"A cataract of water was pouring through the wall, filling the room. A red hand gesticulated, prodded him: over a ravaged mountain side a swift stream was carrying with it legless bodies yelling out of great eye-sockets, in which were broken teeth. Music mounted to a screech, subsided. On a tumbled bloodstained bed in a house whose face was blasted away a large scorpion was gravely raping a one-armed Negress. his wife appeared, tears streaming down her face, pitying, only to be instantly transformed into Richard III, who sprang forward to smother him."
Malcolm Lowry
Lunar Caustic
László Krasznahorkai's The Manhattan Project led me to seek out this Malcolm Lowry book, promising that it would deliver some of the same Searching For Melville in New York City fixations. Fortunately the University of Louisville Library had a copy , as it is pretty pricey out there in The Tubes.
I read Under the Volcano awhile back, and I'm sorry to say that I wasn't really impressed with it and thought that I was finished with Mr. Lowry. But I'm glad that I wasn't. Lunar Caustic has truly been a revelation as well as a delight. For me, this tiny book evokes the shades of William S. Burroughs (as in the above quoted passage--I mean, didn't Lowry pretty much invent Burroughs there? It's not Naked Lunch, for sure, but it's at least Skimpily Dressed Breakfast. Possibly even Pasty & G-String Brunch) and Frederick Exley (though maybe that's more the tenor of the character than of the lines). Speaking of lines, Lowry has many of them which should, it seems to me, be the titles of novels. Like
I mean, come ON. So it looks like I'm going to have to go back and have another look at the Volcano thing. It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it, right?
I read Under the Volcano awhile back, and I'm sorry to say that I wasn't really impressed with it and thought that I was finished with Mr. Lowry. But I'm glad that I wasn't. Lunar Caustic has truly been a revelation as well as a delight. For me, this tiny book evokes the shades of William S. Burroughs (as in the above quoted passage--I mean, didn't Lowry pretty much invent Burroughs there? It's not Naked Lunch, for sure, but it's at least Skimpily Dressed Breakfast. Possibly even Pasty & G-String Brunch) and Frederick Exley (though maybe that's more the tenor of the character than of the lines). Speaking of lines, Lowry has many of them which should, it seems to me, be the titles of novels. Like
I mean, come ON. So it looks like I'm going to have to go back and have another look at the Volcano thing. It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it, right?
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