\s mYevtew KALEIDOSCOPE - University of British Columbia

BOOKS IN REVIEWskine" (178.4) is misspelt; Sherrill Gracewrote a well-known article on Lowry's"expressionist" not "experimental" vision(317.Ο).There is relatively little to quibble within the Companion. The authors mighthave preferred Scott Fitzgerald's definitionof an Oomph girl in "A PatrioticShort" to their own; they make no mentionof Freud's analysis of teeth dreamsin section six of The Interpretation ofDreams, which seems relevant to theemphasis on missing teeth in the sexuallysuggestive Lee Maitland sequence; theyoverlook the significance of Lowry'sechoing of the inscription on the milestoneat the end of the first part of Judethe Obscure ("Joffrey" Firmin's initialsare the same as the doomed Jude Fawley's,too).Ackerley and Clipper are to be congratulatedfor having done their homeworkamong the Lowry manuscripts. Itis pleasing to discover, for example, thatthe Mexican town of "Quintanarooroo"was the novelist's own mischievous inventionand that he toyed with the notion ofdeliberately misspelling the non-fictional"Amecameca." It is also amusing tolearn that in an earlier draft the Consulsourly referred to Montezuma as a "glumchocolate-drinking washout."What the scholarship of the Companionunderlines is the astonishing and possiblyhitherto unrecognized extent towhich Lowry's text echoes the words ofother texts. The energies of Under theVolcano derive in no small way from thesheer multiplicity of genres clashing andoverlapping as the narrative shiftsabruptly from pastiche and parody totragic grandeur and then back again intofarce. The Companion indicates manynew lines of approach to the novel, notleast the remarkable way in which Lowryappropriated the literature of his childhoodand adolescence (Beatrix Potter, F.Anstey, P. C. Wren, Shelley, and works158by numerous other writers) and used itwith a kind of poignant irony to enrichhis darkly comic vision of a man's terriblefall from innocence.Ackerley and Clipper shrewdly recognizethat "Under the Volcano is not anovel with one big idea, but a bookwhich is constantly shifting its ground,one which continually evades the reader."Instead of treating the novel as a messagein code which can be cracked byunravelling a few isolated myths and allusions(an approach which has bedevilledthe work of many previous exegists) theydisplay an acute sensitivity to the interpenetrationof Lowry's ambiguity andwit. Many of the "notes" are in themselvessmall critical essays which genuinelyilluminate the workings of Lowry'simagination. Ackerley and Clipper'sCompanion will send readers back to thenovel with fresh perceptions and a newsense of the awesomeLowry's masterpiece.complexity ofRONALD BINNSIMPALPABLE JAMAICAPHILIP KREiNER, Heartlands. Oberon, 1984.THIS IS NOT YOUR USUAL vacation-tothe-Caribbeannovel. Philip Kreiner is aserious writer. Heartlands, set in a sparse,almost unidentifiable Jamaica, is primarilya novel of interiorization — the recollectionsof the inner goings-on of twopeople. One is Vikki, a thirty-five-yearolddivorcee who has come to the islandto "reclaim her life"; the other is Jimmy,who works on the island (but is alsoCanadian like Vikki). Jimmy leasesHeartlands Great House, but now suddenlyfinds himself engaging in a seriesof mind-peregrinations leading to selfdoubtand a sense of his own "visibility" :he is a minority white in a land populatedprimarily by descendants of slaves