Ultramarine

By Malcolm Lowry

First published in 1933

This first revised edition published in 1963 by Clarke, Irwin, and Company

Since reading Under the Volcano, I’ve become somewhat obsessed with Malcolm Lowry. I found that book about six years ago in both the best and worst circumstances. It absolutely destroyed me, and I’ve been a bit afraid to go back to it because I worry that it will cause me to spiral into a deep depression, again. It also lives in my mind as this All-Time-Great novel, and I know that, eventually, I will return to it. For now, let’s look at Ultramarine, the only other book by Lowry published in his lifetime. 

It’s the story of Dana Hilliot, a stand-in for Lowry, and his first voyage as a mess boy on a freighter, as it travels from Liverpool to Bombay. Dana feels a driving need to learn more about life, about himself, explore the world and better understand what’s out there. So that this book fits right in with the kind of stuff Paul Bowles, Hemingway, Conrad, and many others were doing at the time. 

What makes this book interesting is the way Lowry can put you in the middle of the action so immediately and intimately, the style characteristically his own. This is also what I loved about Under the Volcano and has me now on the quest to read all of his stuff. There’s dialogue and slang and unattributed conversations, distinct voices allowed to roll over one another as the Oedipus does the waves and wandering mind of Dana whose interior searching becomes a slipstream of images that take us from the metal interior of the boat to the psychedelic interior of his mind, with people and images and flashes of love and longing shooting all around: “My yearnings sailed over sea and evening and dawn; and for the first time I felt I knew the meaning of the city, where all nights could intoxicate and torment, and where all hearts spin towards the light and burn themselves in its fire, whose nerves are played to death and sing like violins in defiance and painful exultation, because we still exist – “ (86)

The narrative centers around his visit into town and the trouble he gets into, how his conflict with another ship mate, an old hand, Andy, escalates and what that means/how it impacts everything around him. Lowry trusts that we readers are intelligent and can pick up on the connections that he has made and presented for us; it’s great writing from someone who trusts their audience and doesn’t give a shit if you miss small details because it’s more about achieving something greater than, which is how he’s able to fill you with a sense of dread and sadness for the loss of a pigeon. Lowry has the ability to hit you with images or phrases that are somehow more than the sum of their parts, somehow have gravity (e.g., “”Soon be home,” sighed Andy, and the others agreed, laughing, not knowing what they meant.” (172) or “I made my mother’s letter into a funnel, and filtered the starlight through it into an unfinished glass of beer.” (97)). Put it plainly, he’s just damned good. 

The scope is narrowly focused and more than worthwhile for those curious or for those who have only explored his master work, even offering glimpses of uncharacteristic hope: “In spite of all, I know now that at least it is better to go always towards the summer, towards those burning seas of light; to sit at night in the forecastle lost in an unfamiliar dream, when the spirit becomes filled with stars, instead of wounds, and good and compassionate and tender.” (201) Does it reach the heights of Under the Volcano? Of course not, nor, I think, was that the intention. This is a much smaller book, still absolutely unique in style, and an easy recommendation.

Heavy Lit rating: Recommended