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Malcolm Lowry
This brilliant and sympathetic account of Malcolm Lowry's chaotic and tragic life tells of the alcoholism that overshadowed his entire adult life, his wanderings through Europe and America, his two tempestuous marriages, and his constant struggle to write. As well as presenting extensive new
criticism of Lowry's work, Douglas Day paints a rare and revealing portrait of this brilliant, clumsy, shy, prodigal, and outrageous genius.
criticism of Lowry's work, Douglas Day paints a rare and revealing portrait of this brilliant, clumsy, shy, prodigal, and outrageous genius.
483 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1975
110 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 31, 2025
My recent decision to reembark on a vertiginous voyage that is the writings of Malcolm Lowry inevitably led to a decision approached with valiant trepidation: whether to read a full biography of the tormented writer who only published two novels in his lifetime and who—in the opinion of most literary critics—only published one truly memorable work, the Modernist masterpiece, Under the Volcano (1946).
Lowry died at the ripe young age of 47 in a completely insane, but—sadly for him—typical drinking incident where he attacked his wife who was trying to keep him from drinking yet another bottle of gin, downed barbiturates, and never woke up. The coroner largely sidestepped issues of suicide or foul play by using the euphemism “death by misadventure” on his coroner’s report.1
With two biographies to choose from, I opted for Douglas Day’s 1973 soporifically titled Malcolm Lowry: A Biography over the more “recent” one, G. Bowker’s Pursued by Furies: A Life of Malcolm Lowry (1993). In all honesty, I radiated to the shorter biography, though I had a bias since Douglas Day, a highly esteemed professor of comparative languages at the University of Virginia, collaborated with Lowry’s widow and editor, Margerie Bonner (died 1988), on both queries concerning her husband and on Lowry’s posthumous novel, Dark as the Grave Wherein my Friend Is Laid (1968).2 When granted such a choice, I opt for the biographer who knew the cast of characters, no matter whether this results in flagrant biases or attempts to please living relatives. In the case of Lowry, there would be no text to the biography without a plethora of drinking tales resulting in bad behavior, accidental falls, and hospitalizations for acute alcoholism and insanity. The more annoying aspects of Day’s biography are a result of his Freudian and Jungian psychoanalytic generalizations as to the reasons behind Lowry’s destructive personality. And then there is Day’s academic tendency to stray into the realm of literary criticism, which is forgivable considering the dearth of Lowry’s finished writings and the obvious fact that they are all highly autobiographical, involving artistic types who are alcoholics and undergoing mental crises. The women mostly resemble either Lowry’s first or second wife. These digressions by Day are but minor quibbles because one cannot separate Lowry from his fiction; he was the prototypical writer who could only write autobiographically. Furthermore, Day’s literary analyses are spot on. Day’s book is erudite, impeccably researched and footnoted, and eminently readable, bringing to life the flawed genius who remains an enigma almost 75 years after his death, with most literary-minded people only aware of Under the Volcano and, perhaps, the brilliant film adaptation by John Huston (1984).
There are no spoiler alerts in Malcolm Lowry’s life. Day begins his tale with the last months of the tormented author, expelled from British Columbia, psychotically bipolar in Sicily, then, contemplating, back in England, cures for his alcoholism including lobotomy, and finally succumbing to a violent bender in a rented cottage in Ripe, Essex. Never have I as a reader been more repulsed by alcohol while reading a biography than while reading the accounts of Lowry’s daily life.3 Perhaps the only biography that rivals Day’s for sordid and pathetic tales of alcoholic woe is Blake Bailey’s 2003 biography on Richard Yates, A Tragic Honesty.
After beginning with the inevitable end, Day then presents a very standard impeccably researched and footnoted, biography on this gifted child from an upper-class English mercantile family. Lowry did not distinguish himself in the British school system and was given permission by his father to sail as an ordinary seaman, a gap year if you will—which resulted in his first novel, Ultramarine—before enrolling in Cambridge where he barely eked out a degree and was expected to enter the family business.
Already an alcoholic with a flair for language, Lowry then proceeded to spend the rest of his life on a monthly family stipend, living peripatetically in New York, Hollywood, Mexico, and British Columbia, leaving a trail of liquor bottles wherever he resided. A genius with a perfection complex, Lowry tinkered with his masterpiece, Under the Volcano, for almost a decade enduring countless rejections from publishers, which depicts the last day in the life of an ex-British consul in a remote Mexican outpost. The sorry protagonist, Geoffrey Firmin resembles Lowry, as does the half-brother character Hugh. The estranged wife, Yvonne, is based on Lowry’s brief first marriage to Jan Gabrial, whose Inside the Volcano: My Life with Malcolm Lowry appeared in 2002. Seeing how biographical and important Under the Volcano is in the canon of 20th Century literature, Day’s biography does an adequate job of both keeping the reader entertained and making him or her long for another reread of his Modernist classic.
1: “Death by Misadventure” appearing in British death reports when death results from risks taken voluntarily.
2 It also helped that I had a pristine hardcover of the Day biography in my possession when the urge compelled me to learn more about the enigmatic Lowry. Proximity trumps a trip to the UNH stacks.
3: This feeling also overwhelms me when reading Under the Volcano, with yet another description of mescal guzzling leading to empathetic nausea.
Lowry died at the ripe young age of 47 in a completely insane, but—sadly for him—typical drinking incident where he attacked his wife who was trying to keep him from drinking yet another bottle of gin, downed barbiturates, and never woke up. The coroner largely sidestepped issues of suicide or foul play by using the euphemism “death by misadventure” on his coroner’s report.1
With two biographies to choose from, I opted for Douglas Day’s 1973 soporifically titled Malcolm Lowry: A Biography over the more “recent” one, G. Bowker’s Pursued by Furies: A Life of Malcolm Lowry (1993). In all honesty, I radiated to the shorter biography, though I had a bias since Douglas Day, a highly esteemed professor of comparative languages at the University of Virginia, collaborated with Lowry’s widow and editor, Margerie Bonner (died 1988), on both queries concerning her husband and on Lowry’s posthumous novel, Dark as the Grave Wherein my Friend Is Laid (1968).2 When granted such a choice, I opt for the biographer who knew the cast of characters, no matter whether this results in flagrant biases or attempts to please living relatives. In the case of Lowry, there would be no text to the biography without a plethora of drinking tales resulting in bad behavior, accidental falls, and hospitalizations for acute alcoholism and insanity. The more annoying aspects of Day’s biography are a result of his Freudian and Jungian psychoanalytic generalizations as to the reasons behind Lowry’s destructive personality. And then there is Day’s academic tendency to stray into the realm of literary criticism, which is forgivable considering the dearth of Lowry’s finished writings and the obvious fact that they are all highly autobiographical, involving artistic types who are alcoholics and undergoing mental crises. The women mostly resemble either Lowry’s first or second wife. These digressions by Day are but minor quibbles because one cannot separate Lowry from his fiction; he was the prototypical writer who could only write autobiographically. Furthermore, Day’s literary analyses are spot on. Day’s book is erudite, impeccably researched and footnoted, and eminently readable, bringing to life the flawed genius who remains an enigma almost 75 years after his death, with most literary-minded people only aware of Under the Volcano and, perhaps, the brilliant film adaptation by John Huston (1984).
There are no spoiler alerts in Malcolm Lowry’s life. Day begins his tale with the last months of the tormented author, expelled from British Columbia, psychotically bipolar in Sicily, then, contemplating, back in England, cures for his alcoholism including lobotomy, and finally succumbing to a violent bender in a rented cottage in Ripe, Essex. Never have I as a reader been more repulsed by alcohol while reading a biography than while reading the accounts of Lowry’s daily life.3 Perhaps the only biography that rivals Day’s for sordid and pathetic tales of alcoholic woe is Blake Bailey’s 2003 biography on Richard Yates, A Tragic Honesty.
After beginning with the inevitable end, Day then presents a very standard impeccably researched and footnoted, biography on this gifted child from an upper-class English mercantile family. Lowry did not distinguish himself in the British school system and was given permission by his father to sail as an ordinary seaman, a gap year if you will—which resulted in his first novel, Ultramarine—before enrolling in Cambridge where he barely eked out a degree and was expected to enter the family business.
Already an alcoholic with a flair for language, Lowry then proceeded to spend the rest of his life on a monthly family stipend, living peripatetically in New York, Hollywood, Mexico, and British Columbia, leaving a trail of liquor bottles wherever he resided. A genius with a perfection complex, Lowry tinkered with his masterpiece, Under the Volcano, for almost a decade enduring countless rejections from publishers, which depicts the last day in the life of an ex-British consul in a remote Mexican outpost. The sorry protagonist, Geoffrey Firmin resembles Lowry, as does the half-brother character Hugh. The estranged wife, Yvonne, is based on Lowry’s brief first marriage to Jan Gabrial, whose Inside the Volcano: My Life with Malcolm Lowry appeared in 2002. Seeing how biographical and important Under the Volcano is in the canon of 20th Century literature, Day’s biography does an adequate job of both keeping the reader entertained and making him or her long for another reread of his Modernist classic.
1: “Death by Misadventure” appearing in British death reports when death results from risks taken voluntarily.
2 It also helped that I had a pristine hardcover of the Day biography in my possession when the urge compelled me to learn more about the enigmatic Lowry. Proximity trumps a trip to the UNH stacks.
3: This feeling also overwhelms me when reading Under the Volcano, with yet another description of mescal guzzling leading to empathetic nausea.
November 14, 2016
This is a wonderful biography to read if you´ve got any interest in Lowry, Under the Volcano or writers in general. It has everything and despite some aging - especially in his occassional interpretations of Lowry´s actions via psychoanalysis - you can´t help but come away with a clear picture of what Lowry was like in person. You can see, hear and feel him.
Lowry is an odd character. First and foremost, of course, is the writing. Everything Lowry´s life was about writing; everything was grist to the mill. He wrote about writing his books. When he woke up in a mental asylum in New York he wrote about it. Anything - bad, good, embarrassing, heroic - was written about. His life was the story.
But he wasn´t a happy man. He didn´t fit in with his family. He didn´t fit in where he lived. He didn´t fit in when he escaped to sea. He wanted to be a poet. He was insecure about his body. He drank intensely. When he was taken to a special hospital near London to be treated for alcholism in the 50´s, he was placed in a room with only a red light for company. No food or drink bar a tap which served him alcohol mixed with a poison to make him feel sick. Lowry stayed down in the hole happily, even breaking out with another prisoner on Christmas Eve, going on a bender and coming back of his own volition.
He was a difficult man to live with. Bouts of happiness came with sobriety or moderate drinking but he was mostly broke and suffered indignities like having his house burn down when he was happy. The woman who lived with him had to navigate his moods and booziness. One found him in a whorehouse, lying on a dirty bed where he´d sold his trousers for gin. Taking him home, she had to stop at a bar to let him have a beer to calm his nerves.
But Lowry was, I think, a heroic writer. His books are incredible, even the bad ones. Definitely unique. Psychadelic, almost. Askew. And what could be a better salve for the misunderstood writer than to read his famous letter to Jonathan Cape justifying Under The Volcano?
If you have any interest in Lowry, this book will be your friend.
Lowry is an odd character. First and foremost, of course, is the writing. Everything Lowry´s life was about writing; everything was grist to the mill. He wrote about writing his books. When he woke up in a mental asylum in New York he wrote about it. Anything - bad, good, embarrassing, heroic - was written about. His life was the story.
But he wasn´t a happy man. He didn´t fit in with his family. He didn´t fit in where he lived. He didn´t fit in when he escaped to sea. He wanted to be a poet. He was insecure about his body. He drank intensely. When he was taken to a special hospital near London to be treated for alcholism in the 50´s, he was placed in a room with only a red light for company. No food or drink bar a tap which served him alcohol mixed with a poison to make him feel sick. Lowry stayed down in the hole happily, even breaking out with another prisoner on Christmas Eve, going on a bender and coming back of his own volition.
He was a difficult man to live with. Bouts of happiness came with sobriety or moderate drinking but he was mostly broke and suffered indignities like having his house burn down when he was happy. The woman who lived with him had to navigate his moods and booziness. One found him in a whorehouse, lying on a dirty bed where he´d sold his trousers for gin. Taking him home, she had to stop at a bar to let him have a beer to calm his nerves.
But Lowry was, I think, a heroic writer. His books are incredible, even the bad ones. Definitely unique. Psychadelic, almost. Askew. And what could be a better salve for the misunderstood writer than to read his famous letter to Jonathan Cape justifying Under The Volcano?
If you have any interest in Lowry, this book will be your friend.
March 14, 2017
A meaty, well-written account of Lowry's life by a literary critic who inherited the notes and interviews of Lowry's first would-be biographer, Conrad Knickerbocker, who committed suicide in 1966 before he could write his version. Under the Volcano, one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, was written by a puzzling and erratic alcoholic who did not write anything else of note. Douglas Day shows how many of the elements of Under the Volcano were derived, as well as those of Lowry's other works. I enjoyed Day's analysis of Under the Volcano, even as I wondered whether Lowry's biography was really the right place for it. Lowry was at his happiest during the years he lived with his wife Margerie in a squatter's shack on the rocky beach of Dollarton, just a few kilometers from where I type these words in North Vancouver, and died, drunk, under tragic and mysterious circumstances in the English village of Ripe in 1957, aged 47. In his greatest work he looked into the tortured soul of humanity as it manifested itself in the 20th century.
May 1, 2017
An odd biography: the exhaustively told implication that Lowry's death was somehow mysterious is off-putting, as is the textbook psychoanalysis. But the interpretive reading of 'Under the Volcano' is excellent (and very helpful for such a difficult novel) and the underlying sympathy for such a problematic subject as Malcom Lowry is both persuasive and endearing.
October 9, 2022
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.
Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/
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.
Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/
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June 7, 2020Never heard of Malcolm Lowry, until I read the biography. Written by Douglas Day, a story that intoduces a man with an amazing mind yet hag ridden by self-annihilating alcoholism. Day psycho analyses the mind of the genius Lowry who, though a one-shot novelist, expressed his own tragedy by fictionalizing his life and living his his fictions. A man who may have been stuck in the infant stage of life resulting in a regressive state of mind known as infantilism characterized by deep-seated narcissism and self-absorbtion. It is revealed that Lowry, unlike most human beings who come to terms with the chaos around them by looking at society, looks inward and and sees himself as one with the universe. He slids downhill all the way to a death -- intentional, but maybe not -- by a combined overdose of drink and sleeping pills as The Rites of Spring resounded in the back-ground.
April 22, 2024
I think I saw a documentary on Lowry and that is what motivated me to learn more about him. He was an alcoholic but he was also very talented and tortured. If I recall correctly, he died because he was drunk and put the wrong thing(s) in his mouth. His early death was a tragedy.
August 24, 2016
it's difficult to separate the book from lowry. in terms of the book: i liked it. drifts into psychoanalytical reading more than i think most people reading it today would be willing to believe, gives margerie's memory more primacy that it seems to warrant. that said, she's the only source for a lot of everything (day's book, lowry's books).
in terms of the man: i've never heard of a more inveterate alcoholic. along with nathanael west, one of the unluckiest writers of the last century.
in terms of the man: i've never heard of a more inveterate alcoholic. along with nathanael west, one of the unluckiest writers of the last century.
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September 29, 2019For some reason I read this book over and over. Engrossing life of England's wandering stream of conscience underdog.
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