Has a better novel about alcoholism than Under the Volcano been written? I think not.
bump. I haven't seen /lit/ talk about this book. The prose is some of the best I've read, on a par with Nabokov, perhaps even better.
>>7860305
> The prose is some of the best I've read, on a par with Nabokov, perhaps even better.
Bullshit, post excerpts
>>7860316
>They were the cars at the fair that were whirling around her; no, they were the planets, while the sun stood, burning and spinning and guttering in the centre; here they came again, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto; but they were not planets, for it was not the merry-go-round at all, but the Ferris wheel, they were constellations, in the hub of which, like a great cold eye, burned Polaris, and round and round it here they went: Cassiopeia, Cepheus, the Lynx, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, and the Dragon; yet they were not constellations, but, somehow, myriads of beautiful butterflies, she was sailing into Acapulco harbour through a hurricane of beautiful butterflies, zigzagging overhead and endlessly vanishing astern over the sea, the sea, rough and pure, the long dawn rollers advancing, rising, and crashing down to glide in colourless ellipses over the sand, sinking, sinking, someone was calling her name far away and she remembered, they were in a dark wood, she heard the wind and the rain rushing through the forest and saw the tremours of lightning shuddering through the heavens and the horse—great God, the horse—and would this scene repeat itself endlessly and forever?—the horse, rearing, poised over her, petrified in midair, a statue, somebody was sitting on the statue, it was Yvonne Griffaton, no, it was the statue of Huerta, the drunkard, the murderer, it was the Consul, or it was a mechanical horse on the merry-go-round, the carrousel, but the carrousel had stopped and she was in a ravine down which a million horses were thundering towards her, and she must escape, through the friendly forest to their house, their little home by the sea.
>They were galloping...Bare level plain had taken the place of the scrub and they'd been cantering briskly, the foals prancing delightedly ahead, when suddenly the dog was a shoulder-shrugging streaking fleece, and as their mares almost imperceptibly fell into the long untrammelled undulating strides, Hugh felt the sense of change, the keen elemental pleasure one experienced too on board a ship which, leaving the choppy waters of the estuary, gives way to the pitch and swing of the open sea. A faint carillon of bells sounded in the distance, rising and falling, sinking back as if into the very substance of the day. Judas had forgotten; nay, Judas had been, somehow, redeemed.
The Lost Weekend is superior.
>>7860325
>here they came again, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto
>look mom! I remember the order of the planets in relation to the Sun!!
>>7860325
this is really bad
>>7860333
Have you actually read the book? This is literally the best book about alcoholism. I have never read prose this good since I first read Nabokov, and even he doesn't reach the heights that Lowry does in this book. Try reading the book before you make smart-arse judgments from a few bits of text (which are absolutely brilliant btw).
I remember reading through the Consul's chapters and going "Holy shit, Lowry writes his thoughts in exactly the way I think when I'm shitfaced drunk." It's uncanny.
Then Hugh's chapters struck me as exactly the kind of desperately seeking romanticism by any means possible that I act with sometimes.
I started a thread about the book like two days ago because I just finished it and it's now one of my all-time favorites. The last two chapters are among the most gut-wrenching things I've ever read, but so well-written you can't stop reading.
>>7860333
>>7860335
To be honest I don't know why he picked that passage, it's a hallucination near the end of the book of a dying girl that's mostly incoherent. But the book's very strangely narrated, full of flashbacks, and many of the chapters take the point of view of characters that are drunk off their asses. This is where the talent comes in -- they really sound exactly like someone drinking hard. The prose is legitimately great for most of the book, the specific passage he picked is just someone that's drunk, delirious for several reasons, and is in the process of dying from being trampled by a horse.
>>7860325
It's not bad but I don't think it's on the same level as Nabokov, granted one cannot make an entire assessment of an author from one paragraph. I'll make a note of it and check it out in the future.
>>7860350
I read 50 pages of it and had to give up because it was so hysterical and such sentimental garbage. Maybe the good parts were hiding in the untranslated Spanish bits I didn't understand.
>>7860358
Yeah, I pretty much picked that passage because it was one of the ones I found on goodreads and it resonates with me from actually having read the book. The prose in it is still marvelous and extremely impressive. There is hardly a passage in the entire book that doesn't inspire awe in me, but that's just me. Other people, I know, won't be as impressed.
>>7860364
It starts off very slow. By 50 pages in you probably didn't have a very good grasp of the characters or really the point of the narrative at all.
The purpose is the Consul's gradual fall and damnation. He's supposed to be a Faust that, rather than being saved, turns away from his chances of salvation.
I don't see where you got "sentimental garbage" from but hysterical is actually a good description, it's supposed to be. The protagonist's alcoholism has proggresed to the point that he's literally losing his mind. He hallucinates, he talks to himself, he passes out in the middle of the street, his tremors are so bad he can't physically put socks on his feet or shave. He's also actively trying to repress several different parts of his past. He is crazy, depressed, and lonely.
>>7860381
I wasn't trying to say it was beyond criticism, just explaining why it seemed (correctly) to be rambling and incoherent.
>>7860377
I also love the novel and I think th prose is absolutely wonderful. However, Lowry's prose is undoubtedly strange. Some people absolutely despise it and think it shit, while others are able to see the beauty. Both opinions are valid, I think.
Anyway, if you want more excellent Lowry prose, read a The Forest Path to the Spring. It's like 70 pages or so and much happier than Under the Volcano.
>>7860395
It always depresses me to remember that he intended UtV to be the Inferno section of a retelling of the Divine Comedy, but that he couldn't finish it.
Imagine what Lowry's Paradiso would have been like.
>>7860400
It's unimaginable, I think. The Forest Path to the Spring is definitely upper purgatory and is beautiful. Lowry's Paradiso in its full would have been... I feel like Dante attempting to describe God. I simply cannot.
>>7860262
I bought The Lost Weekend by charles Jackson, it might be good.
>>7860325
I love that passage too. Plebs in here dont know shit. Its's also not a good one to post since this type of writing comes in and out in certain parts and doesnt represent the entire work.
>>7860262
Honestly, the first chapter of this book is some of the best (if not the best) prose I have ever read, and the switching styles between sobriety and being drunk are so seamless and perfect. It is one of my favourite books.
>>7860506
I found the first chapter to be beautiful but weird and overwhelming until we get to the part where the Consul's old friend (I forget his name) finds his love letter in that Renaissance poetry or theatre book and burns it. That made me cry in public.
>>7860495
I hope you're aware of the irony in your comment. (You're right though; his criticism is shallow and so worthless.)
>tfw haven't drank in a few weeks now
I feel much better but also like I will inevitably return one day.
>>7860672
>tfw didn't drink for a week then went straight back to drinking every day
I just want peace from this evil
>>7860262
As an alcoholic what effect will this have on me?
i didn't realise we had so many alcoholics on this board. it figures, i guess
>>7860695
I read it (as an alcoholic), you'll find it extremely relateable. There's a poetry and an aesthetic and tragedy to the way he describes alcoholism. Personally, it made me want to write, and to be as good as Lowry, even though I know I never will.
>>7860305
>I haven't seen /lit/ talk about this book.
What are you tlaking about? /lit/ loves this book.
>canadian """literature"""
>>7860917
correction - /lit/ loves to talk about this book. maybe 5 people here have actually read it.
>>7860923
/lit/ is like 7 people though
alcohol is poison, anons
smoke weed everyday and put down teh alcohol
>>7860922
lowry was british. just because he died in vancourver does not make this canadian. nothing canadianis this good.
>>7860992
weed doesn't agree with me
>>7860998
oh you are right. I don't why why some sources list it as a Canadian novel
>>7860992
I would rather hang out with the drunks I know than the stoners. I find stoners to be unimaginably lazy and boring to talk to.
My secondmost favourite book after Ulysses.
Amazing prose and structure and it actually made me feel something for the main character, which is rare.
>>7861027
I'd rather hang out with sober people desu. It's only ever about one thing with an addict.
>>7860992
writers drink
stoners play video games and look at their hands
>go to solve captcha
>select all the drinks
>tfw
It isn't about alcoholism as much as it is about the Thanatophic death drive. To say Under the Volcano is about alcoholism is to grossly misunderstand it. It is so much more than alcoholism.
Easily the best book I have ever read. Surprised I haven't seen it on a lit top 100 list yet. I've been seeing more and more posts about Volcano lately though, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it become a meme in the next 6 months - year.
Factotum by Bukowski
Don't know how it compares to this one because I haven't read it. But Factotum is a funny but dirty and sad look at alcoholism
>>7861034
i'm both a drunk and a stoner and am for the most part against video games.
>>7861176
Lowry is a much, much more skilled writer than Bukowski. He's extraordinarily complex (Ulysses is to the Odyssey as Under the Volcano is to the Inferno) and very poetic. Bukowski writes fun pulpy novels about being a piece of shit drunk.
>>7861186
what do you think about his poems?
>>7861218
His poems I enjoy, but they aren't exactly profound. I think Bukowski has a great way of phrasing certain things which lends well to his poetry.
>>7861091
It is more than alcoholism, sure, but it's not about fucking freudian psychology you pseud. If anything it's damnation vs salvation and how a broken man can crave damnation, but alcoholisn is ubdeniably the main vehicle of this.
Get your penis-envying mom-fucking pseudoscience out of here.
>>7861421
Why do people hate Freud so much, he was right about so many things. Nobody hates Newton because he was an alchemist
>>7861436
Because people don't still use Newton's alchemy writings, just the stuff Newton was right about. Meanwhile high schoolers take a basic psych class and every book becomes nothing but a list of phallic symbols.
Freud is easy to understand and just edgy enough that people who don't actually know shit about psychology read some wikipedia articles then think they can break down every character and even real-life person to a handful of primal urges. They then feel a weird sense of superiority for "getting it" when they actually don't.
>>7861421
> it's not about fucking freudian psychology
Sure, the Movement towards the extinction of consciousness, the obsession about drugs and alcohol, and his apparent enviousness of the soullessness has nothing to do with a Thantophic drive...
> Get your penis-envying mom-fucking pseudoscience out of here.
Are you unaware of how prominent Freudian criticism is in literature? Go back to r/books.
>>7861421
Oh and here's a quotation by Lowry about Under the Volcano:
>“Under the Volcano” embraces everything from Dante to Freud to the cabala. Here it shambles like Cervantes, there it rages like Ahab, and every page of it pulsates on Out of Body Auto-Reply, that style of pure Lowry that points at once backward, to all European literature, and forward, to the mother of all nervous breakdowns.”
:)
>>7861682
Self-destructive depression is not a concept Freud came up with. This is the issue I take with criticism like this. Every character trait just fits into some preconceived frame that isn't unique to Freud in any way but name.
Stating its prominence is irrelevant as well. Feminist criticisms are just as, if not more prominent, and are, like Freudian ones, masturbatory wastes of ink.
>>7860262
Nope. Nothing comes even close.
