Malcolm Lowry
Overview
Clarence Malcolm Lowry (28 July 1909 – 26 June 1957) was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano
Under the Volcano
Under the Volcano is a 1947 semi-autobiographical novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry . The novel tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac , on the Day of the Dead.Surrounded by the helpless presences of his ex-wife, his...

, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.
Lowry was born in New Brighton
New Brighton
-Canada:* New Brighton, Calgary, Alberta, a neighborhood* New Brighton , a settlement in British Columbia-United Kingdom:* New Brighton, Merseyside, a seaside resort in Wallasey, England**New Brighton A.F.C., the current football club...

, Wirral
Wirral
Wirral may refer to:* Wirral Peninsula, a peninsula in the northwest of England, between the rivers Dee and Mersey* Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside, occupying the northern part of the Wirral Peninsula...

, the fourth son of Arthur Lowry, a cotton broker with roots in Cumberland
Cumberland
Cumberland is a historic county of North West England, on the border with Scotland, from the 12th century until 1974. It formed an administrative county from 1889 to 1974 and now forms part of Cumbria....

, and Evelyn Boden. He was educated at The Leys School
The Leys School
The Leys School is a co-educational Independent school, located in Cambridge, England, and is a day and boarding school for about 550 pupils aged between 11 and 18 years...

 (the school made famous by the novel Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Goodbye, Mr. Chips is a novel by James Hilton, published in the United States in June 1934 by Little, Brown and Company and in the United Kingdom in October of that same year by Hodder & Stoughton...

) and St Catharine's College, Cambridge
St Catharine's College, Cambridge
St. Catharine’s College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1473, the college is often referred to informally by the nickname "Catz".-History:...

. His home was a substantial 5-acre estate with a tennis court, small golf course and a maid who cooked for the family.
Quotations

No se puede vivir sin amar.

Translation: It is not possible to live without loving.

There was no mistaking, even in the uncertain light, the hand, half crabbed, half generous, and wholly drunken, of the Consul himself, the Greek e’s, the flying buttresses of d’s, the t’s like lonely wayside crosses save where they crucified an entire word.

Ch. I (p. 35)

The howling pariah dogs, the cocks that herald dawn all night, the drumming, the moaning that will be found later white plumage huddled on telegraph wires in back gardens or fowl roosting in apple trees, the eternal sorrow that never sleeps of great Mexico.

Ch. I (p. 35)

And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of this land is hell.

Ch. I (p. 36)

What beauty can compare to that of a cantina in the early morning?

Ch. II (p. 49)

For a time they confronted each other like two mute unspeaking forts.

Ch. III (p. 75)

How shall the murdered man convince his assassin he will not haunt him.

Ch. III (p. 79)

But my lord, Yvonne, surely you know by this time I can’t get drunk however much I drink.

Ch. III (p. 85)

Nothing in the world was more terrible than an empty bottle! Unless it was an empty glass.

Ch. III (p. 86)

There was something in the wild strength of this landscape, once a battlefield, that seemed to be shouting at him, a presence born of that strength whose cry his whole being recognized as familiar, caught and threw back into the wind, some youthful passage of courage and pride — the passionate, yet so nearly always hypocritical, affirmation of one’s soul perhaps, he thought, of the desire to be, to do, good, what was right.

Ch. IV (p. 124)

 
x
OK