Clarence Malcolm Lowry was born28 July 1909 in New Brighton, England, scion of a comfortable bourgeois family. Educated well, he rejected his patrimony and went to sea. Most of the rest of his life would be marked by tramping and alcohol. He did return home, and graduated from Cambridge. He then went to London; he met his wife, Jan Gabriel, in Spain and married her in France in 1934. In 1933, he published his first novel, “Ultramarine” based open his time at sea. Like Thomas Wolfe, Lowry’s fiction would grow directly out of his own experiences. There followed much more travel.
He started writing the novel that would make his name, “Under the Volcano” in southern California in 1936—where he was also trying to break into Hollywood. In November, he and Jan moved to Mexico, for what was supposed to be a short stay but turned out to be long. Jan, tired of his drinking, left him, and he continued to write and drink, spiraling out of control, deported, and finally put up by his family in Los Angeles. There he met his second wife, Margerie Bonner. They ended up in a shack in Vancouver, where he and Margerie continued to work on Under the Volcano. The book was about his alcoholic descent—fictionalized as the struggles of a British consul—but he was imbuing it with spiritual, cosmological, and political significance, too.
A lot of this resonant material was suggested by an acquaintance Lowry made in 1943. Long interested in the occult and alchemy, Lowry made the acquaintance of Charles Stansfeld Jones, a Vancouverite who was deeply involved in Aleister Crowley’s magical order. Lowry and Margerie practiced yoga, astral projection, and the I Ching with the man they called Stan. Writing in the Fortean Times, Ruth Clydesdale noted, “A list drawn from Stan’s books together with direct quotes form a couple of them found their way into UTV; more importantly, Stan’s experience of misusing magical powers and plunging into the Abyss structured and thematised the novel. Lowry felt that he’d thereby developed the Consul from a mere ‘shallow drunkard’ into a figure of esoteric and allegorical significance. Indeed, Stan’s influence on UTV is s profound that it is hard to imagine what the book would have been like had Lowry never met him.”
He started writing the novel that would make his name, “Under the Volcano” in southern California in 1936—where he was also trying to break into Hollywood. In November, he and Jan moved to Mexico, for what was supposed to be a short stay but turned out to be long. Jan, tired of his drinking, left him, and he continued to write and drink, spiraling out of control, deported, and finally put up by his family in Los Angeles. There he met his second wife, Margerie Bonner. They ended up in a shack in Vancouver, where he and Margerie continued to work on Under the Volcano. The book was about his alcoholic descent—fictionalized as the struggles of a British consul—but he was imbuing it with spiritual, cosmological, and political significance, too.
A lot of this resonant material was suggested by an acquaintance Lowry made in 1943. Long interested in the occult and alchemy, Lowry made the acquaintance of Charles Stansfeld Jones, a Vancouverite who was deeply involved in Aleister Crowley’s magical order. Lowry and Margerie practiced yoga, astral projection, and the I Ching with the man they called Stan. Writing in the Fortean Times, Ruth Clydesdale noted, “A list drawn from Stan’s books together with direct quotes form a couple of them found their way into UTV; more importantly, Stan’s experience of misusing magical powers and plunging into the Abyss structured and thematised the novel. Lowry felt that he’d thereby developed the Consul from a mere ‘shallow drunkard’ into a figure of esoteric and allegorical significance. Indeed, Stan’s influence on UTV is s profound that it is hard to imagine what the book would have been like had Lowry never met him.”