Malcolm Lowry Dérive: One of our favorite photos of the writer, here near the end, by a lake, in a district of England, full circle. Those pants, as if cut from sail cloth, billow, flap and sheet against the current that is his impending epilogue. Perhaps in this contemplative mood he reflects on his life in Vancouver where he wrote the great if not unbearably symbolic novel he is best known for; the lost inter-tidal shacks; the pints and periods of drunken delirium tremens.
His second Vancouver residence @ 595 West 19th Ave. Largely intact. A hearth to sit by. Few distractions? A movie or play at the Park? A tread to the (False) reek or the Niagara Hotel? A desk with a view? The house was owned by Maurice Carey when Lowry and his wife Margerie lived there from 1939-40.
"Now the setup is this: $2 a week for myself and Margerie in return for which we get one meal a day if we're lucky. There is a family of six, including a loud speaker, a howling wind which rages through the house all day, twins, and a nurse. I forgot the dog, the canary and a Hindoo timber merchant... who sleeps in the woodpile in the basement, hoping, with his fine Oriental calm, that one day he'll be paid for the wood."
- from Selected Letters in Malcolm Lowry: Vancouver Days by Sheryl Salloum
"The fallen light in the forest seemed to make even the ground glow and burn with light."
- October Ferry to Gabriola
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