Into an abyss

NO book is perfect. But there are those which achieve the closest thing to perfection as is humanly possible and this is where the relationship between a writer and publisher comes into play. It is necessarily a symbiotic relationship, not an authoritarian one and it must never be forgotten that finally the text is the author's alone and all that the publisher can do is suggest ways it can achieve its fullest potential. All these truisms can be seen to good effect in the front matter of the Penguin Modern Classics edition (no real conflict of interest here because the book I am writing about was first published by Jonathan Cape in 1967) of Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, one of the greatest books of our time and essential reading for anyone who wishes to acquire a degree of civilisation.

The front matter I am referring to comprises two letters - one from the Lowry's publisher, Jonathan Cape, telling the author why he needed to cut and extensively revise the manuscript to make it worthy of publication, and the author's reply defending his text. Lowry's defence is brilliant and should be made required reading for any author seeking to submit a manuscript to a publisher. By turn impassioned, eloquent, pleading, witty and wise, it convinced Mr. Cape to publish the book, more or less as it was, whereupon it was instantly hailed as a classic.

But that for the reader who has not read Under the Volcano is only the beginning of the many wonderful things that exist between the covers of the novel. For Lowry's classics are indisputably one of the greatest ever examinations of the human condition, easily the equal of Dostoevsky, Kafka, Camus and Gogol. The book opens on the Day of Death in Quauhnahuac, a town in Mexico, under the brooding gaze of two volcanoes. Two men are discussing the death of an acquaintance and friend, the British Consul, Geoffrey Firmin, exactly a year ago not far from where they are drinking and remembering. The rest of the novel is an extended flashback ending in Geoffrey's death.

It is a remarkable exposition of one man's slide into the abyss. Drunk and dejected over the loss of his wife, without moorings or hope, it is clear that there will be no redemption for the British Consul in Mexico. It will only be a matter of time before he is swallowed up, but it is here that Lowry proves himself to be a writer of genius. His tracking of Firmin's deterioration never gets emptily dramatic, cliched or implausible. Detail is piled upon harrowing detail, as we follow the Consul's plunge into a living hell. And we emerge from the novel, shaken, an experience that only the very greatest of novelists can grant us.

As the author himself writes in his legendary letter to his publisher, "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". This is an opinion which is not merely vainglorious, for I have read this great novel at least three times; and on each reading it has yielded something new, some perception that was not readily apparent on a first reading, some especially felicitous phrase or a piece of wisdom that sets you thinking.

Under the Volcano has been compared to The Idiot, Moby Dick, Lord of the Flies and The Catcher in the Rye and it easily holds its own in this pantheon of greats. The New York Times called it the kind of novel "that is urgently pressed on friends". I could not have put it better.

DAVID DAVIDAR

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