Malcolm Lowry: Vancouver Days

by Sheryl Salloum

From 1939 to 1954, Malcolm Lowry lived and wrote in a shack near Dollarton, in North Vancouver. It was here that he revised and polished Under the Volcano until it was almost ready for publication, and here that he experienced his happiest and most productive years. His posthumously published works are filled with references to the landscape and lifestyle he enjoyed while living in BC.
Now, for the first time, these Vancouver years are the focus of a Lowry study. The words and letters of Al Purdy, Earle Birney, George Robertson, and many others shed light on the great novelists's method of working, his view of the world and the fascinating, paradoxical character that was Malcolm Lowry. Extensively illustrated with photographs of people and places Lowry knew, Malcolm Lowry: Vancouver Days includes maps and a selected bibliography.

Genres: Biography

179 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1987

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short but informative look at Malcolm Lowry's time of residence in the Vancouver area (1939 to 1954), told mainly through reminiscences of people who knew him, many of them neighbors at his famous squatter's shack at Dollarton. A fascinating man: a genius and a drunk who choked to death on his own vomit in 1957.

[Dan Prisk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never come across Lowry before, but live very near to Vancouver. So this was both a great introduction to Lowry and a intriguing slice of history for North Vancouver. It's a short and easy read, that - peppered with quotes from his work, and contemporary pictures of the area - sketches an image of the ramshackle early days of North Vancouver, and how that was intertwined with Lowry's life and work.

I'll be looking up a copy of Under the Volcano soon!