A Companion to Under the Volcano

Louis Buchanan is a professor of English at Ryerson University in
Toronto.

This is a page-by-page commentary on references in Under the Volcano which the authors feel need explaining. It includes about 1,700 notes covering over 5,000 separate items in the text of the novel. We are told this is written for the novice as well as the “magus”; the former can look up factual points that escape him (e.g., the Boehme entry tells the reader who Jakob Boehme was), while the latter is expected to “move quickly to more esoteric matters.”

Biography, critical commentary on narrative difficulties, and manuscript problems are usually very well elucidated and analyzed, but these are extensions of notes which are often common knowledge. Because of this format, it may well happen that almost no one will read all of the authors’ often penetrating insights. The novice is expected to “get to the essential facts at once and leave the hidden mysteries until later.” This means that the beginning reader may never return to read the extended analyses. On the other hand, the experienced reader may not feel it necessary to look up the explanatory notes on Lowry’s mention of “The Good Samaritan,” but an interesting analysis of the novelist’s use of Christ’s parable would then be missed.

While the book is very accurate and reflects a vast knowledge of the material, much of the authors’ hard work and lucid criticism will be lost unless the reader goes over every page of the study, which only the most fervent Lowry student would do.