Malcolm Lowry

Clarence Malcolm Lowry (/ˈlaʊri/; 28 July 1909 – 26 June 1957) was an English poet and novelist who is best known for his 1947 novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.

Biography

Early years in England

Lowry was born in New Brighton, Wirral, UK the fourth son of Evelyn Boden and Arthur Lowry, a cotton broker with roots in Cumberland. He was educated at The Leys School in Cambridge (the school made famous by the novel Goodbye, Mr. Chips) and St Catharine's College, Cambridge. In 1912, the family moved to Caldy on another part of the Wirral peninsula. Their home was mock Tudor estate on two acres with a tennis court, small golf course and a maid, a cook and a nanny. Lowry was said to have felt neglected by his mother, and was closest to his brother. He began drinking at 14.

At age 15 Lowry won the junior golf championship at the famed Royal Liverpool Golf Club, Hoylake. His father expected him to go to Cambridge and enter the family business, but Malcolm wanted to experience the world and convinced his father to let him work as a deckhand on a ship to the Far East. In May 1927 his parents drove him to the Liverpool waterfront and, while the local press watched, waved goodbye as he set sail on the freighter S.S. Pyrrhus. The five months at sea gave him stories to incorporate into his first novel, Ultramarine.

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Famous quotes by Malcolm Lowry:

"Good God, if our civilization were to sober up for a couple of days it'd die of remorse on the third"
"Long for me as I for you, forgetting, what will be inevitable, the long black aftermath of pain."
"If you feel like breaking, think of all the other dreams unfulfilled, the children unseen, the books unwritten, the work never to be done, the last nights together, the countless acres of anguish and the darkened haunted cities: consider the pity war distils and ourselves as creatures of luck, compared with the others who can gain no last moments more."
"It can be regarded as a kind of symphony, or in another way as a kind of opera - or even a horse opera. It is hot music, a poem, a song, a comedy, a farce, and so forth. It is superficial, profound, entertaining, and boring, according to taste. It is a prophecy, a political warning, a cryptogram, a preposterous movie."
"What I have absolutely no sympathy with is the legislator, the man who seeks, for his own profit, to exploit the weaknesses of those who are unable to help themselves and then to fasten some moral superscription upon it. This I loathe so much that I cannot conceivably explain how much it is."
"The novel can be read simply as a story which you can skip if you want. It can be read as a story you will get more out of if you don't skip."
"War is being declared to-morrow here so perhaps you can understand that I have been working under difficulties, but difficulties negligible compared with what others have to go through."
"Mexico... is the most Christ-awful place in the world to be in any form of distress."
"Muzzle a dog and he will bark out of the other end."
"Good God, if our civilization were to sober up for a couple of days it'd die of remorse on the third."
"War is being declared tomorrow here so perhaps you can understand that I have been working under difficulties, but difficulties negligible compared with what others have to go through."
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