Ferris Wheels, Faust, and Forms of Influence in Malcolm Lowry and Graham Greene

Ferris Wheels seem to fascinate film-directors – notably Carol Reed in The Third Man (1949), based on Graham Greene’s story and script. Though Ferris Wheels figure less conspicuously in twentieth-century novels, Malcolm Lowry provides an exception in Under the Volcano (1947), a novel also comparable to The Third Man in other ways. One explanation might be that Greene simply drew on Lowry’s example when developing his film-script (later published as a novella) – work begun very shortly after Under the Volcano had appeared. More plausibly, each writer might be understood to have responded separately, though similarly, to the unique pressures of their age. Identifying how these stresses were represented in their work, through cognate symbologies, may suggest some productive ways of reading historically.

Determining the current size and state of subvolcanic magma reservoirs

Determining the state of magma reservoirs is essential to mitigate volcanic hazards. However, geophysical methods lack the spatial resolution to quantify the volume of eruptible magma present in the system, and the study of the eruptive history of a volcano does not constrain the current state of the magma reservoir. Here, we apply a novel approach to Nevado de Toluca volcano (Mexico) to tightly constrain the rate of magma input and accumulation in the subvolcanic reservoir. We show that only a few percent of the supplied magma erupted and a melt volume of up to 350 km3 is currently stored under the volcano. If magma input resumes, the volcano can reawake from multi-millennial dormancy within a few years and produce a large eruption, due to the thermal maturity of the system. Our approach is widely applicable and provides essential quantitative information to better assess the state and hazard potential of volcanoes.

An unknown Capote. The American writer’s juvenilia and unpublished short stories

The article sets out to acquaint readers with early works by Truman Capote that have never been published in collections of his early prose. It concerns his school exercises, some of which appeared in The Trinity Times newspaper, as well as short stories penned before 1942 during his time at Greenwich High School. A brief abstract of these works gives an idea of the talent of the writer, who became aware of his vocation very early in life. The article discusses Capote’s other manuscripts discovered in American archives, including a draft ‘Article about a group of young people in Moscow’, referred to by Capote as ‘A Daughter of the Russian Revolution.’ This documentary piece describes the children of the Soviet elite whom Capote met during his visits to Moscow in 1956, 1958 and 1959. Among his other important finds, D. Zakharov mentions the manuscript of the short story Another Day in Paradise, dedicated to the writer Malcolm Lowry (Under the Volcano), whom Capote met in Sicily. The article raises the question of including the aforementioned works in the writer’s general bibliography, offering arguments in favour of their subsequent publication.

Shallow Magmatic Hydrothermal Eruption in April 2018 on Ebinokogen Ioyama Volcano in Kirishima Volcano Group, Kyushu, Japan

The Kirishima Volcano Group is a volcanic field ideal for studying the mechanism of steam-driven eruptions because many eruptions of this type occurred in the historical era and geophysical observation networks have been installed in this volcano. We made regular geothermal observations to understand the hydrothermal activity in Ebinokogen Ioyama Volcano. Geothermal activity resumed around the Ioyama from December 2015. A steam blowout occurred in April 2017, and a hydrothermal eruption occurred in April 2018. Geothermal activity had gradually increased before these events, suggesting intrusion of the magmatic component fluids in the hydrothermal system under the volcano. The April 2018 eruption was a magmatic hydrothermal eruption caused by the injection of magmatic fluids into a very-shallow hydrothermal system as a bottom–up fluid pressurization, although juvenile materials were not identifiable. Additionally, the upwelling of mixed magma–meteoric fluids to the surface as a kick was observed just before the eruption to cause the top–down flashing of April 2018. A series of events was generated in the shallower hydrothermal regime consisting of multiple systems divided by conductive caprock layers.

The Cognitive Grammar of drunkenness: Consciousness representation in Under the Volcano

Cognitive Grammar analyses the semantics of linguistic features in relation to human cognition; Free Indirect Style allows authors to represent their characters’ cognition with language. This article applies Cognitive Grammar to the analysis of a character’s mind that is represented with Free Indirect Style. In the tradition of mind style analysis, it aims to use linguistics to reveal some of the underlying cognitive processes and proclivities at work in the character’s psychology. The character in question is the protagonist in Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, an alcoholic who is largely characterised by his drunken behaviour and ideation. This article therefore focuses on the linguistic features that serve to represent his inebriated state of mind. It analyses the semantic effects of those features primarily in terms of attentional focus, drawing on Cognitive Grammar concepts, such as objective construal, specificity, scope, profile and domain, and relating these to the protagonist’s cognitive proclivities for solipsism, partial awareness, delayed reaction, attenuated experience and self-delusion. The article also discusses the theoretical background for mind style analysis, arguing for the continued importance of focusing on the relationship between the text and a character’s mind, alongside the focus on the reader’s mind that has come to dominate cognitive stylistics.

Under the Volcano: Mount Mayon and Co-Volcanic Societies in the Philippines

Rich volcanic soils have long attracted human settlements, which have traded the risk of eruption against the benefits of higher agricultural yields. Yet little research has been done on how societies have normalised the risks and adapted to living in proximity to volcanoes, or how those modifications, in turn, might have influenced the effects of eruptions and their consequent hazards. In short, people have co-evolved with volcanoes to create 'co-volcanic societies'. By looking closely at the Philippines and focusing on one region of southern Luzon around Mount Mayon, this article addresses the question of how people and the volcano have 'co-adapted' to living in proximity to one another over time. It also suggests that to make societies more resilient to volcanic hazards, a better understanding of this relationship is required not only to improve current disaster risk reduction policies but even to inform everyday urban planning and civil engineering decisions.