"By the time Malcolm Lowry had finished filling Under the Volcano with 'signs, natural phenomena, snatches of poems and songs, pictures, remembered books and films, shadowy figures appearing, disappearing, and reappearing,' according to Douglas Day, Mr. Lowry's biographer, the book 'finally became not a novel at all but a kind of monument to prodigality of vision.' Certainly it evolved, as Mr. Lowry expanded his short story of the same name into the 1947 novel, into one of the most haunting and difficult works of modern fiction. That this densely allusive work is also tantalizingly cinematic has made it an Everest of sorts, from the film maker's standpoint. The book, aside from an opening chapter that dissolves into flashback, spans only a 24-hour period (the Day of the Dead, in November 1938) and involves few principal characters: Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic former British Consul living in a small Mexican town; Yvonne, the Consul's estranged wife, who has just returned to him, and Hugh Firmin, Geoffrey's rakish young half-brother, with whom Yvonne has had an affair. ..."
NY Times
W - Under the Volcano (film)
Roger Ebert
Criterion
YouTube: trailer - John Huston Films
John Huston
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