Under the Volcano

Name: Under the Volcano
Author: Malcolm Lowry

Malcolm Lowry · 1947

Set in Mexico on the Day of the Dead, 1938. Lowry's novel follows a British consul's alcoholic destruction across a single day. The density of symbolism is almost Joycean; the prose is torrential. Modern Library ranked it eleventh. Writers love it because it shows what language can do when it consumes itself completely.

The case against

on the long digressions
“reams and reams of digression, verbosity, non-sequiturs, rambling obscurities”
a book blog
on the language
“The language wasn’t interesting or aesthetic enough to make up for that”
a book blog
on the nature descriptions
“many to me felt like tedious details for the sake of details”
a book blog
on the length
“it took me nearly a week to read it”
a book blog