Malcolm Lowry a Biography by Douglas Day
New York: Oxford University Press, 1973 ISBN 0195017110
I normally make a point of not reading biographies of authors. There are several reasons that I make that choice - the main one being that I am afraid that if I find an author that I like was not a person that I'd like it may colour my views of their work. And of course time spent reading a biography is time not spent reading something else.
Sometimes I make an exception, and when the biography is of Malcolm Lowry, who's life in many ways was his work, and who is an author that fascinates me, I made the plunge. Douglas Day (an interesting man himself - Marine Corps fighter pilot, born in Panama, fluent in Spanish, holder of three degrees) writes an interesting and well researched biography which - although quaintly dated in the use of Freud to dissect Lowry's personality - also is a thoughtful criticism of his published work.
Lowry is renowned for two things: Under the Volcano, and being an alcoholic. Day does not pull any punches in his life of Lowry, and it is in many ways a depressing tale. A product of a restrictive Protestant family, Lowry for his whole life was dogged by his father's control of his finances: apart from a stint crewing on a ship (where he was mercilessly ragged for being a rich boy), he never had a "proper" job. As Day concludes, Lowry was compelled to write, but was not actually a very good writer: totally self-absorbed, not very observant, his subject matter always came back to his own life and his own experiences.
His alcoholism became a burden very early on in his life. After leaving Cambridge with a third in English, he indulged his dream of a life on the sea (his one voyage as a working seaman soon disabused him of the idea that it was romantic) and came back from his voyage well on the way to becoming a drunkard, and very soon after that he became a complete alcoholic.
It's tragic, but basically the story of all alcoholics follows the same trajectory: inevitable decline, mental decay and death. Lowry's life was one long attempt to escape himself - escape his fears, his frustrations and his anger. At first alcohol was the escape, but soon enough it became the prison that he couldn't break out of. He had times of relative sobriety, mostly at his shack at Dollarton, but as his life progressed his output became less prolific and less readable, and his hospitalizations became more frequent. The shame of many of his drunken escapades haunted him, as did the suicide of one of his Cambridge roommates (a story that Day tries and fails to get to the bottom of....was Lowry in some way responsible?). His relative failure as a writer was something that he struggled with - even his one success (Under the Volcano) caused him much angst, as he found the publicity very hard to deal with.
And what of that success? How could a writer who produced hardly anything else that was much more than serviceable produce such a classic as Under the Volcano? Day shows us that he managed it through revision after revision over ten years, and through the support, typing, editing and addition from Margerie, who supported him for so long, and never doubted his "genius". Day provides a deep, erudite and thorough critique of the novel in this book, explaining the many layers that exist within its pages, relating them to Lowry's life, and to the time he spent in Mexico.
Day had access not only to extensive time with Margerie (he co-edited Dark is the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid with her), but interviewed many others who were important in Lowry's life. He has constructed, as much as is possible, a complete life, a critique, and an amateur Freudian analysis of Malcolm Lowry: the life and critique are still of value. If you are a Lowry man (or woman), this is worth it - after all it did win the National Book Award for Biography in 1974.
No comments:
Post a Comment