- Hardcover: 204 pages
- Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd; New edition edition (Dec 1963)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 022460452X
- ISBN-13: 978-0224604529
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,802,548 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
This is the story of Dana Hilliot's first voyage, as mess-boy on the freighter "Oedipus Tyranjnus" bound for Bombay and Singapore and of his struggle to win the approval of his shipmates. This book alternates between Dana's own narrative and the humour of the seaman's conversation.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
'Ultramarine' is Lowry's first book, written when he was barely out of college. It tells the story of Dana Hilliot, an upper class schoolboy who gets a place working on a tramp steamer in order to facilitate his passage into manhood. His privileged background leads to the crew not accepting him, and his essentially childish nature means that he repeatedly fails to achieve his aim in matters of sex, drink, camaraderie and heroism. It is a 'rites of passage' novel with a very lonely feel.
The book is unusually constructed, with no real narrative structure. Each chapter begins with obscure, largely meaningless dialogue between crew members, full of sailor's vernacular. This is followed by an episode illustrating yet another failure on the part of Hilliot as a man. The episodic structure gives the book a disjointed feel, almost more like a short story collection than a novel.
'Ultramarine', like so much of Lowry's work, is autobiographical, albeit heavily embellished, written after Lowry's own attempts to find his own manhood as a sailor. Because of this, Lowry is able to convey the shame Hilliot feels very well, and the central character is easy to empathise with. However, Lowry himself was barely grown up when he wrote this, and sometimes the author seems like a child writing about a child, with childish ideas of what it means to be 'grown up'. Simple errors, such as supposedly rough and ready sailors speaking like public schoolboys, repeatedly creep in. That being said, although Lowry later dismissed the book, largely because he believed that he had plagiarised it (which he had in parts, probably because he was drunk when he wrote it, rather than through malicious intent), Lowry's distinctive, lyrical voice can definitely be heard. 'Ultramarine' is, ultimately, proto-Lowry. It is a good first book, but he went on to write much better ('Under the Volcano') and I think that 'Ultramarine' is probably best appreciated by readers already familiar with Lowry.
The book is unusually constructed, with no real narrative structure. Each chapter begins with obscure, largely meaningless dialogue between crew members, full of sailor's vernacular. This is followed by an episode illustrating yet another failure on the part of Hilliot as a man. The episodic structure gives the book a disjointed feel, almost more like a short story collection than a novel.
'Ultramarine', like so much of Lowry's work, is autobiographical, albeit heavily embellished, written after Lowry's own attempts to find his own manhood as a sailor. Because of this, Lowry is able to convey the shame Hilliot feels very well, and the central character is easy to empathise with. However, Lowry himself was barely grown up when he wrote this, and sometimes the author seems like a child writing about a child, with childish ideas of what it means to be 'grown up'. Simple errors, such as supposedly rough and ready sailors speaking like public schoolboys, repeatedly creep in. That being said, although Lowry later dismissed the book, largely because he believed that he had plagiarised it (which he had in parts, probably because he was drunk when he wrote it, rather than through malicious intent), Lowry's distinctive, lyrical voice can definitely be heard. 'Ultramarine' is, ultimately, proto-Lowry. It is a good first book, but he went on to write much better ('Under the Volcano') and I think that 'Ultramarine' is probably best appreciated by readers already familiar with Lowry.
Format:Paperback
Ultramarine combines modernist transgression with warmth, passion and an authentic sense of youthful unease: I think it's a great book and oddly under appreciated.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
The Sea, Without Glamour
24 Jun 1997
Format:Paperback
Ultramarine, the first published novel by Malcolm Lowry, tells the story of a young man's disillusioned coming of age at sea. Much of the raw material for the novel comes from notebooks Lowry kept during his own stint as a deckhand. Dana Hilliot, the young Lowryesque hero, faces the contempt of many of his fellow seamen, who view him as a spoiled upper-class poser incapable of doing a real man's work. He affects a grimly stoic front while engaging in elaborate fantasies of revenge.
Lowry's description of life at sea reveals the boredom and discomfort of a long voyage, relieved only by exhausting labor, sudden danger, and occasional nights of drinking and whoring ashore. His young hero's Conrad and Melville-inspired dreams of adventure at sea are replaced by the grimy reality of a deckhand's daily life. The realistic dialogue, the description of the sea and the port cities, and the hero's fevered inner monologue hint at the richness of language that was to inform Lowry's greatest novel, Under the Volcano.
The young hero's moral agonies as he struggles to remain faithful to his fiancee at home may seem comically overwrought to present-day readers, but Ultramarine's rewards certainly outweigh its few flaws. This work of Lowry's youth shows an unruly genius already testing its limits
Lowry's description of life at sea reveals the boredom and discomfort of a long voyage, relieved only by exhausting labor, sudden danger, and occasional nights of drinking and whoring ashore. His young hero's Conrad and Melville-inspired dreams of adventure at sea are replaced by the grimy reality of a deckhand's daily life. The realistic dialogue, the description of the sea and the port cities, and the hero's fevered inner monologue hint at the richness of language that was to inform Lowry's greatest novel, Under the Volcano.
The young hero's moral agonies as he struggles to remain faithful to his fiancee at home may seem comically overwrought to present-day readers, but Ultramarine's rewards certainly outweigh its few flaws. This work of Lowry's youth shows an unruly genius already testing its limits
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
The Detritus of Wisdom
25 Jun 2005
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The French Translator for Lowry's masterpiece, Under The Volcano, said that, until Lowry, she had only encoutered two types of writers:1) The philosophical intellectual, who could go on about great ideas and philosophers but couldn't tell you what street he was walking down and, 2) The observant "Naturalist" writer who observed and recorded everything around him but whose fund of ideas and original thoughts was quite in the red.-Lowry proved to her that a writer could be both, as does this book.
Here we have the young Lowry's thinly veiled autobiographical hero, Dana Hilliot (a name Lowry contrived from Richard Henry Dana, author of Two Years Before the Mast, James Hilton, whom Lowry knew at school, and T S Eliot) remaining (sometime tiresomely) faithful toward the dialogue of the sailors on ship as well as wending his unique "Lowromancings" as he playfully called his poetic, philosophical passages through the work.
At one point in one of these extended meditations/poetic reflections, Hilliot ponders that he is engulfed in the "detritus of wisdom" rather than having discovered any pearls, but then goes on to speculate as to what he would do were he discover one of these "pearls" ----Stop writing?
Let's be thankful that Lowry kept searching and swirling and went on to write one of the greatest novels of the century.
Here we have the young Lowry's thinly veiled autobiographical hero, Dana Hilliot (a name Lowry contrived from Richard Henry Dana, author of Two Years Before the Mast, James Hilton, whom Lowry knew at school, and T S Eliot) remaining (sometime tiresomely) faithful toward the dialogue of the sailors on ship as well as wending his unique "Lowromancings" as he playfully called his poetic, philosophical passages through the work.
At one point in one of these extended meditations/poetic reflections, Hilliot ponders that he is engulfed in the "detritus of wisdom" rather than having discovered any pearls, but then goes on to speculate as to what he would do were he discover one of these "pearls" ----Stop writing?
Let's be thankful that Lowry kept searching and swirling and went on to write one of the greatest novels of the century.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Chaotic and Original
6 April 2009
Format:Paperback
I read Under the Volcano, and have a read a number of his other works. Under The Volcano is his best novel. Lowry fought alcoholism much of his adult life and it is reflected in his writings including Ultramarine. This is his first novel published in 1933. This novel is short, just 186 pages, and it is good, original, and entertaining for lovers of literature, but not as good as some of his other works. If you like Lowry, I recommend the collection of short stories Hear Us O Lord From Heaven They Dwelling Place.
The story comes from Lowry's own time at sea before university. The novel lacks symmetry and the coherent structure of a conventional novel - and that is the creative part. Unexpected things take place. The story involves a young man of 19, Dana Hilliot, working on a freighter ship in Asia. It is part narrative by Dana and part third person narrative, almost stream of consciousness: we are told the events in and around the sea voyage.
On board he is lost in time, and this sets the mood:
"But the sun hurt his eyes. Lowering his head, he tried to calculate how long it had been there. Today, or was it yesterday? Two days ago. All the days were the same. The engine hammered out the same stroke, same beat, as yesterday. The forecastle was no lighter, no darker, than yesterday. Today, or is it yesterday?"
Lowry fills the pages with anecdotes about sailors' lives and the characters that he meets. His shipmates are from Norway, England, Greece, Spain, and America. When they stop at a port, the others seek pleasures but he often stays on the ship, often drinks heavily and constantly thinks of his sweetheart, Janet, who is back in England.
He wants to be accepted as a regular crew member, not as a young man from well off family seeking adventure.
The story takes unexpected turns as Dana lives on board and then visits ports along the passage, often drunk, confused, or bored, but not as confused as the character in Lowry's later novella Lunar Caustic, set in a mental hospital.
The story comes from Lowry's own time at sea before university. The novel lacks symmetry and the coherent structure of a conventional novel - and that is the creative part. Unexpected things take place. The story involves a young man of 19, Dana Hilliot, working on a freighter ship in Asia. It is part narrative by Dana and part third person narrative, almost stream of consciousness: we are told the events in and around the sea voyage.
On board he is lost in time, and this sets the mood:
"But the sun hurt his eyes. Lowering his head, he tried to calculate how long it had been there. Today, or was it yesterday? Two days ago. All the days were the same. The engine hammered out the same stroke, same beat, as yesterday. The forecastle was no lighter, no darker, than yesterday. Today, or is it yesterday?"
Lowry fills the pages with anecdotes about sailors' lives and the characters that he meets. His shipmates are from Norway, England, Greece, Spain, and America. When they stop at a port, the others seek pleasures but he often stays on the ship, often drinks heavily and constantly thinks of his sweetheart, Janet, who is back in England.
He wants to be accepted as a regular crew member, not as a young man from well off family seeking adventure.
The story takes unexpected turns as Dana lives on board and then visits ports along the passage, often drunk, confused, or bored, but not as confused as the character in Lowry's later novella Lunar Caustic, set in a mental hospital.
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