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Ultramarine
Malcolm Lowry, who would permanently stake his claim to literary immortality with the masterpiece Under the Volcano, wrote Ultramarine, his debut, as an undergraduate at Cambridge. Displaying the linguistic virtuosity and haunting imagery that became signatures of Lowry's mature style, Ultramarine, a novel he continually rewrote and revised from publication until his death, is one of his central works, and this new edition offers the opportunity for a fuller assessment of his place in the modern canon.Ultramarine is the story of Dana Hilliot's first voyage, as mess-boy on the freighter Oedipus Tyrannus bound for Bombay and of his struggle to win the approval of his shipmates, trying to match their example in the bars and bordellos of the Chinese ports while at the same time remaining faithful to his first love, Janet, back home in England. Alternating between Dana's own narrative and the ribald humor and colorful language of the seamen's conversation, Ultramarine depicts a boy's initiation into the company of men.
187 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1933
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About the author
Malcolm Lowry
96 books423 followersMalcolm Lowry was a British novelist and poet whose masterpiece Under the Volcano is widely hailed as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Born near Liverpool, England, Lowry grew up in a prominent, wealthy family and chafed under the expectations placed upon him by parents and boarding school. He wrote passionately on the themes of exile and despair, and his own wanderlust and erratic lifestyle made him an icon to later generations of writers.
Lowry died in a rented cottage in the village of Ripe, Sussex, where he was living with wife Margerie after having returned to England in the summer of 1955, ill and impoverished. The coroner's verdict was death by misadventure, and the causes of death given as inhalation of stomach contents, barbiturate poisoning, and excessive consumption of alcohol.
It has been suggested that his death was a suicide. Inconsistencies in the accounts given by his wife at various times about what happened at the night of his death have also given rise to suspicions of murder.
Lowry is buried in the churchyard of St John the Baptist in Ripe. Lowry reputedly wrote his own epitaph: "Here lies Malcolm Lowry, late of the Bowery, whose prose was flowery, and often glowery. He lived nightly, and drank daily, and died playing the ukulele," but the epitaph does not appear on his gravestone
Lowry died in a rented cottage in the village of Ripe, Sussex, where he was living with wife Margerie after having returned to England in the summer of 1955, ill and impoverished. The coroner's verdict was death by misadventure, and the causes of death given as inhalation of stomach contents, barbiturate poisoning, and excessive consumption of alcohol.
It has been suggested that his death was a suicide. Inconsistencies in the accounts given by his wife at various times about what happened at the night of his death have also given rise to suspicions of murder.
Lowry is buried in the churchyard of St John the Baptist in Ripe. Lowry reputedly wrote his own epitaph: "Here lies Malcolm Lowry, late of the Bowery, whose prose was flowery, and often glowery. He lived nightly, and drank daily, and died playing the ukulele," but the epitaph does not appear on his gravestone
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
April 6, 2016
To address the most obvious questions first: Is Ultramarine the equal of Under the Volcano? No. Is it worth your time? Yes. Does it contain swatches of prose that hint at the glory that would be fully-realized in Volcano? God, yes. In heaps. So there you go, lazy bastards: a crib notes version to help you decide whether to proceed. I remain, as ever, your literary laboratory rat. On with the show.
No one writes ‘drunk’ like Malcolm Lowry, nor does anyone write it better. I’ll admit to a 20-year career as a Professional Drinker (SoCal Unit 419: Retired w/ Honorable Discharge; full pension and benefits) and reading him is almost painfully close to home/bone. When he writes a bender, it’s a marvel of almost cinema verité quality. That ebbing back and forth between consciousness and blackout, snatches of photographic clarity amidst the flotsam of booze and misadventure; the circling and eventual swirling down the drain past the point of return into the maw of true, fucking profound drunkenness and its ineluctable repercussions…He nails it all, like a pigeon to a wall with a railroad spike.
Chapter III is pure virtuosity (it must be said that it bears an almost eerily uncanny resemblance at times to WTV's masterful The Rainbow Stories). It is the centerpiece of Ultramarine and worth the price of admission alone. The very next chapter will tear away at you with some avian imagery better read than discussed. Lowry wasn’t just the savant of Volcano and this book is testimony to that. Do yourself the favor of appreciating it on its own terms and throw the comparisons out the window. For 1933, this is bracing modernism with some of the best and darkest stream-of-consciousness prose to come out of the era (which is certainly saying something). The imagery and references are a simultaneous blending of Christianity, paganism, mythology, nursery rhyme, and the linguistic kitchen sink, viz., German, Norwegian, Japanese, and Cockney all smashed together in a ramble-jamble that is absolutely breathtaking at points. Or, as Lowry himself puts it:
“Tinkle tonkle tankle tunk…”
Read it, read it, read it.
No one writes ‘drunk’ like Malcolm Lowry, nor does anyone write it better. I’ll admit to a 20-year career as a Professional Drinker (SoCal Unit 419: Retired w/ Honorable Discharge; full pension and benefits) and reading him is almost painfully close to home/bone. When he writes a bender, it’s a marvel of almost cinema verité quality. That ebbing back and forth between consciousness and blackout, snatches of photographic clarity amidst the flotsam of booze and misadventure; the circling and eventual swirling down the drain past the point of return into the maw of true, fucking profound drunkenness and its ineluctable repercussions…He nails it all, like a pigeon to a wall with a railroad spike.
Chapter III is pure virtuosity (it must be said that it bears an almost eerily uncanny resemblance at times to WTV's masterful The Rainbow Stories). It is the centerpiece of Ultramarine and worth the price of admission alone. The very next chapter will tear away at you with some avian imagery better read than discussed. Lowry wasn’t just the savant of Volcano and this book is testimony to that. Do yourself the favor of appreciating it on its own terms and throw the comparisons out the window. For 1933, this is bracing modernism with some of the best and darkest stream-of-consciousness prose to come out of the era (which is certainly saying something). The imagery and references are a simultaneous blending of Christianity, paganism, mythology, nursery rhyme, and the linguistic kitchen sink, viz., German, Norwegian, Japanese, and Cockney all smashed together in a ramble-jamble that is absolutely breathtaking at points. Or, as Lowry himself puts it:
“Tinkle tonkle tankle tunk…”
Read it, read it, read it.
August 11, 2025
Η κωμωδία συνεχιζόταν, χωρίς σκοπό,χωρίς νόημα,αξιοθρήνητες εικόνες του απόλυτου παραλογισμού της ζώης
March 1, 2022
Under the Volcano is a masterpiece, so much so that it towers and overshadows everything else Lowry ever did. This, his first novel is a sea journey and it's unlikely to win you over it you can't stand the writing in Volcano, long stream of consciousness sentences and it's inaccessible nature, it's hard to imagine putting this out as a young writer and thinking your going to make it big, I don't think Lowry gave a fuck. I liked this book because of it's strangeness and for its unique lyrical writing.
August 2, 2025
Note: This review replaces my older one after a recent reread.
“I hate those bloody toffs who come to see for experience. . . .” (Pg. 19)
The above sentiment, spoken by the grizzled old cook on the freighter Oedipus Tyrannus in Malcolm Lowry’s debut novel Ultramarine has been expressed, with hostility and nearly verbatim, at any young man who dares to broach class boundaries and throw in his lot with that of the common seamen, especially if [gasp] he had previous “experience” in a scholastic or university setting. So universal is the sentiment that it appears in virtually any first-person narrative of a young man from a gentry class—or in Melville’s case in Redburn, delipidated gentry—who pretends to be a mariner.1 Thus, Ultramarine, originally published in Britain in 1933 and later revised after the author became famous for the Modernist classic Under the Volcano (1947), does not present any new themes. In fact, Lowry readily admitted that he pirated one major theme, fear of sexually transmitted diseases, from the, then, contemporary novelist Nordahl Grieg, and his The Ship Sails On.2 Another major theme borrowed from Grieg’s work is the mind-numbing drudgery of both the labor and dialogue during a sea voyage. However, these themes are so ubiquitous in any maritime milieu that one is hard pressed to accuse any neophyte sailor with literary aspirations of any sort of actual plagiarism. The sea and a young man’s initiation into maritime is a template that has changed little over the last hundred years, since the advent of the steam engine eclipsed sailing vessels. Just as Lowry’s protagonist Dana Hilliot was tasked with chipping winch beds in the late 1920’s, I was threatened with the very same on my first vessel, the LNG Taurus in 1987.
This all begs the question, if there is nothing novel to relate, why is the book relevant or still in print?3 Malcolm Lowry is considered one of the great Modernist writers of the 20th century. Famous for rambling dipsomaniacal logorrhea and polyglot erudite allusions, the literary style that comes to the fore in his seminal masterpiece Under the Volcano (1947) is already apparent in this seemingly immature work. There are various nods to Modernism, then a new movement, as the interior rambling monologues of Hilliot reference both Eliot’s Prufrock and The Waste Land, the latter of which occurs in Spanish: “acuérdate de Flebas, que una vez fué bello y robusto como tú--)” (Pg. 150). No wonder the proletariat crew regards him with derision throughout most of the book!
And yet despite all the pretentious citations in Norwegian, Greek and Latin—Lowry has to show off his British schoolboy roots—despite the pidgin German dialogue scenes, there is something utterly compelling about Ultramarine. Lowry manages to create a unique work, albeit a relatively immature one, on a subject that is hackneyed beyond belief: a young man’s—what’s worse, an educated upper-class young man’s—initiation into the maritime industry where preconceived notions of romance are obliterated in a setting that is largely industrial. The gorgeous stars above and the tantalizingly obscure sea below seem tauntingly near, but the present reality is mind-numbing and backbreaking labor punctuated by coarse repetitive prole dialogue. Lowry, perhaps borrowing from his mentor Grieg, emphasizes this by repeating the same secondhand yarns ad nauseam throughout much of the work, lending a monotonous musical quality to his prose. The reader might actually pause and wonder if there is an editorial mistake behind why he is reading the tale of the steward being gifted cigars again and again and again with minor syncopated variations. However, Lowry is a great stylist, as is clear even in a work written largely in his mid-twenties.4 There is a reason to the madness, albeit an annoying one, especially for those not initiated into the excruciating banter of eternally bored chatterboxes.
Ultramarine fits snugly in the genre of maritime novels that describe the unenviable plight of the unlicensed mariner. It’s not as earth shattering as B. Traven’s Deathship (1926), but what is? Deathship is the gold standard.6 Due to its erudite nature, Ultramarine is not as accessible or enticing to the average reader as Melville’s Redburn. Nor does it have the “contemporary” immediacy and humor of the buried classic, Christopher Buckley’s Steaming to Bamboola (1983). Yet, Ultramarine remains close to the heart of this educate mariner with literary pretensions who worked in an unlicensed capacity, on and off, for over twenty years, before getting a Third Mate license. Lowry’s prose is fantastically ambitious—often annoyingly so as it rambles with complete supplication to Modernist writers like Joyce without the least hesitation. His ear for the dialogue of the working class is realistic and musical. The themes he addresses are universal and hauntingly recognizable to anyone who ever signed on a vessel; indeed, I endured picaresque flashbacks from various voyages as I reread Ultramarine, experiencing the nauseating aroma of lead bases paint, the ubiquitous grime in my nostrils, the pain in my feet from steel decks, the derisive order from my first bos’n, and the din-like chatter of those with nothing to say. . .
. . .And—of course—the book remains eternally relevant because Lowry goes on, later in his brief tragic literary career, to write one of the great novels of the 20th Century. Ultramarine should be enjoyed or endured despite its flaws for that reason alone.
---------------------------------------------
1: It took me decades to lose this pretension and be accepted in the industry. In the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, I was known as “the librarian,” or “Dewey” with either acceptance or scorn depending on the speaker.
2: That work appeared in Norwegian in 1924. An English translation was published by Knopf in 1927. Alas, this work is exceedingly scarce. It seems that the Norwegians loved addressing STDs in maritime during the early 20th century with Ibsen’s Ghosts being the primary example.
3: It’s not, but readily available.
4: Lowry, an inveterate tinkerer, revised texts throughout his life and only, arguably, finished two of them, Ultramarine and Under the Volcano. The readily available texts of Ultramarine is the 1962 edition, which was revised by Lowry.
5: “Contemporary” being relative. Christopher Buckley’s debut novel Steaming to Bamboola was written in 1983, and, thus, was my reference of nearly contemporary when I began sailing. The LNG Taurus6: And also reviewed by me on Goodreads. Ditto for Redburn.
“I hate those bloody toffs who come to see for experience. . . .” (Pg. 19)
The above sentiment, spoken by the grizzled old cook on the freighter Oedipus Tyrannus in Malcolm Lowry’s debut novel Ultramarine has been expressed, with hostility and nearly verbatim, at any young man who dares to broach class boundaries and throw in his lot with that of the common seamen, especially if [gasp] he had previous “experience” in a scholastic or university setting. So universal is the sentiment that it appears in virtually any first-person narrative of a young man from a gentry class—or in Melville’s case in Redburn, delipidated gentry—who pretends to be a mariner.1 Thus, Ultramarine, originally published in Britain in 1933 and later revised after the author became famous for the Modernist classic Under the Volcano (1947), does not present any new themes. In fact, Lowry readily admitted that he pirated one major theme, fear of sexually transmitted diseases, from the, then, contemporary novelist Nordahl Grieg, and his The Ship Sails On.2 Another major theme borrowed from Grieg’s work is the mind-numbing drudgery of both the labor and dialogue during a sea voyage. However, these themes are so ubiquitous in any maritime milieu that one is hard pressed to accuse any neophyte sailor with literary aspirations of any sort of actual plagiarism. The sea and a young man’s initiation into maritime is a template that has changed little over the last hundred years, since the advent of the steam engine eclipsed sailing vessels. Just as Lowry’s protagonist Dana Hilliot was tasked with chipping winch beds in the late 1920’s, I was threatened with the very same on my first vessel, the LNG Taurus in 1987.
This all begs the question, if there is nothing novel to relate, why is the book relevant or still in print?3 Malcolm Lowry is considered one of the great Modernist writers of the 20th century. Famous for rambling dipsomaniacal logorrhea and polyglot erudite allusions, the literary style that comes to the fore in his seminal masterpiece Under the Volcano (1947) is already apparent in this seemingly immature work. There are various nods to Modernism, then a new movement, as the interior rambling monologues of Hilliot reference both Eliot’s Prufrock and The Waste Land, the latter of which occurs in Spanish: “acuérdate de Flebas, que una vez fué bello y robusto como tú--)” (Pg. 150). No wonder the proletariat crew regards him with derision throughout most of the book!
And yet despite all the pretentious citations in Norwegian, Greek and Latin—Lowry has to show off his British schoolboy roots—despite the pidgin German dialogue scenes, there is something utterly compelling about Ultramarine. Lowry manages to create a unique work, albeit a relatively immature one, on a subject that is hackneyed beyond belief: a young man’s—what’s worse, an educated upper-class young man’s—initiation into the maritime industry where preconceived notions of romance are obliterated in a setting that is largely industrial. The gorgeous stars above and the tantalizingly obscure sea below seem tauntingly near, but the present reality is mind-numbing and backbreaking labor punctuated by coarse repetitive prole dialogue. Lowry, perhaps borrowing from his mentor Grieg, emphasizes this by repeating the same secondhand yarns ad nauseam throughout much of the work, lending a monotonous musical quality to his prose. The reader might actually pause and wonder if there is an editorial mistake behind why he is reading the tale of the steward being gifted cigars again and again and again with minor syncopated variations. However, Lowry is a great stylist, as is clear even in a work written largely in his mid-twenties.4 There is a reason to the madness, albeit an annoying one, especially for those not initiated into the excruciating banter of eternally bored chatterboxes.
Ultramarine fits snugly in the genre of maritime novels that describe the unenviable plight of the unlicensed mariner. It’s not as earth shattering as B. Traven’s Deathship (1926), but what is? Deathship is the gold standard.6 Due to its erudite nature, Ultramarine is not as accessible or enticing to the average reader as Melville’s Redburn. Nor does it have the “contemporary” immediacy and humor of the buried classic, Christopher Buckley’s Steaming to Bamboola (1983). Yet, Ultramarine remains close to the heart of this educate mariner with literary pretensions who worked in an unlicensed capacity, on and off, for over twenty years, before getting a Third Mate license. Lowry’s prose is fantastically ambitious—often annoyingly so as it rambles with complete supplication to Modernist writers like Joyce without the least hesitation. His ear for the dialogue of the working class is realistic and musical. The themes he addresses are universal and hauntingly recognizable to anyone who ever signed on a vessel; indeed, I endured picaresque flashbacks from various voyages as I reread Ultramarine, experiencing the nauseating aroma of lead bases paint, the ubiquitous grime in my nostrils, the pain in my feet from steel decks, the derisive order from my first bos’n, and the din-like chatter of those with nothing to say. . .
. . .And—of course—the book remains eternally relevant because Lowry goes on, later in his brief tragic literary career, to write one of the great novels of the 20th Century. Ultramarine should be enjoyed or endured despite its flaws for that reason alone.
---------------------------------------------
1: It took me decades to lose this pretension and be accepted in the industry. In the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, I was known as “the librarian,” or “Dewey” with either acceptance or scorn depending on the speaker.
2: That work appeared in Norwegian in 1924. An English translation was published by Knopf in 1927. Alas, this work is exceedingly scarce. It seems that the Norwegians loved addressing STDs in maritime during the early 20th century with Ibsen’s Ghosts being the primary example.
3: It’s not, but readily available.
4: Lowry, an inveterate tinkerer, revised texts throughout his life and only, arguably, finished two of them, Ultramarine and Under the Volcano. The readily available texts of Ultramarine is the 1962 edition, which was revised by Lowry.
5: “Contemporary” being relative. Christopher Buckley’s debut novel Steaming to Bamboola was written in 1983, and, thus, was my reference of nearly contemporary when I began sailing. The LNG Taurus6: And also reviewed by me on Goodreads. Ditto for Redburn.
August 14, 2014
A rollicking sea-journey ; makes the promise Lowry's later and alcohol-addled masterwork would make good on--namely, that he'd be incapable of writing about anyone other than himself--alcohol-addled. Tragic for him; a plus for us.
Read
March 5, 2022A rather bizarre coming-of-age book, based securely in the author's own experience. Some of the narrative is random dialogue among ordinary working sailors; some is the internal monologue of a (probably) virginal 18-year-old lad who has gone off to sea from his comfortable UMC existence for the experience of it and not because (as contrasted with all his shipmates) he desperately needs a job. Full of sensory details, at times poetic, at times also as boring as chores like swabbing the decks and cleaning the heads can be. Doesn't so much end as just stop.
February 26, 2025
Ο Ντέινα Χίλιοτ, μπαρκάρει ως μούτσος με το Οιδιπους Τύραννος σε ένα ταξίδι που θα κρατήσει σχεδόν ένα χρόνο. Βλέπουμε λοιπόν την προσπάθεια του να φανεί αντάξιος του υπόλοιπου πληρώματος και να κερδίσει τον σεβασμό τους.
Η αφήγηση γίνεται κυρίως από τον Ντέινα και παρεμβάλλονται και διάλογοι ή αφηγήσεις των υπόλοιπων. Η γλώσσα των ναυτικών κι οι συνεχείς περιπλανήσεις τους στα μπαράκια των λιμανιών και στα σπίτια του αγοραίου έρωτα ενοχλούν τον νεαρό ναύτη που θέλει να κρατήσει την υπόσχεση που έδωσε σε ένα κορίτσι στην πατρίδα. Όμως υπάρχει και ο εσωτερικός μονόλογος του νεαρού που δείχνει την πάλη που δίνει μέσα του και την ανάγκη του να αποδείξει ότι μπορεί να τα καταφέρει στη θάλασσα, ότι μπορεί να τα καταφέρει μόνος του. Λόγια αποσπασματικά, διάλογοι μπερδεμένοι παρεμβαίνουν κι ο αναγνώστης νιώθει πόσο χαμένος είναι ο ήρωας.
Με ιντριγκάρει η πρόζα του συγγραφέα και νομίζω ότι τελικά έπραξα ορθώς που επέλεξα να ξεκινήσω με το πρώτο του βιβλίο.
Συνέχεια έχει το Κάτω από το ηφαίστειο εν ευθέτω χρόνο..😂
Η αφήγηση γίνεται κυρίως από τον Ντέινα και παρεμβάλλονται και διάλογοι ή αφηγήσεις των υπόλοιπων. Η γλώσσα των ναυτικών κι οι συνεχείς περιπλανήσεις τους στα μπαράκια των λιμανιών και στα σπίτια του αγοραίου έρωτα ενοχλούν τον νεαρό ναύτη που θέλει να κρατήσει την υπόσχεση που έδωσε σε ένα κορίτσι στην πατρίδα. Όμως υπάρχει και ο εσωτερικός μονόλογος του νεαρού που δείχνει την πάλη που δίνει μέσα του και την ανάγκη του να αποδείξει ότι μπορεί να τα καταφέρει στη θάλασσα, ότι μπορεί να τα καταφέρει μόνος του. Λόγια αποσπασματικά, διάλογοι μπερδεμένοι παρεμβαίνουν κι ο αναγνώστης νιώθει πόσο χαμένος είναι ο ήρωας.
Με ιντριγκάρει η πρόζα του συγγραφέα και νομίζω ότι τελικά έπραξα ορθώς που επέλεξα να ξεκινήσω με το πρώτο του βιβλίο.
Συνέχεια έχει το Κάτω από το ηφαίστειο εν ευθέτω χρόνο..😂
November 11, 2025
I don’t think I’ll ever read prose of a quality more ineffable than that of Malcolm Lowry. He explores the universal complexities of a life which, superficially, could only interest the one it belongs to. He captures that self importance we all feel in the midst of complete monotony. And I was made fully engaged with the story of a character which, had they been written by any other author, I would be inclined to dismiss as a nobody, a bystander, ensemble in the theatre of life.
December 5, 2022
"Acaso existían demasiadas respuestas, todas ellas melancólicas, y aunque antaño hubiera elaborado sus propias razones, probablemente ya habían dejado de ser ciertas."
"Oh, el amor que sentía por Janet no era un engaño del tiempo, como el buque: era el norte mismo de la errabunda embarcación."
"En su tierra tal vez fuese de día, por la calle pasarían las mismas caras familiares de siempre; las de quienes transportaban el horizonte entero de sus vidas en el bolsillo y que, por eso, serían enterrados en la fosa común, cotidiana."
"Si lo hubiéramos sabido, si tan sólo hubiéramos sabido que éramos felices en aquella época, no habría sido necesario, en contra de nuestra voluntad, arrancar del presente la oportunidad de inmortalizar el pasado."
"La patria. Sí, todos querían regresar a su patria. Pero, ¿qué patria? Con un poco de imaginación, aquella era nuestra patria."
"Conocer una cosa es matarla; ¡un proceso post-mortem!"
"Pero quedaba siempre esa esperanza débil, esa expectación indefinida de que algún día [...] surgiría de la nada de la ignorancia ese conocimiento consciente de la única verdad que representa el poder absoluto, la felicidad absoluta."
"Oh, el amor que sentía por Janet no era un engaño del tiempo, como el buque: era el norte mismo de la errabunda embarcación."
"En su tierra tal vez fuese de día, por la calle pasarían las mismas caras familiares de siempre; las de quienes transportaban el horizonte entero de sus vidas en el bolsillo y que, por eso, serían enterrados en la fosa común, cotidiana."
"Si lo hubiéramos sabido, si tan sólo hubiéramos sabido que éramos felices en aquella época, no habría sido necesario, en contra de nuestra voluntad, arrancar del presente la oportunidad de inmortalizar el pasado."
"La patria. Sí, todos querían regresar a su patria. Pero, ¿qué patria? Con un poco de imaginación, aquella era nuestra patria."
"Conocer una cosa es matarla; ¡un proceso post-mortem!"
"Pero quedaba siempre esa esperanza débil, esa expectación indefinida de que algún día [...] surgiría de la nada de la ignorancia ese conocimiento consciente de la única verdad que representa el poder absoluto, la felicidad absoluta."
June 28, 2022
Malcolm Lowry is probably best known for "Under the Volcano." His debut novel "Ultramarine" is an experimental narrative that can be seen as an earlier version of that classic. An educated young man decides to go to sea for the experience and winds up learning to be a man, with most of the dangers and pitfalls that come with that. The one sin/lesson he does not allow himself is to take advantage of the willing prostitutes at every port of call. It is all part of his running inner monologue, interspersed with the conversations of the seamen around him.
It was confusing to follow at first, but the reader adapts. By the end we are caught up with the story, slight as it is, and understand the young sailor's motives and wanderlust.
It was confusing to follow at first, but the reader adapts. By the end we are caught up with the story, slight as it is, and understand the young sailor's motives and wanderlust.
Read
August 31, 2024Since reading Under the Volcano, I’ve become somewhat obsessed with Malcolm Lowry. I found that book about six years ago in both the best and worst circumstances. It absolutely destroyed me, and I’ve been a bit afraid to go back to it because I worry that it will cause me to spiral into a deep depression, again. It also lives in my mind as this All-Time-Great novel, and I know that, eventually, I will return to it. For now, let’s look at Ultramarine, the only other book by Lowry published in his lifetime.
It’s the story of Dana Hilliot, a stand-in for Lowry, and his first voyage as a mess boy on a freighter, as it travels from Liverpool to Bombay. Dana feels a driving need to learn more about life, about himself, explore the world and better understand what’s out there. So that this book fits right in with the kind of stuff Paul Bowles, Hemingway, Conrad, and many others were doing at the time.
What makes this book interesting is the way Lowry can put you in the middle of the action so immediately and intimately, the style characteristically his own. This is also what I loved about Under the Volcano and has me now on the quest to read all of his stuff. There’s dialogue and slang and unattributed conversations, distinct voices allowed to roll over one another as the Oedipus does the waves and wandering mind of Dana whose interior searching becomes a slipstream of images that take us from the metal interior of the boat to the psychedelic interior of his mind, with people and images and flashes of love and longing shooting all around: “My yearnings sailed over sea and evening and dawn; and for the first time I felt I knew the meaning of the city, where all nights could intoxicate and torment, and where all hearts spin towards the light and burn themselves in its fire, whose nerves are played to death and sing like violins in defiance and painful exultation, because we still exist – “ (86)
The narrative centers around his visit into town and the trouble he gets into, how his conflict with another ship mate, an old hand, Andy, escalates and what that means/how it impacts everything around him. Lowry trusts that we readers are intelligent and can pick up on the connections that he has made and presented for us; it’s great writing from someone who trusts their audience and doesn’t give a shit if you miss small details because it’s more about achieving something greater than, which is how he’s able to fill you with a sense of dread and sadness for the loss of a pigeon. Lowry has the ability to hit you with images or phrases that are somehow more than the sum of their parts, somehow have gravity (e.g., “”Soon be home,” sighed Andy, and the others agreed, laughing, not knowing what they meant.” (172) or “I made my mother’s letter into a funnel, and filtered the starlight through it into an unfinished glass of beer.” (97)). Put it plainly, he’s just damned good.
The scope is narrowly focused and more than worthwhile for those curious or for those who have only explored his master work, even offering glimpses of uncharacteristic hope: “In spite of all, I know now that at least it is better to go always towards the summer, towards those burning seas of light; to sit at night in the forecastle lost in an unfamiliar dream, when the spirit becomes filled with stars, instead of wounds, and good and compassionate and tender.” (201) Does it reach the heights of Under the Volcano? Of course not, nor, I think, was that the intention. This is a much smaller book, still absolutely unique in style, and an easy recommendation.
It’s the story of Dana Hilliot, a stand-in for Lowry, and his first voyage as a mess boy on a freighter, as it travels from Liverpool to Bombay. Dana feels a driving need to learn more about life, about himself, explore the world and better understand what’s out there. So that this book fits right in with the kind of stuff Paul Bowles, Hemingway, Conrad, and many others were doing at the time.
What makes this book interesting is the way Lowry can put you in the middle of the action so immediately and intimately, the style characteristically his own. This is also what I loved about Under the Volcano and has me now on the quest to read all of his stuff. There’s dialogue and slang and unattributed conversations, distinct voices allowed to roll over one another as the Oedipus does the waves and wandering mind of Dana whose interior searching becomes a slipstream of images that take us from the metal interior of the boat to the psychedelic interior of his mind, with people and images and flashes of love and longing shooting all around: “My yearnings sailed over sea and evening and dawn; and for the first time I felt I knew the meaning of the city, where all nights could intoxicate and torment, and where all hearts spin towards the light and burn themselves in its fire, whose nerves are played to death and sing like violins in defiance and painful exultation, because we still exist – “ (86)
The narrative centers around his visit into town and the trouble he gets into, how his conflict with another ship mate, an old hand, Andy, escalates and what that means/how it impacts everything around him. Lowry trusts that we readers are intelligent and can pick up on the connections that he has made and presented for us; it’s great writing from someone who trusts their audience and doesn’t give a shit if you miss small details because it’s more about achieving something greater than, which is how he’s able to fill you with a sense of dread and sadness for the loss of a pigeon. Lowry has the ability to hit you with images or phrases that are somehow more than the sum of their parts, somehow have gravity (e.g., “”Soon be home,” sighed Andy, and the others agreed, laughing, not knowing what they meant.” (172) or “I made my mother’s letter into a funnel, and filtered the starlight through it into an unfinished glass of beer.” (97)). Put it plainly, he’s just damned good.
The scope is narrowly focused and more than worthwhile for those curious or for those who have only explored his master work, even offering glimpses of uncharacteristic hope: “In spite of all, I know now that at least it is better to go always towards the summer, towards those burning seas of light; to sit at night in the forecastle lost in an unfamiliar dream, when the spirit becomes filled with stars, instead of wounds, and good and compassionate and tender.” (201) Does it reach the heights of Under the Volcano? Of course not, nor, I think, was that the intention. This is a much smaller book, still absolutely unique in style, and an easy recommendation.
September 20, 2025
The bumbling, tumbling, twisting consciousness and introspections of an overly anxious, confused boy lost in love, on a ship full of degenerates. Difficult to keep up with, difficult to put down. Loved the rambling, trailing thoughts of a drunken night out.
September 25, 2024
Well, I thought this was very good. A lot of the dialogue amongst these drunken sailors reminded me of Eugene O'Neill. It's certainly not a perfect novel but it's well worth a read.
April 13, 2022
I found this to be such a mixture. On the one hand, the text is full of baffilling nautical jargon and passages of largely impenetrable passages of stream of consciousness. On the other, the book vividly paints a picture of life on the ocean a hundred years ago with natural sailor speech lifted from Lowry's own experiences.
The conversations, which often involve a room full of men speaking over each other without speech being attributed to a speaker, help create a realistic (I'd guess) depiction of life on board. These are a highlight of the book, along with Lowry's depiction of drunkness and distracted thought which he would go on to perfect in the much superior Under the Volcano.
The conversations, which often involve a room full of men speaking over each other without speech being attributed to a speaker, help create a realistic (I'd guess) depiction of life on board. These are a highlight of the book, along with Lowry's depiction of drunkness and distracted thought which he would go on to perfect in the much superior Under the Volcano.
April 12, 2017
I started reading this by accident. I forgot that I hadn't been able to finish Lowry's other book (Under the Volcano), either. His writing style is grating - watery, stream-of-consciousness prose where you can't tell what's real and what's drunken blathering. Overlapping dialogue ascribed to no one and frequent lapses into various foreign languages. Characters are boring, self-absorbed, Holden Caulfield types. maybe something for an English major to have to analyze. I don't want to.
September 2, 2016
I should have known better than to pick this up, especially after the mediocre experience in Mexico.
I made it through 55 repetitive pages of ship parts, clipped and interrupted salty dog jargon, and a toff pining for his virgin girlfriend, even though his balls were clearly turning ultramarine blue!
Life is WAY too short to spend another minute with this one!
I made it through 55 repetitive pages of ship parts, clipped and interrupted salty dog jargon, and a toff pining for his virgin girlfriend, even though his balls were clearly turning ultramarine blue!
Life is WAY too short to spend another minute with this one!
April 4, 2011
could somebody tell Dean that I read this please? and also that it made sense to me so it would probably be underwhelming for him.
October 16, 2021
If you never realised your dream of running away to sea, Malcolm Lowry’s ‘Ultramarine’ will give you some idea of the challenges and tough times you may have missed out on.
Dana Hilliot signs on the Far East bound tramp ‘Oedipus Tyrannus at the age of 18, both to see something of the world and to prove his manhood. To the crew, however, he is regarded as one of the young affluent males who go to sea purely for the experience and take jobs away from less privileged working class boys – boys who really need the money. In Hilliot’s case, the fact that he is driven to the dock by his father in a Rolls Royce makes their hostility even more intense.
But judging by the tasks he is allotted, it’s unlikely anybody else would want the job anyway. His duties include making coffee, waiting on the crew with meals, washing up, scrubbing the deck, polishing brass, cleaning toilets and spending hours chipping rust from winch beds.
In addition to arriving in a Rolls Royce, Hilliot’s standing with the crew is further diminished by the fact that he won’t join them in their trips to bars and brothels wherever the ship docks.
His celibacy and loyalty to the girl he loves in England may be admirable, but it certainly doesn’t improve the crews' opinion of him. It makes you wonder why he decided to leave her and enter an environment of brutal labour, bullying workmates, degrading tasks, horrible swearing, seedy bars, and brothels highly conducive to contracting VD.
While he rejects the bars and brothels, Hilliot is on very friendly terms with the bottle - and he offers emotive and brilliantly recorded accounts of his various binges in the ports he visits en route from Liverpool to Penang, Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Yokohama. He has joined the crew of the tramp to see something of the world, but in reality, it doesn’t work out that way. The voyage comprises just port after port and it soon dawns on him that they are virtually all the same.
The resentment of the crew may well be explained by the fact that Hilliot’s sea adventure is set in 1927, when class distinction was still much in evidence in England and the men who undertook the hardest and grubbiest jobs on merchant ships were looked down upon as the ‘scum of the earth’. Naturally, they didn’t take kindly to young ‘toffs’ who in their eyes went to sea for fun and adventure.
When my generation was the same age as Lowry in the 50’s, and looking for casual jobs to get extra cash, we also ended up in jobs that few others wanted – including road sweeping, working on rubbish tips, garden labouring and coal heaving. The only more congenial role I found was working as a film extra! As I recall neither I nor any of my friends encountered the abuse and insults heaped on Hilliott on the ‘Oedipus Tyrannus’.
‘Ultramarine’ is not an easy read. Passages covering Helliot’s experiences on the voyage are interspersed with others which focus on the crew recalling bizarre highlights of their own many years at sea. These are frequently disjointed, overly long and complex. His rambling recollections of a bender with the German sailor Hans Popplereuter in Hong Kong takes up almost forty pages.
But if you take your time, you will find revealing insights into life at sea, particularly during the era of the steam driven ships in the early years of the 20th Century. Unfortunately, your understanding and appreciation of the story may well be hampered by lots of quotes in French, German, Norwegian, Japanese, Latin - and even Greek using the Greek alphabet.
Hilliot’s strongest opponent and chief antagonist is Andy, the ship’s cook, who refers to him as ‘Miss Hilliot’. The young first voyager becomes obsessed with winning his approval and becoming his friend. In the end, he succeeds and also integrates better with the crew after getting intimate with a waterfront whore. He finally gets the opportunity to really prove his manhood when he gets transferred to the stokehold as a coal trimmer.
I found ‘Ultramarine’ a challenging and rewarding read with illuminating insights into both male psychology and maritime history. However, I am told that it pales by comparison with the book by Lowry which followed it - ‘Under The Volcano’. I clearly have a treat to come.
Dana Hilliot signs on the Far East bound tramp ‘Oedipus Tyrannus at the age of 18, both to see something of the world and to prove his manhood. To the crew, however, he is regarded as one of the young affluent males who go to sea purely for the experience and take jobs away from less privileged working class boys – boys who really need the money. In Hilliot’s case, the fact that he is driven to the dock by his father in a Rolls Royce makes their hostility even more intense.
But judging by the tasks he is allotted, it’s unlikely anybody else would want the job anyway. His duties include making coffee, waiting on the crew with meals, washing up, scrubbing the deck, polishing brass, cleaning toilets and spending hours chipping rust from winch beds.
In addition to arriving in a Rolls Royce, Hilliot’s standing with the crew is further diminished by the fact that he won’t join them in their trips to bars and brothels wherever the ship docks.
His celibacy and loyalty to the girl he loves in England may be admirable, but it certainly doesn’t improve the crews' opinion of him. It makes you wonder why he decided to leave her and enter an environment of brutal labour, bullying workmates, degrading tasks, horrible swearing, seedy bars, and brothels highly conducive to contracting VD.
While he rejects the bars and brothels, Hilliot is on very friendly terms with the bottle - and he offers emotive and brilliantly recorded accounts of his various binges in the ports he visits en route from Liverpool to Penang, Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Yokohama. He has joined the crew of the tramp to see something of the world, but in reality, it doesn’t work out that way. The voyage comprises just port after port and it soon dawns on him that they are virtually all the same.
The resentment of the crew may well be explained by the fact that Hilliot’s sea adventure is set in 1927, when class distinction was still much in evidence in England and the men who undertook the hardest and grubbiest jobs on merchant ships were looked down upon as the ‘scum of the earth’. Naturally, they didn’t take kindly to young ‘toffs’ who in their eyes went to sea for fun and adventure.
When my generation was the same age as Lowry in the 50’s, and looking for casual jobs to get extra cash, we also ended up in jobs that few others wanted – including road sweeping, working on rubbish tips, garden labouring and coal heaving. The only more congenial role I found was working as a film extra! As I recall neither I nor any of my friends encountered the abuse and insults heaped on Hilliott on the ‘Oedipus Tyrannus’.
‘Ultramarine’ is not an easy read. Passages covering Helliot’s experiences on the voyage are interspersed with others which focus on the crew recalling bizarre highlights of their own many years at sea. These are frequently disjointed, overly long and complex. His rambling recollections of a bender with the German sailor Hans Popplereuter in Hong Kong takes up almost forty pages.
But if you take your time, you will find revealing insights into life at sea, particularly during the era of the steam driven ships in the early years of the 20th Century. Unfortunately, your understanding and appreciation of the story may well be hampered by lots of quotes in French, German, Norwegian, Japanese, Latin - and even Greek using the Greek alphabet.
Hilliot’s strongest opponent and chief antagonist is Andy, the ship’s cook, who refers to him as ‘Miss Hilliot’. The young first voyager becomes obsessed with winning his approval and becoming his friend. In the end, he succeeds and also integrates better with the crew after getting intimate with a waterfront whore. He finally gets the opportunity to really prove his manhood when he gets transferred to the stokehold as a coal trimmer.
I found ‘Ultramarine’ a challenging and rewarding read with illuminating insights into both male psychology and maritime history. However, I am told that it pales by comparison with the book by Lowry which followed it - ‘Under The Volcano’. I clearly have a treat to come.
August 19, 2024
When the year is over, this will surely end up being one of the best novels I read in 2024. I can't imagine too many other books coming along in the next four months to knock it down in my estimation...
It is marvellous. It has a particular resonance for me because I studied in a Maritime College and I had relatives who spent their working lives at sea and probably they experienced much of what Lowry's protagonist here experiences. A tramp steamer in the 1920s/30s. The novel spoke to me on a deeper level than most other novels have ever done.
Curiously enough, I had this paperback when I was young and always planned to read it and never did. Four decades later I acquired the same edition and now I have read it. I wish I had explored the work of Lowry sooner! His prose style is exquisite. Lyrical and strange but also muscular and true. There is no baroque decoration for its own sake here. The poetry is beautiful but brutal. There is a sturdy stream of consciousness backed up by an extraordinary set of dialogue exchanges and pure gutsy descriptions of the maiden voyage of a new sailor. It is psychologically tough, offbeat, stoical, exotic and timeless, and it feels absolutely authentic in every line of every paragraph.
I have become an instant Malcolm Lowry admirer. I will now seek out all his other books....
It is marvellous. It has a particular resonance for me because I studied in a Maritime College and I had relatives who spent their working lives at sea and probably they experienced much of what Lowry's protagonist here experiences. A tramp steamer in the 1920s/30s. The novel spoke to me on a deeper level than most other novels have ever done.
Curiously enough, I had this paperback when I was young and always planned to read it and never did. Four decades later I acquired the same edition and now I have read it. I wish I had explored the work of Lowry sooner! His prose style is exquisite. Lyrical and strange but also muscular and true. There is no baroque decoration for its own sake here. The poetry is beautiful but brutal. There is a sturdy stream of consciousness backed up by an extraordinary set of dialogue exchanges and pure gutsy descriptions of the maiden voyage of a new sailor. It is psychologically tough, offbeat, stoical, exotic and timeless, and it feels absolutely authentic in every line of every paragraph.
I have become an instant Malcolm Lowry admirer. I will now seek out all his other books....
October 17, 2025
Sentimientos encontrados, pensamientos confusos y direcciones enrevesadas. Esas serian algunas formas de poner en palabras lo que significo esta lectura para mi.
Lo mas destacable que puedo comentar de este libro, es que me sorprendió mucho la manera tan rica, poética y abstracta con la cual el autor puede expresarse e interpretar experiencias vividas. Más aun, teniendo en cuenta su corta edad.
Otro punto curioso fue, la similitud que podía encontrar en su protagonista Dana Hilliot, el joven Werther. Ambos pasan de la narración en tiempo real a las cavilaciones emocionales y el existencialismo, aunque en el caso de Hilliot de una manera mucho más caótica.
Es en el punto anterior donde me quiero detener y construir mi critica, ya que es ahi, donde reside lo negativo para mi. Esta lectura es muy desordenada, caótica, salta de un lugar a otro, de realidad a ficción, del reino onirico a lo material, del sueño a la vida. No me molesta que esto suceda, es el como esta hecho, realmente es un libro con mucho potencial, pero que se ve trabado por sus propios deseos de contar, contar, contar, saltar, explorar, comentar, criticar y asi volver de nuevo y repetir. Ya que es eso, lo que me falto en esta obra. Fluidez.
Aun con todo lo anterior solamente por lo original de su narrativa y su manera de narrar, pienso que merece una oportunidad. Simplemente no es para mi.
Lo mas destacable que puedo comentar de este libro, es que me sorprendió mucho la manera tan rica, poética y abstracta con la cual el autor puede expresarse e interpretar experiencias vividas. Más aun, teniendo en cuenta su corta edad.
Otro punto curioso fue, la similitud que podía encontrar en su protagonista Dana Hilliot, el joven Werther. Ambos pasan de la narración en tiempo real a las cavilaciones emocionales y el existencialismo, aunque en el caso de Hilliot de una manera mucho más caótica.
Es en el punto anterior donde me quiero detener y construir mi critica, ya que es ahi, donde reside lo negativo para mi. Esta lectura es muy desordenada, caótica, salta de un lugar a otro, de realidad a ficción, del reino onirico a lo material, del sueño a la vida. No me molesta que esto suceda, es el como esta hecho, realmente es un libro con mucho potencial, pero que se ve trabado por sus propios deseos de contar, contar, contar, saltar, explorar, comentar, criticar y asi volver de nuevo y repetir. Ya que es eso, lo que me falto en esta obra. Fluidez.
Aun con todo lo anterior solamente por lo original de su narrativa y su manera de narrar, pienso que merece una oportunidad. Simplemente no es para mi.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 20, 2025
Lowry deals with the tension between the individual and the generic mass of people and social relations around him. The from itself accentuates this as the seamen are the indistinguishable, their dialogue blends together into a mix of 'furies' while Dana Hilliot desperately tries to stay separate, to distinguish himself against the other. Lowry's impressive stylistic choices are really the basis of the novel; this is also the aspect of the novel which I most enjoyed. Although, now that I think about it the 'action' of the novel both informs the form, and the form informs the 'action'. The novel has an impressive confidence in its own experimental-ness, switching styles between chapters and including some amazing passages of prose.
The novel slowly reveals there is little hope in sustaining a sense of individuality in social societies and social circles where we all (instinctively) know that each person is basically the same. This is how Danna grows up, he comes to realise he can only ever just be another one of the seamen despite his efforts to not be. He eventually conforms to the mass of people that surround him – consumed into their company.
I liked it but I think it does seem a little like a first novel (? I am not sure if this is fair?). But I own 'Under the Volcano' and this novel has made me feel sure I will definitely read that at some point.
The novel slowly reveals there is little hope in sustaining a sense of individuality in social societies and social circles where we all (instinctively) know that each person is basically the same. This is how Danna grows up, he comes to realise he can only ever just be another one of the seamen despite his efforts to not be. He eventually conforms to the mass of people that surround him – consumed into their company.
I liked it but I think it does seem a little like a first novel (? I am not sure if this is fair?). But I own 'Under the Volcano' and this novel has made me feel sure I will definitely read that at some point.
July 9, 2022
No le pongo 5 estrellas porque los diálogos me han costado un poco de seguir. Entiendo que está hecho a propósito para darle la esencia de la cubierta de un barco llena de señores marineros hablando todos a la vez, pero me ha frenado varias veces y he tenido que volver atrás. Debo decir que hace un uso muy interesante de la primera y la tercera persona con el protagonista dependiendo de lo que esté ocurriendo. A las partes de pensamiento de Hilliot les pongo un 10 de 10 es una maravilla me ha gustado mucho. Lo recomiendo
July 18, 2021
Buena escritura y buena traducción. Me sorprendió gratamente ver dos o tres artilugios retóricos que me maravillaron por su eficacia, especialmente uno que ya había visto en Seda de Alessandro Baricco, pero que esta vez fue impresionante por lo audaz y bien logrado. Pero no supera al Nitrato de plata (piedra infernal)
March 9, 2023
I liked this book, and it was working more like a hallucinatory experience, or whatever. And it is one of those rarer books you can’t find too much, nowadays. “It’s like magic working together,” I said. And it’s like a treasure chest, too, containing many workings. The Good God’s little book.
December 8, 2024
Begins well with an adventurous boy on his first ship, but rather quickly falls into a very repetitive pattern of girlfriend longing, whore longing, and ship acceptance longing that permeates the entire book. Not all bad, but not enough good ! 2 stars
July 11, 2025
Λίγο πιο γλαφυρό από ότι το περίμενα. Πρώτη φορά διαβάζω βιβλίο που α) μοιάζει σαν να το έχει γράψει μεθυσμένος (αυτό μάλλον είναι για καλό) και β) έχει πολλές λογοτεχνικές και λυρικές αναφορές που δεν μου δένουν με τη θεματική (αυτό μάλλον είναι για κακό).
February 4, 2021
Even at such a young age, Lowry had an incredibly refined and exacting understanding of himself, and the accompanying perception of those around him.
August 28, 2021
Endlose vulgäre Dialoge zwischen Männern auf der See. Viel mehr beinhaltet das Buch nicht :/
Read
December 24, 2022Found it. No idea how to rate it though.
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