/lit/ - Literature

>>2067700
Did the edition you have include any extract of his letters to the publisher clarifying the intent of his book? If not then maybe try and find it somewhere, that helped me a lot to appreciate it more.
It's my favourite novel, mainly because of the allusions and structure of the book, have you checked out the hypertext guide to the novel? http://www.otago.ac.nz/english/lowry/index.html
His posthumously edited book "dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid" is kind of a reflection and in some ways a retelling of Under the Volcano, I haven't read it yet, but I doubt it's as good technically as UTV.

If you know your Modernist canon, this stands quite comfortably above the likes of Woolf and Mann, for style, and probably sits just below Joyce in that regard.

Fine, it's a real case of same shit, different toilet with the typical tragic narrative, this time in Mexico, with an alcoholic diplomat, but I feel that the interior drama ramifies it pretty elegantly, and as a result, the narrative transcends its perhaps unoriginal parts, in quite an inspired way.

Finally, I'll point you to the web of allusion Lowry has made. There'll be a lot you've missed, as I did, and it'll bear up nicely under repeat reads consequently. In his letters, he discusses Kabala allusions etc., but what struck me first time through was how well the Mexican history analog was employed.

>>2067709
>SNAP!

>>2067717

>>2067719
Go away.

>>2067724
Don't tempt me.. this thread has potential.. we'll get in trouble.
Also op, I would advise you avoid the movie.

>>2067726
>>2067724
>>2067719

Circle-Jerk?

>>2067730

>>2067726
why?

>>2067735

>>2067733
Why not?

>>2067709
>>2067712
It restores my faith in this shithole (see bison pictures) when asking about something outside the general Dorian Gray reading list tends to yield helpful answers.

I'll look into the letters and hypertext guide before I return for a reread. Following the structure/allusion web will at least give me a route to the personal investment which tends often to be my stumbling block in tragedies. I'd put Woolf as both a writer and thinker far above Lowry for the moment but maybe that'll change.

>>2067744
What did you think of chapter 6? The Hugh chapter where he thinks about being a radical on a ship

>>2067744
Nah, I can't deny that Woolf was the better thinker. She's one of a few feminist thinkers you could call great unequivocally (simply because the thought genre lends itself to a sort of tacitly justified bigotry). I'm not sure she ever captured consciousness like Lowry though or had his prose, whatever the accomplishment of a novel like 'To the Lighthouse' in terms of its perspective and take on existential freedom.

>>2067744
>>2067744
>>2067744
>>2067744
>>2067744
>>2067744
>>2067744
>>2067744
>>2067744
>>2067744
>>2067744
>>2067744
>>2067744
>>2067744

>>2067769

I kind of like the cover you posted a lot better than mine (pic related).

Anyways... I liked the tenth chapter of this book a lot. I got kind of bored midway through, when it seemed like not very originally written prose and the consul disappeared for a whole chapter -- but the tenth really blow me away right from the first paragraph, which is probably one of the most tragic ones in the whole book.

I also liked the end a lot. Disregarding the first chapter, I still felt the consul was gonna die at the end, but when he doesn't suicide, like one might expect, it reminds me of Kafka a lot, where the character's unconsciousness's start to shape their fates, however conscious they try to go in the opposite direction. It's a grotesque antithesis to the Goethe quotation Lowry puts at the start of the novel.

COME BACK, THREAD! BACK TO THE LIVING!

>>2069597
do you want to talk about it?

>>2067809
the 10th is the freudian death dream train allusion right? you're not dean btw are you?