I only drink to make other people appear more interesting to me but during my many years in remote corners of the globe I met lots people who drank for lots of reasons, most of which had to do with trying to forget. To them, alcohol was a perfect solvent: it dissolved their marriages, their families and their careers.
Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano" has become a classic of the twentieth century, but unfortunately its themes of alcoholism and failure were all too genuine a part of his own life. While he continued to write and to travel, the remainder of his life was plagued by the severe emotional problems brought about by his excessive drinking. He died in June 1957, in a rented cottage in the village of Ripe, Sussex, where he was living with his wife Margerie after having returned to England in 1955, ill and impoverished. The coroner's verdict was death by misadventure, and the causes of death given as inhalation of stomach contents, barbiturate poisoning, and excessive consumption of alcohol. It has been suggested that his death was a suicide. Inconsistencies in the accounts given by his wife at various times about what happened on the night of his death have also given rise to suspicions of murder.
Many readers find it hard to break into "Under the Volcano". Their difficulty is a shadow of the trouble Lowry himself had in writing it. Like other major novels of its kind - Melville's "Moby Dick", for instance, and Conrad's "Nostromo" - it can take several attempts before one really gets going even though the plot is simple enough: its the indelibly haunting tale of Geoffrey Firmin, a former British consul living in Mexico in 1938, who assiduously drowns himself in alcohol.
Unfortunately, Des, there hasn't been an adaptation about the addiction to COKE - yet! - so for the moment you have to stick with the real thing.
