The Letters of Malcolm Lowry and Gerald Noxon 1940–1952 ed. by Paul Tiessen (review)

156 LETTERS IN CANADA 1988 items to each other or to their context. Both these problems are unfortunate, since together they place an entirely unnecessary burden of work on the reader who might otherwise enjoy as well as benefit from Bowering's immense knowledge. Nevertheless, the book deserves use. It should not only be acquired by anyone seriously interested in The Double Hook but also recommended and made available to students (at least at the graduate level). For if it is true, as Bowering herself suggests, that a 'barbarian is one who has no past, who remembers, sees, and knows nothing .. about the kind of knowledge that possesses us,' then we as readers should not come to it as barbarians ignorant of the knowledge that by its author's grace possesses The Double Hook. The grace of Bowering's book, therefore, is that it enables us to avoid such barbarism if we choose. (PATRICIA MONK) The Letters ofMalcolm Lowry and Gerald Noxon 1940-1952. Edited by Paul Tiessen with the assistance of Nancy Strobel University of British Columbia Press. 182. $27.95 This volume collects the extant correspondence between Malcolm Lowry and Canadian radio-drama writer Gerald Noxon. The men met at Cambridge in 1929, when Lowry submitted his short story 'Port Swettenham ' to Experiment, which Noxon edited. From 1931 to 1940, their early friendship was suspended while both travelled; they resumed contact in 1940, when Conrad Aiken informed Lowry, who by this time had settled in Dollarton, that Noxon was living in Eastern Canada. Lowry's August 1940 letter to Noxon ('In reply to yours of July, 1930') begins the twelve-year correspondence, which Tiessen chronologically arranges, whenever possible, by letter and reply. Although Noxon and Lowry met only a handful of times during the period of their correspondence, their letters manifest a remarkable intimacy. After the stale, mythologizing portraits in the published biographies, these letters reveal an informal, humorous, and devoted Lowry. With Noxon, Lowry continued his search for a surrogate family, and found a 'brother' with whom he could share his reverential appreciation of the Burrard Inlet shorescape. This appreciation preoccupied Lowry's poetry of the period; from 1940 to 1947, Lowry wrote over one hundred and fifty regional poems, and his correspondence with Noxon is intriguing because the seeds of a particular poem are occasionally detectable in a letter. For example, Lowry's opening paragraph of a February 1944 letter is closely linked to his poem 'Happiness.' Aside from the light the letters throw on Lowry's compositional practice, they also depict Lowry as a critic, as he analyses the literary works Noxon senthim. Tiessen's preface - an annotated chronology - and lengthy introductory essay provide excellent orientation to the lives of the two men, although HUMANITIES 157 his note on the text, which is appended to the introduction, is meagre and insufficient. He notes that the letters come from two depositories - the Humanities Research Centre at the University of Texas at Austin and the Special Collections Division of the University of British Columbia Library - but he does not provide a location file for each letter should the reader want to check or follow up a particular item. And, although he states that his sources include 'typed originals and carbon copies, as well as holographs,' Tiessen does not include a statement on copy text: which of these various states are we reading? What happens when there are two or more states? Are there variants, and if so, why are they not recorded? Ignoring variant readings sometimes decreases the significance of an item. For example, by running together the lines of Lowry's June/July 1944 telegram to the Noxons, Tiessen misses the delightful lineation and plaintive poetry of the holograph original. Because there are copious Canadian references throughout the letters, Tiessen should have provided explanatory annotation for non-Canadian readers. Even Canadianists will be unfamiliar with Noxon's literary works, discussion ofwhich occupies a fair amount of the correspondence. Merely citing when the Malcolm Lowry Review published Noxon's works 1986 and 1987 - does not really help to illuminate this aspect of the correspondence; notes are absolutely necessary here. It would also be interesting to know Tiessen...