Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Review of Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World'

Brave New WorldBrave New World by Aldous Huxley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Happiness is a ... harder master ... than truth." I love Mustapha Mond. In giving him some of the best lines in 'Brave New World,' Aldous Huxley betrays his bias: He believes, perhaps even hopes, that his well-constructed vision of an orderly, happily infantile, benevolently controlled future society might some day come to pass.

Well, in many respects it has. (I speak largely of the United States here - the country that Huxley had in mind as he wrote.) Viral internet memes, if not the reality-numbing internet itself, replace his hypnopaedia. Take your pick of countless prescription and illicit psychoactive drugs, adding up to his 'soma'. The decline of the nuclear family and the proliferation of promiscuity and casual sex, though lately dampened somewhat by HIV/AIDS, came into full flower with the introduction of the birth control pill in 1961. Despite an overtly democratic government, increasingly sophisticated Corporate tyranny and its relentless hypnopaedic political propaganda/lobbying have gradually built an economic caste system not unlike that of Huxley's Alpha-to-Epsilon structure. Consumerism is rampant. What sport/leisure activity these days does not adhere to Huxley's mandate that it require the purchase of vast amounts of ever-more-specialized and expensive equipment?

When a book proves to be this prescient over such a long time span, it deserves its status as one of the classics. I first read BNW as a high-school student, and thought myself a kindred spirit of Huxley. I tried to emulate his somewhat pretentious poetic style in my own poetry. But when I recently re-read the book, nearly fifty years on, I found myself sometimes getting annoyed at the 'full-of-himself' passages. His poetic excess sometimes gets in the way of his story telling. His worship of Shakespeare, though understandable, sometimes comes across as blatant evangelism. And sometimes he eschews interactive dialogue in favor of two-plus-page-long single-paragraph monologues.

What I love most about Brave New World is that Huxley manages, with such seeming ease and naturalness, to populate the pages with a whole slew (and slough) of diverse, richly painted characters. From the perpetually conflicted Bernard Marx to the intriguingly conformist Lenina Crowne, who manages to be subtly but pointedly shaken by the Savage's denial of her instant gratification, right down to the distinctive traits of minor characters like the overly hairy but ever pleasantly equanimous Benito Hoover, Huxley's skills at characterization shine. I have only one small quibble: where are the Alpha-plus females?

I have not bothered to present an outline of the story since there have already been thousands written. Instead, I'll finish with a quote spoken by the eminently capable Helmholtz Watson after being subverted by his contact with the Savage: "You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases." Happiness - true, mature happiness - is indeed a complex nut to crack.

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1 comment:

  1. Dear Ladies and Gentlemen
    Do you want to contribute something to solve the biggest problem of humankind? Then sign our petition under the world's largest platform change.org:
    http://www.change.org/de/Petitionen/weltweite-geburtenregelungen-verbindlich-einf%C3%BChren-introduce-obligatory-worldwide-birth-controls
    Would you like to spread these informations on your homepage, on TV and radio stations, in social medias etc und support this campaign., if possible?

    The German physicist, aerospace physician, writer and television presenter Heinz Haber wrote in 1973 that a planet the size of our Earth should not be populated with more than 500 million human beings in order to maintain a harmonious balance between human beings and nature. Today (June 2013 ) we have, with (officially listed ) 7.2 billion human beings, reached more than 14 times this guideline value, and an end of this population growth is not in sight! A huge mass of unemployment and the collapse of our prosperity will be further consequences. A worldwide, mandatory birth control for all countries of Earth is urgent, if we want the impending climate catastrophe to weaken somewhat.
    Even the UN IPCC has recognised the danger in its fifth World Climate Report, but played it down by only predicting a higher sea level rise than previously prognosticated. The world however is in store for an unprecedented climate catastrophe which will bring us human beings - even in Europe! - primeval conditions. According to a current campaign at the world's largest petition platform "change.org", the reasons for this are obvious, but are ignored and tabooed as a result of ignorance, cowardice and lust for might.

    Quote from a proponent of the petition:
    "The overpopulation of Earth is a huge disaster and shows the picture of an egoistical thinking human being who doesn't care the slightest bit about his/her environment and who has raised the fulfilment of his/her desires to be the supreme principle of his/her life. The quality of the future life of all human beings is inseparably connected with the state of nature. The unrestrained plundering, exploitation and the therewith accompanying destruction, devastation and poisoning of the soil, air and water, caused by the huge demand for foodstuffs and goods of all kind of a still explosively growing population, presents the human beings with unsolvable problems. Overpopulation is not a taboo word, rather the exact term for an excessive number of human beings brought about by an irrational and irresponsible procreation of children, and which nature can no longer cope with. There should only be as many human beings living in a country as it can also sustain from its own resources. In addition the fauna and flora must also have enough space to expand in order to fulfil their vital functions in a good functioning ecosystem. This shows that all countries of Earth are overpopulated and need to do something about it. The control of the overpopulation does not mean that human beings have to leave, and it also has nothing to do with racism, but rather it demands of the human being, regardless of his/her colour, that a reasonable birth regulation must be strongly striven for and carried out for the benefit of all human beings and all life on our planet."
    With best regards from Germany
    Achim Wolf

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