611. Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid

Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid
Malcolm Lowry
1968
Around 276 pages

What an awkward title. It's even lampshaded in the novel as kind of annoying, but it made the final cut anyway. Malcolm Lowry is part of our pessimistic crew of alcoholic writers. I wasn't too excited about his most famous novel, Under the Volcano, so I didn't expect much out of this one.

This was unfinished before Lowry's death, and apparently assembled by his wife, who may or may not have killed him. You can always tell when a work is unfinished, but when I like the author enough, I'll read the incomplete works anyway. Much like Under the Volcano, this is an autobiographical work about a struggling writer who almost drinks himself to death in Mexico. Lowry gives himself a really cool name though, in Sigbjorn Wilderness.

I never really enjoy hallucinogenic novels, and he pretty much covered this material before in his previous novel. You can tell he was an insecure and troubled person, which is always relatable. But if you take your new wife on a vacation to the same place where your first marriage fell apart, you are kind of bringing it on yourself, no?

RATING: **---

Interesting Facts:

Lowry reputedly wrote his own epitaph: "Here lies Malcolm Lowry, late of the Bowery, whose prose was flowery, and often glowery. He lived nightly, and drank daily, and died playing the ukulele," but the epitaph does not appear on his gravestone.

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