02-07-2025
Beer, whisky, mescal — this is the great novel of alcoholic self-destruction
In 1938, when he had already spent two years labouring on Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry sent his friend Conrad Aiken a new year's greeting. 'Don't think I can go on,' he told his fellow writer. 'Where I am it is dark. Lost.'
After that things got really bad. Lowry's wife divorced him. He was imprisoned for fighting with fascist street thugs near his home in Cuernavaca, then deported from Mexico. He wrote and rewrote this great novel of alcoholic self-destruction, restarting from the beginning at least four times, his task made harder because he was frequently incapacitated by drink. He nearly lost the lot when the squatter's shack he had moved to in Vancouver burnt down. Then, when he completed what he knew to be his masterpiece, it was refused by 12 publishers.
