Pg. 115 of David Markson’s copy of Ushant by Conrad Aiken:

     On which Markson places a check next to a mention of “Hambo,” as he does at every other mention of the name “Hambo” anywhere in Ushant.

—

     The reason why he’s checked every mention of “Hambo” in his copy of Ushant is because, as he writes on pg. 226 of Malcolm Lowry’s Volcano: Myth Symbol Meaning:
     “Lowry appears as ‘Hambo’ in the work; only in an edition republished after Lowry’s death did Aiken append an identification.”

     And, as we know, Lowry was to Markson, what Aiken was to Lowry.

     Markson in conversation with Joseph Tabbi:
     “[Under the Volcano] quite simply knocked me out of my chair. Within a couple of years, I’d read it probably half a dozen times. And then I finally sent [Lowry] a letter saying God knows what—be my father, or something as asinine. But evidently it did strike the right chord, since one of the first letters I got back ran on for twenty or more pages[…]Of course something I didn’t know at the time was that Lowry had written the same sort of letter himself, as an even younger man, to Conrad Aiken. So he was ready to be sympathetic with that “identification” that someone can feel for a given book.”