and so

on and and one way out would be to give

himself over to sensuality and what the

other was to just destroy his mind with

uh his character's Minds with with

alcohol I I think I maybe the thing that

I've find most difficult with L is that

I always think he's writing about

himself um and those bits that you

mention which are very Vivid you step

out of himself into the world and you

see the world then then soon you relapse

into into this Consciousness which is

very there's not much room for your own

breath in there is there no certainly in

the in the Final Chapter when Jeffrey is

in a in a

bar drinking heavily very heavily and

he's surrounded by sort of Mexican

gangsters and and old ladies and pimp

chickens that sort of thing um it's

suffocating the way he writes that is

suffocating and and the protagonist the

console MH sort

of the the way it's being NR through his

eyes sort of sucks the air out of the

the room and whether or not that's a

conscious choice that he's made or

whether that's what his mindset was when

he was writing that chapter it's

certainly

uh the way the novel ends is is

suffocating it is um and again you're

mentioning Dante is very interesting

because it goes in the opposite

direction doesn't it you don't begin in

heaven but you you certainly end in hell

yeah and and the novel name checks

malibal yeah yeah uh frequently which is

the is that the lowest C yes yes that's

a sort of destination for Ferman that's

right and that's where know Dante starts

isn't it it's under Under the Volcano

isn't it my final question which we ask

for ask everybody that we interview for

this podcast uh is if you could Round Up

burgess's list to 100

which book would you add and why it's

the period remind me of the period again

it doesn't have to stick with the period

it's 1939 to 1984 but the one book I

would add to any list of that kind well

no and there are many in Translation

aren't these are all books in English

but you can mention a book in

Translation well one of the books in

Translation would be Natalia ginsburg's

uh family sayings um which she has a

wonderful habit and very anti- Lowry if

you like of uh feeling that we she she

wrote a life of manzoni and and the

character in family sayings is the

protagonist you never see her and she's

just basically constructing the whole

novel out of um the F family sayings so

there's a kind of space in the middle

which is her cut out as it were and

she's hearing and hearing all these

things and gradually you get a very

strong sense of her without her being

there and the manzoni family um uh it's

about manzoni the great Italian writer

but she builds the whole novel out of

the people around him the people

surrounding so like in Velasquez's great

painting of uh you know the lasas the

the royal family is looking looking and

the painters at the back painting and

you don't see the king and queen but you

see what they see which is their empire

you don't see them you see what they see

which I think is the most brilliant bit

of uh Magic and the other the other

novel I would put in any list

um Ginsburg was from the 60s 50s and 80s

I guess uh would be Moby Dick by Herman

Melville my novel which is inexhaustible

there's also also a book which is much

more much more L esque which is rabal

you know gargan and pantag but

translated by that I don't there's a

very wonderful translation by a by the

man who did The Honorable kryon and I

can't remember his name at the moment

um in any event it's it's a a most

stunning translation from from uh it

must have been the 1600 and something 15

something and uh when I was talking to a

friend of mine who was at Cambridge at

the time when uh Ted Hughes and so on

were up and he was a great friend of

hugheses he said yes when he was at

Cambridge everyone was reading that

translation and this particular book

this particular translation had a huge

impact on Hughes and Plath and gun and

others uh and it's curious that it's

almost never mentioned but um it it's

something that I think I think Burgess

would have loved it and probably knew

very well I I think he did and um I've

just recorded a podcast about false

staff by Robert and I and that that book

came up rabet came up a lot um and uh we

we will put the the translation in the

description of this episode so people

will know it it's all over my book on

the novel I I quote extensively from it

it's one of those books where there

there's a battle scene and somebody lops

off the top of somebody's head and the

action stops and rabet who is himself a

physician looks in and describes the in

interior of the skull and then the

action starts again it's it's just magic

it's so surprising very hilarious um and

very cruel and um not very friendly to

the church or or to the state well

that's an excellent choice a very bur

jessian Choice Michael thanks for

joining us on the 99 novels podcast it's

been a great Delight to hear hear your

take on Under the Volcano and your

suggestions for for books to read thank

you

you've been listening to 99 novels a

podcast by the international Anthony

Burgess

Foundation Michael Schmidt's latest

collection of poetry talking to Stanley

on the telephone is out now from Smith

doorstop the novel a biography by

Michael Schmidt is out now from Harvard

University press

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