Under the volcano novel5/18/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() This is the simple truth: Under the Volcano is one of the few inexhaustible, endlessly rewarding novels of the 20th century. The book, Lowry explained, is built “as a wheel so that, when you get to the end, if you have read carefully, you should want to turn back to the beginning again.” The book is “so designed, counterdesigned and interwelded that it could be read an indefinite number of times and still not have yielded all its meanings or its drama or its poetry: and it is upon this fact that I base my hope in it.” In 32 pages of patient, ingenious, and sometimes hilarious explanation, Lowry laid out the structure, intentions, and symbolism of the book that he had labored over for almost a decade. In honor of that anniversary I began rereading it, but first I reread the letter that Lowry wrote to Jonathan Cape, his publisher, after hearing that Cape’s reader was recommending drastic cuts. November 2, the Day of the Dead in Mexico, marked the 70th anniversary of the day on which Malcolm Lowry’s masterpiece Under the Volcano begins. ![]()
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