Wistbook 005 “City Hospital”

loscil
“City Hospital”

Sound report on Malcolm Lowry’s
novella “Lunar Caustic”.

Registry no. Wistbook 005
Edition series. 100
Format. 3″cd and novella
Released Feb 29
http://wistrec.com/wistbook-005/

Has anyone got a copy of this as I missed it?

The Paris Review No. 29, Winter-Spring 1963

Among the contents:

Malcolm Lowry, Lunar Caustic
Conrad Knickerbocker, Malcolm Lowry and the Outer Circle of Hell

More details here

Shine and The Titanic

"I was standin' in the window one day," he announced, "when de captain and de mate had a few words, when dat great Titanic struck, sah," he slapped down the ace, "dat cold iceberg. Say back up, Shine, and take another blow, Lunar Caustic

I have to say that Battle’s song about the Titanic is a bonafide piece of American folk lore that is my own discovery taken down right in the mouth of the inferno so we don't have to be beholden to a music company or any anthology of folk songs for it. Though it may exist in another form, if so I’d be interested to find out how it differs. Letter to Robert Giroux 17 January 1952

Lowry's novella Lunar Caustic was based on his time in Bellevue Hospital, New York, at 1st Avenue and 27th Street in Manhattan. At the instigation of his friend, Eric Estorick, Lowry was admitted as a voluntary patient in May or June of 1936 for psychiatric observation (rather than treatment), consequent on delirium tremens; he was there for perhaps ten days.

What Lowry has stumbled upon in hearing Battle's song about the Titanic in Bellvue was a long oral tradition in Black American around the sinking of the Titanic.

The best resource on Shine and the Titanic that I have found is Marilyn Nance's webite

A useful starting point to understand this oral tradition can be found in The Toast of the Titanic Oral Tradition Carries On Legend of Lone African American By Dana Hull, Washington Post, December 20, 1997

Titanic hoopla is upon us: the documentary, the musical, now the movie. Yet buried deep in the mythology of the doomed voyage is the story of Shine, a fictional character who lives on through the folk traditions of the African American community. Legend has it that the only black man on board the Titanic was a laborer called Shine -- "shine" being a derogatory term for blacks. Because he worked below deck, Shine was the first to realize that the Titanic was sinking, and thus was able to escape while more than 1,500 passengers perished in the April 14, 1912, disaster. Most stories about Shine take place in the form of "toasts," an improvisational oral narrative popular in black communities from the 1920s to the early 1960s. A form of street poetry, toasts were usually performed in the male provinces of pool halls and street corners, and were passed on from friend to friend. Often as profane as they were misogynistic, the raplike verses reveal a different perspective of the event that currently is being celebrated in the Hollywood blockbuster starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. The Shine toast revels in sharing a smug satisfaction that the Titanic -- a symbol of white European arrogance and affluence -- sank on its maiden voyage. The irony that African Americans were not allowed to make the crossing -- thus sparing their lives -- inspired a wealth of jokes, toasts and ballads. Numerous verses of the various Shine toasts, particularly those that refer to the female anatomy, are not suitable for a family newspaper. But the rhyming verses, which could last for up to 10 minutes, go something like this: Up stepped a black man from the deck below that they called Shine. Hollerin, "Captain! Captain! Don't you know? There's forty feet of water on the boiler room flo'." The captain said, "Go back, you dirty black! We got a thousand pumps to keep this water back." Because Shine exists solely in the oral tradition, verses would vary from teller to teller.

Roger Abrahams, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was one of the few folklorists to record them. "Most versions of the Titanic fit into the same general pattern," he wrote in his 1963 book "Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore From the Streets of Philadelphia." There's a "prologue about the terrible day on which the ship sank; the introduction of Shine, the mythical Negro stoker on board the ship; a description of his argument with the captain about whether the ship was sinking; his jumping into the water and his amazing swimming ability described; the captain's offer of money to save him, which he refuses; the offer of the captain's wife and/or daughter of sexual relations with him, which he likewise refuses; a conversation with the shark and/or whale where he claims to be able to out-swim them (which he apparently does); and a final ironic twist in which it is mentioned that Shine swam so fast that by the time news of the sea tragedy arrived, Shine was already inebriated in some specific location." When the news got around the world that the great Titanic had sunk, Shine was in Harlem on 125th street, damn near drunk. Or: When all them white folks went to Heaven, Shine was in Sugar Ray's Bar drinking Seagram's Seven. "Shine is the clever black," says Bruce Jackson, a professor of American culture at SUNY-Buffalo who traveled around the country recording toasts in the 1960s and '70s. "He's the only one on board smart enough to save his life, and he's the only one strong enough to physically swim to shore."



Other toasts include stories about a barroom brawl involving Stagger Lee, or tales of the Signifying Monkey, an animal fable in which a clever monkey outwits a lion. "There are a number of toasts," Jackson says of his field recordings. "But I heard the most toasts about the Titanic. It made an enormous impact on the popular imagination of the time. People knew in the black community that it was an all-white ship -- it was part of the White Star Line. When it went down, that was not lost on the community." But the sinking of the Titanic was not solely the province of toasts. Numerous musicians, from guitarist Blind Willie Johnson to the New Lost City Ramblers, recorded songs that told the Titanic tale. Some versions, recorded as "God Moves on the Water," were widely circulated in the 1920s and focused on the spiritual aspects of the accident.

The Titanic was a symbol of technological prowess, and some people saw the disaster as divine intervention. It's possible to spend hours listening to Titanic tunes in the majestically dusty archives of the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies. Ask archivist Jeff Place for Titanic songs, and he'll pull out album after album: Pink Anderson's Carolina Medicine Show Hokum & Blues, Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers, Mance Lipscomb. Others recall singing a song about "When That Great Ship Went Down" at summer camp. The famed blues guitarist Leadbelly also recorded a Titanic song. His lyrics included the common folklore that Jack Johnson, the black man who was world heavyweight boxing champion at the time, was denied passage on the boat. Jack Johnson wanted to get on board Captain, he said, "I ain't hauling no coal" Fare thee, Titanic, fare thee well. "There are a lot of songs about the Titanic, in part because the story itself is so dramatic," says Anthony Seeger, curator of the Folkways Recordings archives. "Versions of songs about the Titanic have been done with rock, gospel and blues. The clarity in which class distinctions were made on the voyage really resonated in folk culture, and by singing about it Americans were able to comment on their feelings." As Leadbelly sang it: When he heard that mighty shock, Mighta seen that man doin' the Eagle Rock Fare thee, Titanic, fare thee well.

There are many variations on the lyrics. Bruce Jackson in Get Your Ass in the Water [pp.189-90] details one version:

The eighth a May was a hell of a day.
I don't know, but my folks say.
The news reached the little seaport town
that the old Titanic was finally goin' down.
Say now there was a fella on board they called Shine,
he was jet black and he change anybody's mind.
Shine came up from the bottom deck below,
said, "Captain, water's runnin' all in the firebox doors,
and I believe to my soul
this big motherfucker's fixin' to overflow."
Captain says, "Shine," says, "you go back down,
I got forty horsepower to keep the water pumped down."
Shine went down and came up with a teacup in his hand,
he said, "Look here, captain, say, I'm a scared man.
I'd rather be out on that iceberg goin' around and 'round
than to be on this big motherfucker when it's goin' down."
Shine jumped overboard and he began to swim,
with ninety-nine millionaires lookin' at him.
Shine swimmed on down by the Elbow Bend,
there he met the devil and all a his friends.
Big man from Wall Street came on the second deck.
In his hand he held a book of checks.
He said, "Shine, Shine, if you save poor me,"
say, "I'll make you as rich as any black man can be."
Shine said, "You don't like my color and you down on my race,
get your ass overboard and give these sharks a chase."
Say, the captain's daughter came out on the second deck
with her drawers in her hand and brassiere around her neck.
She said, "Shine, Shine, if you save poor me,"
say, "I'll give you all this ass your eyes can see."
Shine said, "There's fish in the ocean, there's whales in the sea,
get your ass overboard and swim like me."
Now Shine was swimmin' and screamin' and yellin',
his ass was kickin' water like a motor boat propeller.
Shine was doin' ninety, he begin to choke,
fell on his back and he begin to float.
Big motherfucker from Wall Street told the sharks,
"I'm a big motherfucker from Wall Street, you got to let me be."
Sharks say, "Here in this water, your ass belongs to me."
Shark told Shine, say, "A bit of your ass be a wonderful taste."
Shine say, "Man, it sure be a motherfucken race."
Now when the news finally got around
that the old Titanic had finally gone down,
there was Shine on Main Street damn near drunk
telling everybody how the Titanic sunk.
A bitch said, "Shine," say, "daddy," say, "why didn't you drown?"
He said, "I had a cork in my ass, baby, and I couldn't go down."

Read another version on Louisiana Voices

Read other insights here:

Arbeitspapiere / Working Papers Nr. 81 by Matthias Krings: Black Titanic. African-American and African appropriations of the White Star liner

The African American Toast Tradition

Bruce Jackson: African-American 'Toast' Poems

But what might Battle's toast have sounded like? Here is a version by Dolemite aka Rudy Rae Moore which may have been near to what Lowry heard in Bellevue:



One irony that I discovered is that a black person did perish on the Titanic -
Joseph Phillippe Lemercier Laroche. But where there any black crew members?

One of the best collections into how the fate of the liner was documented by musicians can be found below:

http://oldweirdamerica.wordpress.com

You can listen to nearly 60 tracks on the above site.

Lowry Book Covers 2

Lunar Caustic 1977 edition published by Jonathan Cape.

'Swinging the Maelstrom'

'Swinging the Maelstrom' was one of the titles of a novella written by Lowry which was eventually published as Lunar Caustic in 1961.

Where does the name "maelstrom" originate and where exactly is the whirlpool?



For many centuries, the Norwegian Sea was regarded as the edge of the known world. The disappearance of ships there, due to the natural disasters, induced legends of the monsters (kraken) which halt and sink ships. As late as in 1845, the Encyclopædia metropolitana contained a multi-page review by Erik Pontoppidan (1698–1764) on ship-sinking sea monsters of half a mile in size.



Many legends might be based on the work Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus of 1539 by Olaus Magnus where he described the kraken and maelstroms of the Norwegian Sea. The kraken also appeared in Alfred Tennyson's poem of the same, in Herman Melville's Moby Dick and in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.

Between the Lofoten islands of Moskenesøya and Værøy, at the tiny Mosken island, lies the Moskenstraumen – a system of tidal eddies and a whirlpool called a maelstrom. With the speed of the order of 15 km/h (the value strongly varies between the sources), it is one of the strongest maelstroms in the world.



It was described in the 13th century in the Old Norse poems Edda and remained an attractive subject for painters and writers, including Edgar Allan Poe, Walter Moers and Jules Verne. The term maelstrom originates from the combination of Dutch words malen (to grind) and strom (stream); it was introduced into English language by Poe in his story "A Descent into the Maelström" (1841) describing the Moskenstraumen.

The Moskenstraumen is created as a result of a combination of several factors, including the tides, position of the Lofoten and the underwater topography; unlike most others whirls, it is located in the open sea rather than in a channel or bay. With the diameter of 40–50 meters, it can endanger small fishing vessels even in modern time, which might be attracted by the abundant cod feeding on the microorganisms sucked by the whirl. Read more on Wikipedia

We can now see what the name of "maelstrom" could conjure up for Lowry - Norwegian connections in place and mythology, links to his favourite writers such as Poe and Melville and childhood links to reading Jules Verne. Malc may also have known about the Norse myth from his mentor E.E. Kellett who wrote The Northern Saga (1929) which refers to Edda. These links combined with the word's association with "violent or turbulent situation" become a perfect metaphor for Lowry's state of mind when he entered Bellvue Hospital in 1936 - the source for the novella.

Retreat of the Howling Dog

Darkness was falling; through the clearing haze the stars came out. Over the broken horizon the Scorpion was crawling. There was the red, dying sun, Antares. The south-east, the Retreat of the Howling Dog appeared. Lunar Caustic

"The Retreat of the Howling dog" is one of the phrases which you can imagine appealed to Lowry. The origins of the phrase are as follows:

Porrima is a star in the constellation Virgo named after the "Goddess of Prophecy" Zawiat al Awwa which is translated "The Angle (or Corner) of the Barker"; from the tradition that the space enclosed by the curve of Epsilon, Delta, Gamma, Eta and Beta marked the "Retreat of the Howling Dog". Robert Burnham Jr: Burnham's celestial handbook: an observer's guide to the universe beyond the Solar System



Gamma (γ) Virgo, Porrima, is a white binary star (some call both yellow) and slightly variable in light; 3 and 3.2, on the waist of the Virgin (beside the waist in this drawing).

The Latins called this Porrima, or Antevorta, sometimes Postvorta, names of two ancient goddesses of prophecy, sisters and assistants of (p.470} Carmenta or Carmentis, worshiped and at times invoked by their women. Porrima was known as Prorsa and Prosa by Aulus Gellius of our 2nd century. [Carmenta was the Roman goddess of childbirth. Pierre Grimal (Dictionary of Classical Mythology) says Carmenta was regarded as a divinity of procreation; she was invoked by two names, Prorsa (head first) and Postversa (feet first), the two positions in which a child can be born]

Gamma (γ Porrima) was specially mentioned by the 13th century Persian astronomical writer Al Kazwini as itself being Zawiat al Awwa, the Angle, or Corner, of the Barker; and Al Tizini (Arabian astronomer, first half of 16th century), with the 15th century Tartar astronomer Ulug Beg, had much the same name for it; but the Persian astronomer Al Biruni (973-1048 A.D.), quoting from Al Zajjaj, said that "these people are all wrong," and that Awwa' here meant "Turn," referring to the turn, or bend, in the line of stars. This interesting early figure is noticeable even to the casual observer, gamma (γ Porrima) being midway between Spica and Denebola, the sides of the Kennel stretching off to the north and west, respectively marked by eta (η Zaniah) and beta (β Zavijava), delta (δ Auva) and epsilon (ε Vindemiatrix).

In Babylonia it marked the 19th ecliptic constellation, Shur-mahru-shiru, the Front, or West, Shur (?); while individually it was Kakkab Dan-nu, the Star of the Hero, and the reference point in their annals of an observation of Saturn1 on the 1st of March, 228 B.C., the first mention of this planet that we have, and recorded by the second-century Greek astronomer Ptolemy. The Chinese knew gamma (γ Porrima) as Shang Seang, the High Minister of State. They culminate on the 17th of May.[Star Names, Their Lore and Meaning, Richard Hinckley Allen, 1889].

The stars beta (β Zavijava), eta (η Zaniah), gamma (γ this star Porrima), delta (δ Auva), epsilon (ε Vindemiatrix), outlining this Kennel, formed the 11th manzil (Arabic Moon Mansion), Al Awwa, the Barker, or "the Howler", which was considered of good omen.

Influences of the 11th Arabic Moon Mansion Al Awwa: Gives benevolence, gain, voyages, harvests and freedom of captives.

With Moon transiting here: sow, plant, take medicine but do not travel or marry. (Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology, Vivian E. Robson, 1923)

Truckin' in Lunar Caustic

Say listen,' Battle demanded, 'let's have some truckin' -don't you know any truckin',' 'Very nice,' said Mr ... 'Yeah, yuh give us truckin',' said Battle. Malcolm Lowry Lunar Caustic

I fell on this below while searching for references to Lunar Caustic on the Net:

OK, so this made me wonder about the phrase "keep on truckin'". With a bit of Googling: it's from a dance popular in the 1930s. A song entitled "Truckin'" was written by Ted Koehler and Marty Bloom written "Cotton Club Parade of 1935 (lyrics: “It spread like a forest blaze,/Became a craze,/Thanks to Harlem now,/Everybody's truckin'.” Like other black slang usages, "truckin'" got picked up by the hippies of the 1960s, most notably by Mr. Natural, drawn by R. Crumb in the first issue of ZAP Comix, Feb. 1968. It was in wide countercultural usage by the time the Grateful Dead recorded their "Truckin'" in 1970.

I also found "truckin'" used by one of my favorite authors, Malcolm Lowry, in his book Lunar Caustic, published posthumously in 1963 but started in 1934 (based on Lowry's "deliberate pilgrimage" to Bellevue Hospital about that time), in which "truckin'" is used to refer to a style of jazz piano playing, rather than dance.

So it seems to me the name of the black dance is older than the 1935 song, and is more likely to derive, via a jazz piano style, from the "traffic, intercourse, communication, dealings" usage you cite, than from the wheeled or vehicular sense. Language Hat

I have been aware for some time that Lowry was partially familiar with African-American idioms in speech and music which he may have picked up on his trips into Harlem or from his residency in Belle Vue. How extensive his knowledge was is open to debate because terms like truckin' were already spilling into the mainstream by the mid-30s. I will return to his other references to African-American culture in later posts.



Here are some other thoughts from The Big Apple:

“Truckin‘“ or “Truck on Down” (1935)
The dance "Truckin" or "Truck on Down" was popularized in Harlem in 1935. Various Harlem spots and entertainers took credit for popularizing it.

(Oxford English Dictionary)
truck, n.
U.S. A popular dance (see quots.). Cf. TRUCK v.2 5, TRUCKING vbl. n.2 2.
1935 Sun (Baltimore) 15 Nov. 14/6 The truck, or truckin', that jerky yet rhythmic dance which combines a bend of the body, a tightening of the hand muscles and a slight strut with the legs, hit the theaters, sidewalks, gin taverns and dance floors of Harlem last summer. 1937 N.Y. Amsterdam News 4 Sept. 12/2 Add a bit of the Shag, the new dance sensation that has pushed the 'Truck' out of the limelight, throw in a bit of the Suzi-Q for a spice and then top it all off with the 'Truck'.

19 July 1935, Washington Post, "Broadway" by Ed Sullivan, pg. 19:
I like best the "Truckin' Down" number led by Cora La Redd. "Truckin'," in Harlem, is a description of a peculiar slouchy walk, and the new dance has the same contagion of rhythm that made an instantaneous hit of the Black Bottom when Tom Patricoa and Ann Pennington brought it to town. With one shoulder hoisted, the dancers do a spraddle-legged walk that finally gives you a terrific yen to try it yourself.



1 September 1935, Chicago Defender, pg. 8:
LET'S "TRUCK ON DOWN" AND
SEE WHO STARTED THIS DANCE

NEW YORK CITY, Aug. 30. -- Every once in a while Harlem brings some new innovations to the theatre in the form of a dance or a musical tune. Whatever Harlem seems to suggest in the form of something different is readily accepted by Broadway and is then passed on to other cities.

At the present time the newest creation is a dance called "Truckin'" and its sudden popularity and source of origin evidently has all of the newspaper colony in a quandry as to whom should go the credit of beingthe originator.

Writers In Mizz

Most of the writers are in a veritable mizz and have been firing back at each other in their daily releases. Ed Sullivan gave the credit to Cora La Redd of the Cotton Club. Walter Winchell thought that the dance had its conception some five or six years ago, at the old Connie's Inn, which, according to dates, would have been about the time that "charleston" gave way to the "Lindy Hop," although the Lindy did not reach its peak of popularity until 1932.

Allan McMillan, Chicago Defender correspondent, who has kept a complete file of theatrical doings over a period of ten years, says that all of the writers are wrong about the originator of this new dance craze called "Truckin'" because the original idea was introduced by Chunk Robinson, who is at present the comedian starred in the revue at Small's paradise.

Willie Bryant Made It

Robinson saw an aged longshoreman down at the docks shuffling along with a truck laden with four bales of cotton. Robinson noticed that the fellow had an in-and-out movement to his feet and because of the terrific load he was straining with his left shoulder pivoted a trifle higher than his right. This actually accounts for the stance of the new craze which now has Broadway as coo coo as Harlem. Nearly every night club production in Harlem has a "Truckin'" number

According to the data of McMillan, the dance was introduced by Chunk Robinson on the Columbia Burlesque chain of theatres as far back as 1928. There wasn't any particular name for the dance but Chunk continued to do it because it made the people laugh. It also resembled the old "Buzz" step that was recorded back in the old minstrel days of 1915.

Last year when Allan McMillan was appearing at Small's as host, Chunk Robinson and Willie Bryant were playing in the dressing room and unconsciously went into the routine of the present dance termed as "Truckin' On Down." Willie Bryant then decided to make the step popular, the results of which were that Noble Sissle and Flournoy Miller produced a unit "Truckin' On Down:" Noble Sissle composed a song, "Truckin' On Down';" recently published by Handy Brothers Music company; Ted Koehler and Leonard Harper built a huge production number in their recent revue around "Truckin';" practically every kid on the streets of Harlem ranging in ages from six to twelve may be seen in his or her version of "Truckin'"...the grown-ups are singing it...and on Broadway the cry is where did this "Truckin'" come from?

14 September 1935, Chicago Defender, pg. 8:
Here's How
"Trucking"
Got Famous

Chicago Defender,
Chicago, Ill.

Dear Sirs:

I would like for you to know the history of the dance called "Trucking."

The first revival of the dance was done on May 3, 1935 at the Harlem Opera House in the show called "Truck on Down." That's where I revived the dance and made it the talk of Harlem when we popularized it at the Harlem Opera House. Its first big moment was here. The title was given it by Red and Struggle, and they named it "Truck on Down," almost two years ago in Philadelphia. The dance originally came from a man named Buzz Barton. It was then called the "Buzz."

Miss La Redd says she originated the dance and the Cotton Club it was originated there. The first song "Truck on Down," was written by Noble Sissle and Harry Brooks. Therefore, by my being the first to popularize this dance five months ago, I claim myself the original reviver of the dance and named it "Truck on Down." I am now at the Cotton Club doing my dance to the tune of Ted Cola's "Truck."

I wish that you would take this matter into consideration immediately as we are seeming to have an awfully big battle at the Cotton Club as to whom the credit belongs.

Yours sincerely,

Henry (Rubber Legs) Williams.

Here's Cora in action



Here's Duke Ellington and his Orchestra - vocal Ivy Anderson - Truckin' - Brunswick 7514 - 1933:



All-female dance band of the 30s. Leader and singer Ina Ray Hutton with their version:



The word Truckin' was also used in the classic number by Eddie Kendricks which was the name of the Radio Merseyside soul show in the 70's hosted by Terry Lennaine - so we come back to Lowry's Liverpool!:



Let's go pout with a bit of counter culture which Lowry would have signed up for even got skeletons thrown in!!!:

Portrait de Malcolm Lowry en poète par Caroline Sagot Duvaur

I recently came across this piece below by the French writer Caroline Sagot Duvauroux:


Le poème demande à être fabriqué en cèdre, à la hache
À la scie, au pied-de-biche, en deux coups de cuiller à pot
Entre brouette et arrosoir
Aileron tournant de la baleine geignarde
Poêle en fer réparé avant le thé
Au métal blanc, à coup de cisailles
Avec charbon de bois, sel, amiante et sel marin

Voilà pour l’établi.

Suit immédiatement :

Note pour un poème
Étudiez le verbe irrégulier to die

Voilà pour le sujet.

Si la mort (le vautour) peut voler pour l’amour de voler
est-il rien que la vie ne pût faire pour l’amour de mourir

Mourir en langue pongouée (c’est une langue du Gabon) ne se conjugue pas.
C’est le lieu qui se conjugue et te meurt. Tous les peintres sont pongoués. Et Malcolm Lowry du volcan est un peintre.

Et le lieu tue le consul pendant qu’Yvonne rejoint le lieu, les constellations.
Une géographie tue l’histoire, une géologie remplace les personnages, non pas les sujets. Qu’est-ce qu’un poème ? ça, une langue, dont chaque mot est un récit en deuil du surgissement, qui se rétracte et se déploie sur une page pour que surgisse l’à nouveau.

Et le volcan revendique le poème qui explose en milliers de lambeaux éparpillés sur l’espace du volcan. Le poème est devenu nucléaire, fissuré, cellule cancéreuse qui se nourrit de l’unité perdue.

Si on peut dire que Les fleurs du mal sont un roman (Michel Butor), on peut dire que le Volcan est un poème tant il est vrai que la langue du poème cherche avant tout, dans ses glissements lexicaux et analogiques, dans ses refrains désuets et ses énigmes, cherche sa faillite de langue, cherche le son, l’image, mieux, cherche le son du sens, l’allitération de l’obscur, échoue sur le mot qui se détache de la vision, comme une main d’œil, pour dire : mystère.

Mais Malcolm Lowry n’a pas dit son dernier mot ou du moins ne le sait pas. Il écrit des poèmes. Pourquoi ? Il veut des poèmes ! Il faut donner acte de ça. Les poèmes dont on dispose n’inventent pas de forme ni ne nous tombent comme des récompenses du grand volcan. Les récompenses du grand volcan sont dedans, détails disséminés, plaisir poétique qui vous regarde et qu’on chope à bourlinguer dans l’affaire. Mais les poèmes existent. C’est autre chose qui s’y cherche, du sens, du refus, l’audace d’une douceur, autre chose qui ne voit pas jour mais qui n’a pas renoncé à chercher.
Read more

BBC 3 April 11th 2010: Malady feat. Lunar Caustic Reading

I missed the above - anyone got a recording?

The great American essayist, Susan Sontag, once said that we all carry two passports – one that allows us into the kingdom of the well and another, which we’re less inclined to use, that ushers us into the realm of the sick. This week’s edition of Words and Music is all about that kingdom of malady – from the famous musical sneeze in Kodaly’s Hary Janos suite to the balm of the Bach aria “Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen”; or, if you prefer, from Harold Pinter’s description of electroconvulsive therapy in The Caretaker to John Evelyn’s eye-watering account of the seventeenth century’s way with bladder stones. Its not all so visceral though. Many indispositions begin in our minds…sometimes they are trivial as in Grieg’s vague feelings of homesickness and sometimes they are serious as in Malcolm Lowry’s grotesque and comical account of the hallucinations brought on by dipsomania.
Talking about illness can be part of a cure so maybe listening can affect a kind of healing too. The readers for this journey into the night-side of life are Rory Kinnear and Anna Maxwell Martin.

Producer: Zahid Warley

More details here

The show featured the following:

Author of text: Malcolm Lowry
Name of text: From Lunar Caustic
From book: From Lunar Caustic
Reader: Rory Kinnear
Dur: 01'59

One of the music tracks played was by Gil Scott Heron which has an ironic touch with regard to Malc's time in NY!

Editing Modernism in Canada - Important news for Lowry Enthusiasts

I am pleased to report some significant news regarding the publishing of new and out of print works by Malcolm Lowry under the banner of the Editing Modernism in Canada project:

The EMiC project is affiliated with and/or partnered with several presses and series of editions: The Porcupine’s Quill; the Canadian Literature Collection, edited by Dean Irvine, and the Anthology Collection, edited by Janice Fiamengo, both published by the University of Ottawa Press; the Laurier Poetry Series, edited by Neil Besner, and the TransCanada series, edited by Smaro Kamboureli, both published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press; the CrossCurrents series, edited by Paul Hjartarson, published by the University of Alberta Press; McGill-Queen’s University Press; and the University of Toronto Press.

The editions in preparation include texts by a wide range of canonical, formerly canonical or popular, and non-canonical authors: Carroll Aikins, Ted Allan, Sol Allen, Irene Baird, Marius Barbeau, Bertram Brooker, Ernest Buckler, Fred Cogswell, Louis Dudek, Sui Sin Far, Marie Joussaye Fotheringham, A.M. Klein, Raymond Knister, Dorothy Livesay, Malcolm Lowry, Hugh MacLennan, Eli Mandell, P.K. Page, E.J. Pratt, F.R. Scott, Elizabeth Smart, Miriam Waddington, Sheila Watson, Wilfred Watson and the collaborative authorship of Martha Ostenso and Douglas Durkin as well as Oscar Ryan, Mildred Goldberg, Ed Cecil-Smith, and Frank Love. Many of these editions include digital apparatuses, and many of the proposed editions will be published online in the EMiC digital repository.

Given the EMiC project’s mandate to supervise and train graduate students and postdoctoral fellows working on their own editions, these editions are but a partial representation of the potential number of EMiC editions.

Our rationale for the selection of authors and texts has been determined by multiple criteria:

1) canonical authors whose works are either out of print or available only in excerpts in anthologies;

(2) canonical authors whose work is in print but unavailable in critical editions;

(3) previously unpublished works by canonical authors;

(4) formerly canonical or popular authors whose works are out of print and otherwise inaccessible;

(5) non-canonical authors whose work has already been the object of previous critical and literary-historical study but remains unpublished, uncollected, or out of print;

(6) marginalized and minoritized authors whose work has not yet been widely recognized as part of modernist literary cultures.

In addition to EMiC editions, the project will issue a series of essay collections and special journal issues with contributions by participants in the 2011 workshop and the 2010 and 2012 conferences. Read more on EMiC

What is exciting for Lowry enthusiasts is the following which EMiC has in the pipeline:

2011

* Malcolm Lowry, Lunar Caustic, eds. Victor Doyen and Christopher Ackerley. Print edition with web-based apparatus (University of Ottawa Press)

* Lowry and Space, eds. Miguel Mota and Richard Lane. Multimedia book.

* After Lowry, dir. Miguel Mota. Film.

2012

*Malcolm Lowry, In Ballast to the White Sea, eds. Paul Tiessen, Patrick McCarthy, and Miguel Mota (University of Ottawa Press). Print edition with web-based apparatus.

2013

* Malcolm Lowry, The 1940 Under the Volcano, eds. Paul Tiessen, Patrick McCarthy, and Miguel Mota. Print edition with web-based apparatus (University of Ottawa Press)

Probably, the most exciting news is the publication of the supposedly "lost" manuscript of In Ballast to the White Sea. I understand that this publication will be based on an early draft held in Jan Gabrial's archive. This early draft may not be as complete as the one lost in the fire in Lowry's shack in 1944. However, it will provide a glimpse into the long thought lost work which will have huge significance for Lowry enthusiasts and scholars.

I will keep readers posted on above when I have more details.

Penguin to publish Lowry's Lunar Caustic

Just found out from the Tesco's website that Penguin are planning to publish Lowry's Lunar Caustic next February:

About the book

'Staring out at the river his agony was like a great lidless eye'. In this stark, compelling and greatly autobiographical novella, Malcolm Lowry tells the story of Bill Plantagenet, a piano player and ex-sailor who has lost his band and his mind drinking in New York. As Plantagenet commits himself to a Psychiatric hospital to suffer his recovery, Lowry writes with eloquent ferocity on the delusions of madness, and the true meaning of sanity.
More info

An autobiographical novella that tells the story of Bill Plantagenet, a piano player and ex-sailor who has lost his band and his mind drinking in New York.

Secondary genre: Contemporary
Total Pages: 96
Genre: Fiction
Tesco Books

PIEDRA INFERNAL, DE MALCOLM LOWRY

Lowry's novella Lunar Caustic has been published in Spain:

La segunda esposa de Malcolm Lowry, la abnegada Margerie Bonner, publicó Piedra infernal (Lunar caustic, en el original) en The Paris Review en 1963. Lowry, que originalmente había concebido este texto como un cuento, nunca lo dio por concluido a pesar de haber trabajado en él durante años. Según sus planes, Lunar caustic integraría el “purgatorio” de su soñado e inconcluso proyecto “El viaje interminable”, en el que Bajo el volcán ocuparía el infierno. Seis años después de su prematura muerte ocurrida en 1957, Margerie publica el texto advirtiendo que se trata de “un trabajo principalmente de ensamblaje, una aproximación al método y a los propósitos de Lowry [...] No añadimos una sola línea”. Y concluye: “Malcolm, no cabe duda, lo habría reescrito todo, pero ¿quién iba a poder hacerlo como él?” Posteriormente, en un acto de audacia editorial, Jonathan Cape publica el cuento como novela en 1968. R.E. Lorente lo traduce al español en 1970, y ahora la editorial Tusquets rescata esta breve y mítica obra maestra con la traducción de Juan de Sola.

Como todos los protagonistas de la obra narrativa de Lowry, Bill Plantagenet, la figura principal de Piedra infernal, se encuentra al filo de su propio abismo. Es un dipsómano pianista de jazz que ha llegado de Inglaterra al puerto de Nueva York. Ignoramos casi todo de su pasado, incluso él mismo acarrea enormes lagunas de su historia reciente. Apenas conocemos un puñado de pasajes donde desdichas y separaciones imperan: la disolución de su banda de jazz, la pérdida de Ruth, su compañera. Tras deambular en completo estado de ebriedad por las calles de Nueva York, ingresa a un manicomio municipal, mezcla de hospital y cárcel, donde conoce a quienes serán sus compañeros: Garry, un chico que vive en un mundo de leyendas e invenciones, siempre ajeno a la realidad de su miseria y de su crimen; el viejo marinero Kalowsky, víctima de un hermano que lo ha internado para sacárselo de encima, suerte de padre sustituto que jamás dejó de buscar en vida el propio Malcolm Lowry; y Battle, un negro mitad ingenuo mitad peligroso, un chiflado en estado de pureza casi angélica.

Allí, Plantagenet vivirá las miserias propias de un psiquiátrico de la primera mitad del siglo xx: entorno insalubre, incomprensión médica, enfermeras impiadosas, pacientes en lamentables estados físicos y psicológicos. Pero también advertirá cómo el amor y la compasión afloran: “Muchos de los que aquí se consideran locos –dice– son simplemente personas que quizás un día intuyeron, si bien de un modo confuso, la necesidad de cambiar, de renacer.”

En ese “modo confuso” está la clave de la piedad y grandeza del protagonista. Algo en el mecanismo de implementación de esa necesidad de cambio falla en estos hombres desahuciados y se produce un deslizamiento, un matiz que para la ciencia de entonces es una patología. Plantagenet se enfrenta al doctor Claggart, encarnación del orden a través de la psiquiatría, y se revela ante la condición de normalidad con la que la sociedad adocena a los individuos para construirse a sí misma.

Plantagenet es una más de las transposiciones que Malcolm Lowry hizo de su propia persona. De hecho, el libro está parcialmente basado en la experiencia de su paso por el legendario Bellevue Hospital de Nueva York. Al igual que Geoffrey Firmin de Bajo el volcán o que Sigbjørn Wilderness de Oscuro como la tumba donde yace mi amigo, Plantagenet es un alcohólico autocondenado, cínico consigo mismo, convencido de que “el camino del exceso conduce al Palacio de la Sabiduría”. Un palacio que (él lo sabe y hacia allá se dirige a toda prisa) también es una tumba.

La prosa de Lowry brilla por su lirismo magnético, casi religioso, y por su alucinatoria manera de representar la realidad perceptiva de un hombre atormentado. Como el ex cónsul de Bajo el volcán, Plantagenet compone su realidad de una manera escalofriante y casi psicodélica. A él acudirán visiones esperpénticas como cristalización de un poderoso sentimiento de culpa, del que no puede escapar; caleidoscópicos paisajes donde se mezclan el pasado y las pesadillas en un collage de intensidad casi insoportable. Esto, junto con la oscura y accidentada vida del autor, ha permitido confundir a Lowry con un escritor maldito. Una etiqueta tan injusta como inexacta. Más que un maldito, Lowry es un místico. La tensión de su escritura acontece luego de una suerte de transverberación teresiana; un éxtasis sin duda alcanzado tras consagrarse a la palabra como única e inestable salvación.

A pesar de tratarse de una novela (o cuento) publicada sin la aprobación de su autor, Piedra infernal no puede considerarse una treta editorial o la acción desesperada de una viuda por publicar los textos inéditos de su marido. Si bien Lowry nunca la publicó en vida, al leerla encontraremos nuevamente lo mejor de este genial escritor, cuya vida autodestructiva fue a la vez una voluntad y un destino, pero sobre todo el germen de una obra refinada, de enorme plasticidad y honestidad poética. ~ Letras Libres

George Cukor's Romeo and Juliet 1936

He had played the piano all night - how long was it since he had left the tavern early this morning? He started across the street away from the hospital and was nearly run over by a streetcar. Signs nodded past him: the best for less, Romeo and Juliet, the greatest love story in the world, no cover at any time. Malcolm Lowry Swinging The Maelstrom

Lowry is referring in the above passage from Swinging The Maelstrom to the 1936 George Cukor film of Shakespeare's play featuring Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard.

Despite the care and attention that went into its production, this film has never been highly regarded. At enormous expense an entire replica, based on first-hand photographs, of an Italian Renaissance city was constructed on a Hollywood back lot. No expense was spared to achieve historical accuracy. Professor Strunk was brought from Cornell University to insure academic respectability and the greatest stars of the day were cast in major roles: Norma Shearer as Juliet, Leslie Howard as Romeo, John Barrymore as Mercutio, Basil Rathbone as Tybalt, and so forth. The Capulet ballroom scene rivalled a Busby Berkeley musical extravaganza. Yet for all these good intentions, the film did poorly both at the box office and at the hands of critics. The leading players, it was said, were too old for the teenage lovers, and yet decades later Zeffirelli would be denounced for having cast actors who were too inexperienced for the roles. I believe the film should be cherished as a masterwork from antiquity: a bit archaic, a little rigid, slightly overdone, but, yes, still withal warm and good Internet Shakespeare

Georg Kaiser's Von Morgen bis Mitternachts (1917)

Lowry's works are littered with allusions to German Expressionist films and theatre. Chris Ackerley recently pointed me in the direction of one contained in Lowry's Swinging The Maelstrom (an early version of the published Lunar Caustic:

the interminable helpful nonexistent conversations going on all the bloody night, clinching one's case and pointing a solution, a way out to the light and freedom, though in the morning, which always turns out to be midnight, only the gulf is there as usual.

The allusion is to Georg Kaiser's play Von Morgen bis Mitternachts (From Morn To Midnight) 1917. Friedrich Carl Georg Kaiser, called Georg Kaiser, (November 25, 1878 in Magdeburg, Germany – June 4, 1945 in Ascona, Switzerland) was a German dramatist. Although he was highly prolific and wrote in a number of different styles, he made his mark as the most successful expressionist dramatist and, along with Gerhart Hauptmann, the most frequently performed playwright in the Weimar Republic. Georg Kaiser's best known plays include The Burghers of Calais (1913), From Morn to Midnight (1912), and a trilogy, comprising The Coral (1917), Gas (1918), Gas II (1920).Read more on Wikipedia

Lowry mentions this play in his famous letter to the Norwegian writer Nordahl Grieg dated 8th September 1931. He also makes reference in a 1951 letter to Clemens ten Holder that he helped with a production of the play at Cambridge whilst he was as student. In the same letter, he writes that he had seen Claude Rains in a production of Von Morgen bis Mitternachts. According to R.S. Furness in Expressionism, Claude Rains acted the role of the cashier in Ashley Dukes's Stage Society production at the Gate Theatre, London in 1925 based on Duke's translation of Kaiser's play.

However, Wikipedia contradicts Furness's comments:

The history of London's Gate Theatre Studio, often referred to as simply the Gate Theatre, is typical of many small independent theatres of the period.

Founded in October 1925 by Peter Godfrey, a conjurer and clown, and his wife Molly Veness, the theatre was originally on the top floor of a ramshackle warehouse at 38 Floral Street, Covent Garden. Then known as the Gate Theatre Salon (The Gate to Better Things), it could hold an audience of 96, and opened on 30 October 1925 with Godfrey's production of Susan Glaspell's Berenice, starring Veness as Margaret, 'the searcher for truth', and which ran for a fortnight.

With a series of challenging productions, including August Strindberg's The Dance of Death, the Gate struggled to survive without attracting any particular attention, until the Sunday Times critic James Agate, enthusiastically reviewing Georg Kaiser's From Morn to Midnight, urged his readers to apply for membership of the theatre and to go and see the production. But at the end of a scheduled three-week run the play was transferred to the Regent Theatre in King's Cross when Claude Rains took over the leading role from Godfrey. Read more on Wikipedia

The review by James Agate is contained in his book Red Letter Nights and is dated March 14th 1926.

I am uncertain whether the 1926 production is the one Lowry is referring to because he writes to ten Holder that he had seen the play prior to him visiting Germany in 1928.

Interestingly, Kaiser’s From Morn to Midnight, was staged by Peter Godfrey for Terence Gray's Festival Theatre Cambridge in February 1928. The Festival Theatre on Newmarket Road, Cambridge, was founded by Terence Gray, the son of an Irish aristocrat, in 1926. Lowry would later have his poem "In Cape Cod With Conrad Aiken" published in the Cambridge Theatre Programme in March 1930.



The play was also turned into a film by Karl Heinz Martin in 1920:

The film version has the Cashier (played by Ernst Deutsch in Martin's film) in a small bank in W. (ostensibly Weimar) who is alerted to the power of money by the visit of a rich Italian lady. He embezzles 60,000 Marks and absconds to B. (Berlin) where he attempts to find transcendent experiences in sport, romance and religion, only to be ultimately frustrated. Kaiser's classic expressionist plays, written just before and during the Great War, often called for man to make a decisive break with the past, rejuvenating contemporary society. He eschewed characterization, and particularly character psychology, instead making his protagonists and other characters archetypes, employing highly anti-naturalistic dialogue often comprising lengthy individual speeches. Wikipedia


The film version begins with a bank clerk (Ernst Deutsch) becoming obsessed with a female customer (Erna Morena). His libido awakened, the clerk steals money from the bank only to discover that the female customer is in fact a respectable lady accompanying her son on a study tour. She is not the kind to drop everything for a few days' fun with a bank clerk on the run from the law. Horrified to learn that he has thrown his life away for nothing, the clerk flees and experiences a terrifying vision of death.

This causes him to return home to his wife and children only to reveal to them that he is on the run from the law. This revelation kills his wife stone dead. The clerk then kicks up his heels by betting on cycle races and cavorting with prostitutes and finishes the night with the salvation army where, inspired by the confessions of the down-and-outs he throws his money away. Sadly, this act of repentance comes too late.

The damage is done and the police are closing in on him thanks to a tip provided by a member of the salvation army who provides the clerk with another vision of death. With all hope gone, the clerk shoots himself and dies slumped against a crucifix with the words 'Ecce Homo' glowing above him. An inscription that means 'behold the man' and which is usually associated with the flagellation of Jesus suggesting that the clerk's fall from grace is less a story of moral failure than of a man broken by the world. Read the rest of this excellent essay Apocalyptic Adolescence: 10 Works Of German Expressionist Cinema by Jonathan McCalmont on Video Vista

The good news is that I have just read that Karl Heinz Martin's film version of the play is due for DVD release. Read more on The Bioscope.

Paul Rooney: Lowry and New York @ Bluecoat 6/10/09

Artist Talks @ The Bluecoat
Under The Volcano; An Exhibition for Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957)
Paul Rooney: Lowry and New York
6th October 2009
6.30pm
The Bluecoat
School Lane
Liverpool

Paul Rooney, who is exhibiting his film Bellevue at the centenary festival for Malcolm Lowry, will be giving a talk about Lowry and New York on Tuesday coming.

Paul Rooney's Bellevue

Paul Rooney's film Bellevue draws on Lowry's time in a psychiatric ward at New York's Bellevue Hospital in 1935, which informed his novella Lunar Caustic. Published posthumously in 1958, the book focuses on a failed English musician who befriends two other patients. Rooney was interested in the book's 'study of the disorientation of addiction and intoxication, but also in the idea of Lowry's voluntary attendance at Bellevue (he could check out when he liked), which parallels the privileged position that art has in relation to real life: it is always easier to visit desparate places when you know that you can leave at any time'.




Paul Rooney Biography

Born Liverpool 1967 Studied 1986-1991 MA Fine Art and BA Painting Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh Solo Exhibitions and Projects 2006-07 Lucy Over Lancashire, BBC Radio Lancashire, Radio 1, 6 Music, BBC Cymru and Resonance FM 2004 Know Your Place, firstsite, Colchester 2003 There Are Two Paths, off-site performance, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Meadow Gallery, Shropshire and Birmingham ArtsFest; Songs and Routines, Reg Vardy Gallery, University of Sunderland 2002 The NWRA Variety Night, Cubitt Gallery, London 1999 Rooney 'Peel Session' John Peel Show, BBC Radio 1FM Group Exhibitions and Projects 2007 Cine y Casi Cine, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; Locale - British Artists in Residence, 1a Space, Hong Kong; Nachtschicht, Kulturzentrum K4, Nürnberg, Germany; Women at the Crossroads of Ideologies screening, Stara Gradska Vijenica, Split, Croatia; 2006 Single Shot, Tate Britain and other London venues, touring to fourteen other cities in the UK and Europe; TV Ergo Sum, PULSAR 2006, Galeria de Arte Nacional, Caracas, Venezuela; Walk On, Salon Vogue, Shanghai Biennial; Work in Progress, Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek, Kino Arsenal, Berlin 2005 Variety, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea; British Art Show 6, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Angel Row Annex at Beatties, Nottingham; and Arnolfini, Bristol 2004 Pass the Time of Day, Gasworks Gallery, London, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, Castefield Gallery, Manchester and Collective Gallery, Edinburgh; Shrinking Cities, Kunst-Werke, Berlin 2003 Let Us Take You There, Site Gallery, Sheffield, and Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool; You Are At Home Here, Lokaal 01, Breda, Netherlands; We Go Round and Round in the Night and are Consumed by Fire, Comme Cá Gallery, New York; Fragmentos, Galeria Casa Gaia, Havana, Cuba; Electric Earth, a British Council show, touring to The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Radio Laboratory Museum, Nizhni Novgorod, Yaroslavl Museum of Fine Art, Yaroslav, Na Solyanke Gallery, Moscow, and venues in Lithuania, Yugoslavia, Turkey, South America 2002 Shopping (as Common Culture), Tate Liverpool; Palestine International Video Festival, Birzeit University, Qamariyeh Gallery and various venues, West Bank, Palestine; Mappin Open, Mappin Gallery, Sheffield; 2001 Merry Movement, Laforet Museum Harajuku, Tokyo 2000 Pixelvision, Royal Museum Of Scotland, Edinburgh, Lost and Found, Amsterdam, Red/Hull Time Based Arts, Waygood Gallery, Newcastle, Catalyst Arts, Belfast, B16, Birmingham, Dick Institute, Kilmarnock, First Floor, Melbourne 1999 My Eye Hurts, Thread Waxing Space, New York; Perspective 99, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast; EAST International (as Common Culture), Norwich Gallery, NSAD, Norwich

Colin Smith Lunar Caustic Paintings

Lunar Caustic A new ship for Malcolm Lowry and other paintings by Colin Smith

Colin Smith’s paintings present a set of images, often of situations or scenes that bespeak of isolation. Silent figures found at possibly the wrong end of a conversation or in interrupted moments, anonymous unpeopled buildings or ships caught in the passage of time have an emotional resonance with the depictions of empty clothes that hang in unspecified spaces. This captured sense of the moment in itself, despite a tendency towards an existentialist alienation, becomes all the more poignant by describing actions and sensations that are implicit. An openness of interpretation avoids an overtly contrived narrative thereby allowing the nature of the painting to reveal itself more freely. Read and see more here

Checkout Time at the Asylum

Here's an interesting article on former occupants of Bellvue from the NY Times:

To the healthy and/or wealthy, Bellevue was still considered a hellhole. But that didn’t prevent it from becoming a pit stop for a roiling, turbulently unhappy segment of cultural and literary New York, a chapter in the biographies of countless writers and artists. A very young Eugene O’Neill was taken there after attempting suicide, and in 1935, Malcolm Lowry (Under the Volcano) spent two weeks being treated for acute alcoholism. In 1946, the story goes, Joan Vollmer, the wife of William Burroughs, was found on the street, incoherent and neglecting her infant daughter. She was committed for psychosis brought on by the amphetamines she and Burroughs had been injecting. Vollmer may or may not have been psychotic, but Burroughs was certain he didn’t want her in Bellevue. Seven years earlier, he had gone to his analyst’s office and presented him with the tip of his own finger, which he had severed in order to impress a young man. The analyst had called Bellevue. Burroughs knew what was on the other side of those gates, and he got Vollmer out. Read more