"My novel – the Volcano – seems to have gone smack into the void, no intelligent comments so far or encouragement. I think it is really good, though The Lost Weekend may have deprived it of some of its impact – alack, prosaic justice? ..." – letter to Conrad Aiken, Fall, 1945.
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A reader for Jonathan Cape, the original British publisher of Under the Volcano, commented that the novel "inevitably recall[ed] ... The Lost Weekend", a 1945 novel by Charles Jackson, about an struggling writer's five-day alcoholic binge. In his "Letter to Jonathan Cape", Lowry notes that "it was The Lost Weekend that should have inevitably recalled the Volcano; whether this matters or not in the long run, it happens to have a very dessicating effect on me."
Lowry also wrote that "after reading the book it became extremely hard for the time being to go on writing and having faith in mine", given the similar subject matter (LJC).