UNDER THE VOLCANO

MALCOLM LOWRY’S MAGNIFICENT novel, surely the most breathtaking work of fiction of the XX century and, in the opinion of many, the greatest novel in the English language, has perhaps not received the critical acclaim it deserves due to the character of its author and the personality of its leading character. Indeed, although there are a great many plays, novels, short stories and poems written by drunks, there are very few written by a drunkard from Liverpool about a drunkard from Liverpool.

IN THE NOVEL, Lowry’s character, Geoffrey Firmin, is trapped in an alcoholic deathward spiral due to his being desperately lost in a foreign country, cut off by circumstances from the wife he loves and unable to return to his happiness except for one passage, where he has a vision of a long journey “home”, spurred on by a horde of gruesome Scandinavian daemons riding above the clouds, “like Swedenborg’s angels”.

OF COURSE THIS IS ALL symbolic in the novel, and Firmin (and Lowry) had just been drinking too much in Quauhnahuac, Mexico, and had become a little jittery when they looked up at a volcano about to erupt at any moment, eventually leading to both author and character to lose hold on reality. Yet in “real” life I find myself abandoned here in my home city of Liverpool after my flight back to Portugal has been cancelled. And all of this due to ash coming out of some unpronounceable dung heap in Iceland which I have started to call Valhalla. I am now seeing visions of a long journey myself, but this time nearly three days on the sterilised cubicles and public toilets that the French and Spanish, respectively, call trains.

ALL OF THIS COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED if the authorities responsible had listened to some of my patented ideas about how to deal with such a crisis. My idea that all airplanes that fly above 20,000 feet should have a giant fan attached to them would clearly have solved this problem, as would the idea of a giant fan on a very long pole that could be held up at times of danger from rogue volcanic ash.

MY SKETCH ABOVE ALSO INCLUDES another idea of mine, to avoid lightning striking aircraft: they could all be fitted with a long metallic rope that would be in touch with the ground at all times, thus “earthing” them without “grounding” them. I suspect, however, that these ideas will be scoffed at, just as happened with my idea for a giant airplane-shaped blanket to be used in the case of fires on board. And I will probably not even bother registering my idea of a giant cork that one could put into the opening of the volcano in Iceland and keep it quiet. Or the massive fire extinguisher.