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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent factual account of Malcolm Lowrys troubled lif, 8 Jun 2005
Bowker's 'PBF' is a biography of Malcolm Lowry, one of the most enigmatic figures in world literature. Despite being exclusively a writer from the age of eighteen through to his death thirty years later, Lowry only produced two finished novels: 'Ultramarine', which he refused to acknowledge the existence of, and 'Under the Volcano', one of the great books of the twentieth century. After his death many of his works in progress, some of which he had been working at for fifteen years, were published by his wife, Margerie. His life was dogged by numerous demons (fear of sex, guilt over a friend's suicide, unhelpful influences, fear of accusations of plagiarism, and, of course, alcohol) that both fuelled his talent, crippled his output, and led him towards self-destruction. Lowry's whole life was a work of fiction, and the main character in his works was a thinly disguised version of himself. Bowker's challenge is to pick the fact from the fiction, to uncover the unfictionalized Lowry. He succeeds admirably.
This is not a work of hero worship. The image that Lowry usually presents, that of the romantic, Byronic, poetic drunkard, is conspicuous by its absence. Instead, Bowker presents him as a little boy lost, a youngest child who never grew up, and who never learned to cope with the adult world. Although Bowker admires Lowry the writer, Lowry the man is presented as a pitiable figure. This achievement of Bowker's, to not fall for Lowry's own image of himself, is the great strength of this biography. Although Bowker makes liberal use of Lowry's letters, he recognises that Lowry is the least reliable source about himself (with his wife running a close second). The biography is painstakingly pieced together partly from the correspondences of the Lowries (which provide good evidence of their emotional states, if not a lot else), but also their acquaintances (which give a very different picture of Lowry than he might like).
The style is very dry, necessarily so, as Bowker has to avoid falling for Lowry's romantic imagery. The contrast between Bowker's prose and Lowry's couldn't be greater. Bowker also stops short of any sort of cod philosophy to explain Lowry's development. In some ways this is a plus point, because you never feel that the book has drifted into meaningless speculation. However, it does mean that, although we get a picture of Lowry's home life as a child, it never becomes clear where the great writing and alcoholism emerge from. How Malcolm Lowry was made remains obscure, and this is surely missing one of the most important points of the book. The dry factuality of it all is never punctured by speculation, leaving the readers minds to fill in the blanks. Likewise, Bowker never engages in scandal-mongering, despite the existence of many dark episodes in Lowry's life that could be explored further. Was Lowry a rapist? A homosexual? Did he kill himself? Did his wife contribute to his death? Because Bowker, or anybody else, doesn't have the facts, he doesn't take these things any further. This isn't really a criticism, because sticking to the facts is of course admirable, doubly so with a figure like Lowry, but sometimes you can't help feeling that it is what is left out that would tell us most about Lowry.
This is an excellent biography, rich in detail but never straying from the facts. Unlike some biographies, it never indulges in her worship, quite the opposite on occasions. Fans of Lowry should read it to gain a much deeper understanding of his work. People who just like literature should read it for the fascinating story of one of its finest, but most troubled, twentieth century exponents, and an insight into an artist at work.
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