A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z
|
|||
|
Date
and Place of birth: |
|||
|
Life and Works: Lowry, Clarence Malcolm, english novelist who is widely recognized as an important writer who effectively articulated the spiritual desolation of the individual in the 20th century. An uncontrolled alcoholic, Lowry's life was marked by self-destruction and desolation. Lowry was born on July 28, 1909, in Birkenhead, Chesire, England, as the son of Arthur Lowry, a wealthy cotton broker, who owned plantations in Egypt, Peru, and Texas. His grandfather from his mother's side was a Norwegian sea captain. At the age of seven, Lowry went almost blind from a disorder of the corneas, but recovered his sight four years later after an operation. He was sent away to boarding school when he was eight years old and later briefly attended a public school where he wrote poems and stories for the Leys Fortnightly, the school magazine. Later in his life, Lowry would lament frequently about his abysmal childhood. Most biographers attribute this to Lowry's tendency to embellish and fictionalize events to serve his own purposes. For example, he claimed that the noticeable scar on his knee, the outcome of a childhood bicycle accident, was the result of a gunfight during the Chinese civil war. Lowry was particularly influenced by American writer Conrad Aiken and his 1927 novel, Blue Voyage. Precipitated by a fan letter, Lowry moved to Boston in the summer of 1929 in order to learn from Aiken. This apprenticeship financed by Lowry's father. Lowry was also very interested in the Norwegian writer, Nordahl Grieg, and his dark novel about a young man's adventures at sea entitled The Ship Sails On. In the fall of 1929, Lowry attempted to placate his parents by enrolling at Cambridge University. His career as a student was unspectacular. He remained remote and aloof, spending most of his time working on drafts of his first novel Ultramarine (1933) that follows a young man's first sea voyage and his determination to gain the crew's acceptance. Although some critics saw evidence of Lowry's potential for extraordinary writing, Ultramarine was for all practical purposes a failure. Of the 1,500 copies printed, only half were sold. The novel was later reworked and published in final form in 1962. He began abusing alcohol by the time he was 14 years old. By the time he graduated in 1932, the twin obsessions which would dominate his life—alcohol and literature—were firmly in place. Lowry was already well travelled, having sailed to the Far East as a deck hand on the Pyrrhus between school and university and made visits to America and Germany between terms. After Cambridge, Lowry lived briefly in London, existing on the fringes of the vibrant thirties literary scene and meeting Dylan Thomas, amongst others. Following this, he moved to France, where he married his first wife, Jan Gabrial, in 1934. It was a turbulent union, and, after an estrangement, Lowry followed her to New York (where he entered the Bellevue Hospital in 1936 following an alcohol-induced break-down) and then to Hollywood, where he tried his hand at screenwriting. The couple moved to the Mexican city of Cuernavaca in late 1936, in a final attempt to salvage their marriage. This failed, however, and in late 1937, Lowry was left alone in Oaxaca and entered another period of dark alcoholic excess, culminating in his being deported from the country when he was considered a Spanish spy. Once he forgot the first draft of his manuscript in a bar. By the time Lowry left Mexico, his first marriage was in ruins. Later, in her book Inside the Volcano (2000), Jan Gabrial wrote that "He would drink anything. I had thrown out the rubbing alcohol I'd used to massage his back, but he gulped the contents of a bottle he thought contained hair tonic but which Josefina had refilled with cooking oil..." In 1939, he moved to Canada, and the following year he married his second wife, actress and writer Margerie Bonner. For nearly 15 years, they lived in a squatter's cabin at Dollarton on the Burrard Inlet, near Vancouver, in British Columbia. The shack burned down in 1944, and the manuscript of In Ballast to the White Sea was destroyed, but other works in progress were saved. After a time living with friends, they returned and rebuilt. Margerie was an entirely positive influence, editing Lowry's work skilfully and making sure that he ate as well as drank (she was no slouch herself, when it came to drinking). The couple travelled to Europe, America and the Caribbean, and while Lowry continued to drink heavily, this seems to have been a relatively peaceful and productive period. The years he spent in Dollarton, BC, (1940-54) were the happiest and most productive years of his chaotic life. Much of his later fiction is set in BC. All of Lowry's work is to a degree autobiographical. His reputation is founded on his second novel, Under the Volcano (1947), a subtle and complex study of the dissolution of an Englishman’s character. Set in Mexico, the novel is highly autobiographical. It tells the tragic story of the last 12 hours in the life of Geoffrey Firmin. The entire novel takes place on November 2, 1938, with the exception of the first chapter, set in 1939. An alcoholic consumed by his vice, Firmin had been the British consul in Quauhnahuac, Mexico, but was removed after Britain severed diplomatic relations in 1938, over the oil crisis. His crumbling life served to reflect the political upheaval in Mexico at the time. Yvonne, Firmin's ex-wife, returns unexpectedly, but their attempts to reconcile are undercut by Firmin's continued drinking and abusiveness. The scene is further complicated by the arrival of two of Yvonne's ex-lovers, Firmin's half-brother and one of his friends, a French film director. Firmin spends the last hours of his life drinking and reflecting on his life. At the climax, Firmin is gunned down by a Mexican fascist who mistakes him for a criminal, and Yvonne is trampled to death by a runaway horse. From 1941 to 1944 he worked with his wife Margerie in their Dollarton shack tirelessly revising the manuscript, and in 1946 it was accepted for publication. In the character of the consul, a drunken diplomat without official duties, and in the infernal Mexican setitbusng, Lowry found his perfect symbols. His supple and allusive style lends tragic dignity to the consul's sufferings, and gives the novel its unique combination of humour and horror. The novel- partly written in stream of consciousness-shows influence of Joseph Conrad and James Joyce. Lowry's alcoholism and mental disorders shadowed much of his writing career and starting a new novel was for him very difficult. The last ten years of his life he spent in and out of hospitals. Accidents followed him everywhere, broken bones, dog bites, blood poisoning. Lowry’s other works, all published posthumously, include Selected Poems (1962); two volumes of short stories, Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place (1961) and Dark As The Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid (1968); October Ferry to Gabriola (1970); and a novel, Lunar Caustic (1968). The Selected Letters of Malcolm Lowry, edited by his widow and Harvey Breit, was released in 1965, followed in 1995-6 by the two volume Sursum Corda! The Collected Letters of Malcolm Lowry, edited by Sherrill E. Grace. Scholarly editions of Lowry's final work in progress, La Mordida and his screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night have also been issued. Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry (1976) is an Oscar-nominated National Film Board of Canada documentary produced by Donald Brittain and Robert A. Duncan and directed by Brittain and John Kramer. It opens with the inquest into Lowry's "death by misadventure," and then moves back in time to trace the writer's life. By 1954, Lowry had been released by his publisher, Random House. One of his last unfinished works, October Ferry to Gabriola, takes place in the mind of unemployed lawyer, Ethan Llewelyn, as he journeys from Dollarton to Gabriola Island, just off the coast of British Columbia. The Random House editor complained about the book's lack of focus and clarity. Despondent over the termination of his contract, Lowry sought psychiatric treatment in 1955, but it seemed to do him little good. In February 1956, Lowry and his wife settled in Ripe, East Sussex, on the south coast of England. The couple argued. When Lowry threatened his wife with a broken gin bottle, she fled the house. Lowry died on the morning of June 27, 1957 from an overdose of sleeping pills. He was buried in the graveyard of the village church. |
|
||
|
Selected works:
Bibliography:
|
|||
|
|||
Subscríbase a nuestro canal de noticias
Download here our book search engines