Geoff Wisner

Swimming in the Volcano

by Bob Shacochis. Scribner's, 1993. 519 pages, $22.00

If you liked the short stories in Bob Shacochis' first two books, Easy in the Islands and The Next New World -- and there's a lot to like in those vivid, racy tales, most of them set in the Caribbean -- you won't necessarily like his sprawling first novel, Swimming in the Volcano. The jumpy, highly charged language that worked so well in the stories can be wearisome in larger doses, and the strain of sustaining it often shows. The bats that fly from a ruined church aren't just bats, but "small flapping blurs of being." A woman doesn't just nod; she gives a "garrulous nod" (whatever that may be). Metaphors spread like tropical vines. Having just described how the "blue ear" of a bay rests against the land "in an act of docility," Shacochis goes on: "In the near distance you could see the eastern jaw of Pilo Bight, its brown humps like knuckles worn through a green yarn glove." Which is it: ear, jaw, or knuckles? This is a book in which a taxi's brakes fail at the top of a mountain and it takes ten pages for it to careen to the bottom. Yet it is also a book whose risk-taking style sometimes pays off in passages of startling beauty.

Swimming in the Volcano is set on the imaginary island of St. Catherine, near St. Vincent and Barbados in the Lesser Antilles. Shacochis creates this island in impressive and satisfying detail: its geography, politics, history, trade, wildlife, and agriculture. These are the Carter years, and the novel's main character, Mitchell Wilson, comes from a generation about which he thinks, "We made music and we made war in the jungle, and sometimes it wasn't easy to tell the difference." Wilson, a 26-year-old agricultural economist, is working as a consultant for the Catherinian government, motivated in part by his admiration for the reformist Prime Minister Edison Banks. But Banks' ministers, meanwhile, are plotting to root out their political opponents by inventing an insurrection and then crushing it with military force.

Like the hero of Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, this novel's almost-namesake, Mitchell Wilson finds his life thrown into turmoil by a visit from a woman who hopes to revive their troubled relationship. But whereas the wife of Lowry's hard-drinking consul is his only hope of rescue from alcoholic and spiritual ruin, Wilson's ex-lover Johanna is nothing but trouble. Beautiful and headstrong, she arrives with several thousand dollars taped to the back of a map of South America, some cocaine hidden in the case of her diaphragm, and a passport that reveals she is married to an international drug dealer.

Swimming in the Volcano shares with Lowry's novel a keen eye for local color and a taste for baroque language, and with Graham Greene's and Robert Stone's novels of Latin America a moral seriousness that sometimes gets overly solemn and portentous. But Swimming in the Volcano is an original work, with people who are as distinctive as the scenery. Cassius Collymore, a beaten and neglected Catherinian child who becomes a violently deranged adult, and Big Sally, a "doughnut-hipped" Peace Corps volunteer whose lover is a handsome calypso singer -- characters who could easily have become caricatures -- are drawn with unexpected complexity. Indeed, the account of Collymore's childhood is a fine, harsh story that could stand on its own.

Here is Mitchell Wilson riding his bicycle home, in one of many passages so deft you want to lift them off the page and frame them on the wall:

The southeastern face of the mountain rose off his left shoulder, channeled with darkness, and the sea ahead gathered a soft woolen shadow far out on its rim. He pumped the pedals hard until he was gasping, which made him exuberant, thinking this was what it meant and how it felt when it was good, the breeze in his face carrying the smells and conversations of the open shops, the people and the architecture jolted into impressionistic messages, scrolled ironwork, flowered dresses, a girl toting a calf's head by its bloody ear, a many-gabled boarded-over house, a line of women jogging like Masai warriors, single file on the path flanking the road, shallow baskets of plantains and passionfruit balanced on their erect heads. Mitchell pumped for more speed as he crested Zion Hill, crossed Brandon Vale, labored up Ooah Mountain, and began to coast downward toward Howard Bay, purple land crabs scuttling out of their sandy holes and jigging on the black road in front of him. He was flying, free and unburdened, wishing he had no place to go.

Passages like these would have greater impact if they were not surrounded by language that strains too hard for effect. Shacochis has formidable skills, but he should realize that not every sentence needs to turn a somersault.

Published in the Harvard Post, December 17, 1993.



Home Books Bio Blog Contact

Book Reviews Essays & Articles Presentations

Africa Caribbean Travel & Nature Fiction Nonfiction Investing
Geoff Wisner Swimming in the Volcano by Bob Shacochis. Scribner's, 1993. 519 pages, $22.00 If you liked the short stories in Bob Shacochis' first two books, Easy in the Islands and The Next New World -- and there's a lot to like in those vivid, racy tales, most of them set in the Caribbean -- you won't necessarily like his sprawling first novel, Swimming in the Volcano. The jumpy, highly charged language that worked so well in the stories can be wearisome in larger doses, and the strain of sustaining it often shows. The bats that fly from a ruined church aren't just bats, but "small flapping blurs of being." A woman doesn't just nod; she gives a "garrulous nod" (whatever that may be). Metaphors spread like tropical vines. Having just described how the "blue ear" of a bay rests against the land "in an act of docility," Shacochis goes on: "In the near distance you could see the eastern jaw of Pilo Bight, its brown humps like knuckles worn through a green yarn glove." Which is it: ear, jaw, or knuckles? This is a book in which a taxi's brakes fail at the top of a mountain and it takes ten pages for it to careen to the bottom. Yet it is also a book whose risk-taking style sometimes pays off in passages of startling beauty. Swimming in the Volcano is set on the imaginary island of St. Catherine, near St. Vincent and Barbados in the Lesser Antilles. Shacochis creates this island in impressive and satisfying detail: its geography, politics, history, trade, wildlife, and agriculture. These are the Carter years, and the novel's main character, Mitchell Wilson, comes from a generation about which he thinks, "We made music and we made war in the jungle, and sometimes it wasn't easy to tell the difference." Wilson, a 26-year-old agricultural economist, is working as a consultant for the Catherinian government, motivated in part by his admiration for the reformist Prime Minister Edison Banks. But Banks' ministers, meanwhile, are plotting to root out their political opponents by inventing an insurrection and then crushing it with military force. Like the hero of Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, this novel's almost-namesake, Mitchell Wilson finds his life thrown into turmoil by a visit from a woman who hopes to revive their troubled relationship. But whereas the wife of Lowry's hard-drinking consul is his only hope of rescue from alcoholic and spiritual ruin, Wilson's ex-lover Johanna is nothing but trouble. Beautiful and headstrong, she arrives with several thousand dollars taped to the back of a map of South America, some cocaine hidden in the case of her diaphragm, and a passport that reveals she is married to an international drug dealer. Swimming in the Volcano shares with Lowry's novel a keen eye for local color and a taste for baroque language, and with Graham Greene's and Robert Stone's novels of Latin America a moral seriousness that sometimes gets overly solemn and portentous. But Swimming in the Volcano is an original work, with people who are as distinctive as the scenery. Cassius Collymore, a beaten and neglected Catherinian child who becomes a violently deranged adult, and Big Sally, a "doughnut-hipped" Peace Corps volunteer whose lover is a handsome calypso singer -- characters who could easily have become caricatures -- are drawn with unexpected complexity. Indeed, the account of Collymore's childhood is a fine, harsh story that could stand on its own. Here is Mitchell Wilson riding his bicycle home, in one of many passages so deft you want to lift them off the page and frame them on the wall: The southeastern face of the mountain rose off his left shoulder, channeled with darkness, and the sea ahead gathered a soft woolen shadow far out on its rim. He pumped the pedals hard until he was gasping, which made him exuberant, thinking this was what it meant and how it felt when it was good, the breeze in his face carrying the smells and conversations of the open shops, the people and the architecture jolted into impressionistic messages, scrolled ironwork, flowered dresses, a girl toting a calf's head by its bloody ear, a many-gabled boarded-over house, a line of women jogging like Masai warriors, single file on the path flanking the road, shallow baskets of plantains and passionfruit balanced on their erect heads. Mitchell pumped for more speed as he crested Zion Hill, crossed Brandon Vale, labored up Ooah Mountain, and began to coast downward toward Howard Bay, purple land crabs scuttling out of their sandy holes and jigging on the black road in front of him. He was flying, free and unburdened, wishing he had no place to go. Passages like these would have greater impact if they were not surrounded by language that strains too hard for effect. Shacochis has formidable skills, but he should realize that not every sentence needs to turn a somersault. Published in the Harvard Post, December 17, 1993.