The Master and Margarita/Under the Volcano

One of the most rewarding things about being a bookworm is discovering some jewel of a novel that really flies under the radar. The bookstore likes to funnel us cattle towards the 30-foot tall Twilight display, and jam Oprah’s latest selection down our throats, or pseudo-literature that pretentious fucks fall in love with because it is written by a minority or someone from some remote, war ravaged nation – extra points if that nation hates our guts. Kite Runner comes to mind. (Thankfully the National Book Award has remained a good source of reading materials, largely, though not always, free of political consideration: Peter Matthiessen’s Shadow Country, the frontrunner this year, is by all accounts a piece of serious literature, and it’s staring at me from my nightstand every night; Denis Johnson’s Vietnam epic Tree of Smoke last year, Vollmann’s Europe Central in 04 – all outstanding.) It is hard sometimes to figure out what to read, especially if you want to branch out and try new things, new writers. How much great literature is out there, waiting to be read, unknown outside small slices of academia and wonkish enclaves that I know, I know, must exist? I have gotten lucky of late, stumbling upon two jewels written by guys I had never heard of, that I read back to back! That is pretty rare . . .

The Master and Margarita was written by Mikhail Bulgakov. He worked on it sporadically between 1928 and his death in 1940, his opus. It is a hybrid of fantasy and sci-fi and religious allegory – what Clive Barker would call fantastic fiction – an epic reworking of the Faust legends together with the story of Pontius Pilate and the execution of Jesus, all woven around the premise of Satan visiting the Soviet Union – the atheistic Soviet Union – during the Terror. I don’t really know what to compare it to, other than Goethe’s Faust itself; it was like a fevered dream.

Satan’s retinue includes a vodka swilling, six shooter packing, chess playing fat black cat, a wicked version of Azazel with one long fang, and a beautiful, naked red-headed maid/witch, and they target Moscow’s literary elite – who go by the parodistic acronym MASSOLIT. Interspersed with the Satan thread is the story of the Master, a writer who has been reduced to insanity and resides in an asylum - MASSOLIT ruined his career and reputation because he dared write a novel about Pontius Pilate and it drove him nuts – and his lover, Margarita, who will do anything, including a Faustian bargain, to rescue him. Paralleling the entire Moscow storyline are chapters from the Master’s novel about Pilate. Bulgakov flips the script, however, by removing all the myth from the crucifixion story, stripping away the messianic and the fantastic, and with a majestic rhetoric painting a picture of what might have actually happened. Then he liberally alludes to all sorts of New Testament scripture throughout the Moscow plotline, adding to the surreal and dreamlike atmosphere trailing Satan.

It is a complex, intricate, and highly allusive work - I read it with the New Testament in hand. The extensive commentary in the Vintage version I have were also indispensable, simply to get a feel for many of the Muscovites’ Bulgakov name drops like Dante. (Evidently for the same reasons as Dante as well; Bulgakov was settling scores.) The novel is full of ridiculous episodes that can swing from hilarious to disturbing instantly, including a wonderfully depicted Witches’ Sabbat. However, even with all the surrealistic and fantasy elements, the Terror hangs over the novel. People disappear, characters are obsessed with paperwork and passports, and the Master himself burns his Pilate manuscript out of fear of jailing or execution. Writing about Pontius Pilate in Stalin’s Soviet Union was a good way to end up in a work camp, or worse. Bulgakov knew something of this himself; he was in hot water with the Secret Police numerous times, and burned a few of his own manuscripts. (In fact, The Master and Margarita wasn’t published in its entirety in Russia until 1988, well into glasnost). Stalin, a famous bookworm himself, thought Bulgakov was a genius and loved his work – which is why he never got into real trouble – but, obviously, a book about Satan and Pilate depicting Christ as a hero is not going to pass the Soviet censors. Thankfully the manuscript survived (a great story in and of itself – read the afterword), unlike so much Russian literature of the period, and we are richer for it.

Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano is an entirely different reading experience, but equally enjoyable. Like The Master, it is full of allusions, from Homer and the New Testament to the silent films of the twenties and thirties. However, this is no fantasy novel. It is a modernist take on a romantic, tragic figure. Geoffrey Firmin, a former British Consul, has settled in Mexico, Quauhnahuac, and devoted his days and nights to drinking. Mezcal – lots of it. His wife, Yvonne left him because of it, and he is a miserable drunk. He toils at an unfinished novel and cultivates a coterie of other drunks who worship and revile him in equal parts.

The action in the novel takes place on the Day of the Dead 1938 – all over one day. Europe is getting ready to tear itself apart, with the Spanish Civil War in full swing. Hitler and Mussolini have propped up Franco and provided him with all kinds of toys to ferret out the Republicans. Of course, by this time the Republicans have been almost completely co-opted by Stalin, who is more interested in testing his own toys and turning Spain red than the cause. Mexico is mixed up in all this. Porfiro Diaz’s shadow is still hanging over the country. Cardenas has assumed the presidency, giving away farmland like it’s going out of style, but the remnants of Diaz’s espionage apparatus and rural politicos/strongmen still wield power, 20 some odd years after his death. They have allied themselves with fascist Spaniards and Nazis, and terrorize the countryside.

The Consul has given up on politics, however. On the Day of the Dead, he is visited by Yvonne, who is still hoping to reform him and dreams – fantasizes, really - of a quiet life outside Mexico, on a farm somewhere in America or England. She is joined by Hugh, the Consul’s brother in law and rival for Yvonne’s affections. Over the course of the novel, as the three traipse across town, we glimpse their dysfunctional interrelationships through flashbacks and their interaction, as the Consul becomes progressively more inebriated. He is a true alcoholic, but a genius. As the day creeps forward, we glimpse those moments of clarity seeping through his muddled head and it becomes easy to understand why Yvonne fell for him. He argues with Hugh over politics, he fights with bar owners whom he owes money, and he has heartbreaking conversations with Yvonne. As the novel progresses it becomes obvious where the story is going. But Lowry’s prose is hypnotic, and demands attention regardless. Certain words are repeated, over and over, and the descriptions of Quauhnahuac and its denizens are equal parts hilarious and disturbing.

The novel has been compared to Ulysses, but this may have more to do with the structure (everything happens in one day) and the flowery prose than anything else. Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus come across as literary devices – instruments to advance Joyce’s fears and objections to modernity than actual living, breathing characters. The Consul is real. You will love him, hate him, pity him, and grieve for him. He has the scars and broken dreams that we all have, and he is a cautionary tale for what happens if you let those demons eat you alive. Whatever else Under the Volcano may be, it is a brilliant depiction of a drunk, maybe the best ever put to paper.