Under the Volcano

I wanted to begin the year with a "big book." Well, at least it's big to me: 390 pages (not including the introduction and afterward) in tightly packed type with little room for the margins. I dislike books with thin margins—while I rarely annotate as I read, I need the text (especially prose) to be framed by some white, like the border of a painting. It might sound precious, but it's for my eyes and my sanity.

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry is a masterpiece, and masterpieces are often annoying by nature. I believe it was Peli Greitzer, on Twitter, who said that the reason he never liked Pynchon's books is because it seemed like the point of their existence was to be good art. Now I can get behind that!

Speaking of Pynchon: Lowry's book reminds me of Gaddis, who has often been compared to Pynchon. Much of the book reminded me of The Recognitions. I haven't read that book in over ten years. In my second-to-last semester of college I took an independent study with a Pynchon scholar. It was a course of my own design—we would begin with Gaddis' The Recognitions, then read Pynchon's V., The Crying of Lot 49 (a kind of break; the worst book of the four), and Gravity's Rainbow. Why? I don't know. I know I wanted to read those books, explore that era and style of American fiction, and there was a teacher around who could help me. It's wild to me that I committed to the project: not only did I take four other courses while doing this, I actually read all those books in a 16-week period! Heavy, long reading. Power lifting reading. At times I would have to read 200 pages in a sitting to keep up with the schedule. I don't know if I have that energy any longer.

I don't remember much about The Recognitions—I remember the first chapter well, which seemed to me like it could have stood alone as its own novella of sorts; and I remember the ending well, too. A lot of hundreds-of-pages of I-forget in the middle. Lowry's prose strikes me as similar to Gaddis. I recall an interview with Gaddis where he said he couldn't bring himself to read Lowry (while he was working on The Recognitions) because he felt it was too similar to his own project. Get over it!

I want to return (before I finish) to an earlier point I made: everyone loves masterpieces (how could you not etc.) but masterpieces are often irritating works of art—they are so precisely themselves, so meticulous with each dusted corner of their existence; are readers allowed to live there? They feel, at times, like show kitchens inside of department stores. As mechanically ideally as they are void of human error (and all the endemic warmth error brings). 

Well, I only feel that way about half the time, when I haven't had enough sleep. It's a good book. My favorite description is when Lowry compares the sound of a bus starting to the sound of "startled poultry."