A Darkness That Murmured: Essays on Malcolm Lowry and the Twentieth Century

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta. He is
the author of Calling Texas, Earth Prime, and Mind the Gap.

This solid volume has a wealth of indispensable material about Malcolm
Lowry, who was a Canadian writer by residence. The volume includes three
interesting new letters from his youth and two from near the end of his
life; an account of his undergraduate relationship with professor and
novelist Charlotte Haldane; and previously unpublished reminiscences by
writer Alfred Mendes, his ex-wife Jan Gabrial, and his friend William C.
McConnell. The critical works consist of studies that deal with his
plagiarism, his gnostic references, and his affinities for Cocteau and
Freud. Other studies compare his work with James Joyce’s and with
contemporaries Sharon Thesen (who has published a book of poems about
him) and Don DeLillo. All in all, this is a rich and varied collection
suited to just about every interest the protean Lowry can arouse.