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In this rare volume of poetry, Aldous Huxley is characteristically, uncompromisingly erudite; yet surprisingly forceful, passionate, and erotic. ... Read more

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In his final novel, which he considered his most important, Aldous Huxley transports us to the remote Pacific island of Pala, where an ideal society has flourished for 120 years.

Customer Reviews (83)

Island (P.S.)
On the bright side, this novel is written late in Huxley's life and is the summation of the incredible wisdom he amassed over the years.
On the other side, it is a philosophical discourse on utiopia strung together by two-dimensional characterswhose purpose is to present the opportunity for the next utiopian lecture.
The first two chapters engege the reader in the flesh and blood of the protagonist who is fraught with moral and sensual dilemnas that the reader can identify with.Likewise, the denoument in the last two chapters returns the reader to a compelling flesh and blood moral struggling resulting in an intellectual and perhaps physical climax.
While the intervening chapters on utopia are intellectually satisfying in that the reader may react with, "yes, yes, that's the way it should be!" the ideas are presented in a frustrating form in that, while a good novel keeps three-dimensional characters moving, Island makes many stops to allow two-dimensional characters to describe utiopian scenerios.

The Island contains the seeds of its own destruction
I kept reading this book because on some level I was just waiting for something to happen.There were a couple of conflicts that could come to head somehow and make the book interesting in the "I'm reading a fictional narrative sort of way".However, none of these became more than hints until the very last two pages of the book.When this happens it seems like some predetermined anticlimax that you have been waiting for all along.The book fails as a narrative which is a problem when the publishers want to sell it as fiction.

The problem is that it is not a work of fiction butis more a work of philosophy as story.I kept thinking of Candide or Gulliver's Travels (Oxford World's Classics).The problem is that Voltaire and Swift's works were at the bottom much more interestingly told.Island is the vehicle for Huxley to lay out his real utopia devised after a lifetime of intellectual work.The protagonist and the reader are guided around the island to learn about the pro-Buddhist, pro-hallucinatory drug, pro-sex, and anti(capitalist, communist, consumption, western education, nuclear family, etc) philosophy.

This journey, as the protagonist learns and starts to internalize the teachingsof the island, comes to an end based on the forces that represent the bad in the world.Poor Huxley's utopia even though isolated from the world cannot survive as the very nature of the philosophy is non-violent and acquiescent.It contains the seeds of its own destruction.I cannot help but think how much Huxley hated modernity and hoped for and sought a world beyond this one in the form of religion and drugs.For him, the struggle was not about the control of the means of production, but whether the means of production should exist.I just think he should thank his stars that he did not live to see the Brave New World in the flower as we can seeit.

Huxley Preaches Instead of Presents
I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. "Brave New World" is one of my favorite dystopias, so I was excited to see how Huxley tackled autopia, and to see how his thoughts on society matured between his writing of "Brave New World" and "Island"-- his last novel. I felt the result was slightly disappointing.
While all dystopias and utopias are comments on society, and almost all utopia/dystopia authors have an agenda which they would like the reader to come to after reading the work, most do so in a more subtle manner. There is nothing subtle in "Island" which is my biggest problem with it.While I agree with many of the ideas shown in the story, I felt that Huxley didn't present them, but preached them. The book leftno room for the reader to form their own opinion on issues in modern society, instead they were told, repeatedly. This preaching seemed both at odds with the ideas Huxley was pushing, and weakened the rest of the story by sacrifing things such as well rounded characters. The reader only gets flat, static, characters who can all be catagorized as either the pro-Western culture characters,who are all portrayed as naive, ridiculus, or greedy, and the anti-Western culture characters, who are all portrayed as smart and sexy ideals.
These elements made it so that while I agreed with many of Huxley's ideas, the heavy handed style weakened the force of both the message and the book as a whole.

Horrible novel, great vision
First off, as many people have pointed out, 'Island' is a complete and total failure as a novel. The plot is paper thin and the 'characterization,' such as it is, is pretty horrible. But this doesn't mean this is a bad book, or not worth reading. Hermann Hesse's last (and one of his best) book, "The Glass Bead Game" (aka "Magister Ludi") suffers from the same faults, but likewise is eminently worth reading.

I wouldn't say Huxley succeeds in portraying a true utopia, but then, who ever has? Nowhere in fiction, essay, or political propaganda have I seen anyone else come even remotely close - Huxley at least borders on plausibility, and indeed, desirability (something else lacking from many 'utopian' visions). Many of the negative reviews here are by radical conservatives who find the ideas of more open sexuality, psychedelic visions and a modern updating of Eastern philosophy and contemplation anathema. Well, fair enough, I guess, but look at the world THOSE people are endeavouring (some cynics might say successfully) to build. I for one would definitely have appreciated more rock climbing, first-hand experiential evidence of 'higher things,' even if through psychedelics, and more sensitive sexual experience, during my confused youth. In fact, ultimately, I found my way to all of those things through friends, readings, and my own meandering gropings through life, but I don't feel at all that these were (or are now) encouraged by the social structure in which I live, nor by my elders. Huxley imagines a world in which this situation is reversed, and though I have some problems with his vision, I find it quite charming and desirable in many ways.

Some negative reviews have poitned out how quaint and 1960's-oriented and dated many of the ideas are (to those reviewers anyway); I would argue though that many of the new ideas fermenting in the 60's have really yet to come to full fruition, and far from being dated, are in need of further dissemination.

The book is heavily didactic and this can get a little annoying at times, but as always Huxley is full of insights and is worth reading. From what I understand he wrestled with this book for years trying to find a good way of conveying these notions; maybe he should have just opted for non-fiction of some kind. Still, this book is far from 'obsolete' and is Huxley's utopia very much worth considering for all those of us living in a the real-life, if toned-down, version of 'Brave New World.'

Critique of modern society easily digested.
An easy read. Island has an interesting fictional narrative of an ideal society located on a remote tropical island. Huxley's story is loaded w/ references of Eastern spiritual traditions and nonduality. Excellent stuff for those interested. ... Read more

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Half an hour after swallowing the drug I became aware of a slow dance of golden lights . . .

Customer Reviews (77)

INTERESTING & VALID OPINIONS...BUT EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT
Says Huxley, "The urge to escape from selfhood and the environment is in almost everyone almost all the time... That humanity at large will ever be able to dispense with Artificial Paradise seems very unlikely. Most men
and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul."

Huxley goes on to describe how some mediums help to "open the doors" of the soul, such as art, music, religion, etc. Still, the worst things for the human race are what are available to us, and no matter how many drunk driving accidents occur or how many cases of lung cancer exist, people will keep partaking in each of these vices because it provides temporary release. Still, mankind needs better doors to open in order to flourish.



FULL REVIEW:

[...]

Aldous Huxley
This is an excellent book and really causes one to think twice about how we, as humans, tend to perceive and observe things.I found that I was more open to the ideas the author was presenting after I read the book a few times.Aldous Huxley is a fabulous author and this is one of his many great works that causes the reader to examine and reevaluate their thoughts and perceptions.

Excellent symbols for an indescribable experience
There are other books which clearly portray hallucinogenic madness (Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass) but there's no wisdom, only obscurity. In this book, Aldous Huxley skillfully presents himself as the patient explorer at the beginning, with many big-picture questions. In his descriptions of visuals and sensations, he includes countless references to artists, composers and poets. If you are not familiar with them, his comparisons become difficult to appreciate. Regardless, it's inspiring and Aldous is successful in transmitting those elusive epiphanies.

the doors of perception
a great book, sometimes a little hard to follow given the circumstance it is written under. purchase & shipping were excellent,take yourtime to read this book! it pretains to the 60's group the doors.

Understanding the Intangible Boundaries of Human Perception
In the oft cited counter-culture staple, "The Doors of Perception", Aldous Huxley explores the almost intangible areas of human perception and the vehicles that he believes will allow us to arrive there.Rather than relying on dry scientific research, Huxley delves deeper explaining the expansion of his own perception through his experimentation with mescaline.In describing his own activities and thoughts while under the influence of mescaline, he highlights its potential and boundaries.Rather than focusing simply on the psychedelic effects of his rendezvous with mescaline, Huxley uses his own state of mind to explore the mentality of others he believes to be toying with the boundaries of human perception (largely musicians and artists).Huxley proposes that the human mind is limited by a "reducing valve" that slows the flow of information in order to prevent being overwhelmed by the sensory experience of humanity.

Perhaps the most profound aspect of "The Doors of Perception" is Huxley's position on the use of mescaline as a means of allowing a wider array of people to experience a fully realized perception of the human existence.Huxley's writing is intriguing and opens up a line of thought as it clarifies the edges of the human experience.He is waxing poetic as he describes his own experience and highlights the importance of deviations from our daily state of our mind."The Doors of Perception" is a cult classic for a reason.Huxley describes elements of the human mind that are still controversial.His ability to link expanded human consciousness with experiences that we have at least touched upon briefly makes his writing easy to relate to.
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Product Description

Aldous Huxley's tour de force, Brave New World is a darkly satiric vision of a "utopian" future&#8212where humans are genetically bred and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively serve a ruling order. A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, it remains remarkably relevant to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying entertainment.

Customer Reviews (800)

Brave New World
America's Galactic Foreign Legion - Book 1: Feeling Lucky

We need more humor in our science fiction.

most boring book on the future
How do you ruin a book on the future involving:

1) the future
2) sex
3) drugs

Why by being the most boring book ever and going ape over:

1) Shakespeare
2) religious nonsense


This book had many, many good ideas that COULD have made for a very thought provoking and entertaining read, but a plot is never fleshed out and there is no character development.Unfortunately, it was utterly UN-entertaining on every level!It's good (ideas) till they go to the Savage Reservation then it completely nose-dives into BORING!!!Ideas without a story.I recommend reading the first ~25% of the book then lighting it on fire.

A challenging but Interesting Book
Brave New World is a very interesting book that draws you in. This book makes you think about a different world other than the world we live in today and how people think differently as a result. The author uses different points of view and changes from character to character to make the reading interesting.
I feel that the only weakness in this book is the level of explanation or depth. They throw you right into the story without much explanation or background. This gives the book an appealing aspect but also makes it confusing to read.
If you are planning on reading this book you should know that there is some very challenging vocabulary. These words would make it very challenging to read this book at a young age.
But overall I think this is an awesome book if you are in the mood for a dystopian adventure.

An Amazing Book
I really admired reading Brave New World, Aldous Huxley brings life to each one of characters and brings the reader into a world where normal human desires such as, the human interaction, human abilities to reason or to argue, beliefs, human's intelligences. The human's physical longings such as theattraction to the opposite sex, and also the human communication doesn't longer matter in this new world that Huxleycreates.
The novel opens at Central London Hatching Conditioning Centre factory, where the director and Hatchery is givinga tour to a group of children who are learning about the society in which they live in and how it is the way it is. Within the tour the boys discover that this factory isn't a normal factory, this factory creates human embryos for theWorld State. This embryos are categorized in five different castes called Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon. Each castes are trained to obtain a certain role within the society, such as leadership or menial labor but one characteristic each castles posses, is the loss of real human emotions, attachments, intellectually, and the ability for self reasoning.

This World State is located in London and its the new world, everything outside of it is considered savage reservations, one man named Bernard Marx who is seen as one of the leaders in this new World State questions his own beliefs about the society in which he lives in, which forces him to take a trip to one of the savage reservation in New Mexico, this is where he encounters the protagonist, john. John is considered to be normal within the world that we live in today, he has the ability to reason, choose beliefs, resist sexually desires and to be his own person, a real human being.
Bernard Marx takes John out of the savage reservation and into this World State,once John arrives he starts to realize that this World State is utopia on earth, the World State civilization is controlled by soma (soma is a chemical spry that takes away the humanly emotions, such as fear, sadness, pain, hurt, everything that makes us human). The ability to be intelligent no longer exists in this civilization. "Christianity without tears--that's what soma" is.
Within the world State John struggles to live and understand this new society and themeans to be free, to be a human being, to long for real danger, goodness, and the ability to express real emotions such as tears and happiness.

In my life the only thing that makes me human is the ability to be hurt, sad, afraid, excited, and weary; this are my emotions. Without emotions I would not be able to fall in love, enjoy books or movies, or anything that makes life wroth living. If I was john brought to this World State I too would struggle to finding where I belong and eventually would lead me to insanity. In a society where people are created without any personal freedoms andwithout the ability to have emotions, that society will never stand strong but instead collapse to the ground.

Funny and scary at the same time
It's so weird that this novel was published in the 1930s because of the issues it brings up.It talks about issues like sex, reproduction, and religion in such a way that I was shocked that this book actually came out in the 1930s.The author was clearly thinking ahead of his time.It's both scary and funny at the same time because of how the rulers of this "brave new world" go about ordering their seemingly "perfect" society while at the same time praising all things "Ford".Definitely an interesting read. ... Read more

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An inspired gathering of religious writings that reveals the "divine reality" common to all faiths, collected by Aldous Huxley

Customer Reviews (42)

Mystic Gold, But be Warned
I would not recommend this book if you have not already studied a lot of philosophy (especially the philosophy of mystics) or if you have not practiced mystical teachings for some time, as most of this book will probably just then come off as a bunch of meaningless - though well articulated - thoughts spoken by some dead and maybe drug-buzz-happy monk from a thousand years ago.

This might seem like a counter-intuitive recommendation, since this book is the 'perennial' philosophy and exposes you to such a wide range of philosophical subjects, but the words are spoken by those who (presumably...and probably) have come to understand these concepts through incredibly extensive thought and practice over many, many years.

The essay at the end of this book by Huxley is actually where I would start if you come from a western culture (as I do). I think you'll find that it speaks in a way that feels a lot more readable.

Sometimes these ideas hurt. Honestly, they do. Walking in circles can make you dizzy, nauseous, and sometimes vomit all over the sidewalk, where everyone sees you and its very embarrassing. But eventually, I believe, after A LOT of struggle, you will begin to assimilate and understand these ideas into your everyday thought, and you'll realize that when you grasp them, you start to feel very still, calm, and that you'll probably never puke ever again. Unless you get food poisoning, or maybe become pregnant.

Perennial Philosophy Aldous Huxley
The Most needed and enlightening book in our individual search for meaning and desperately spiritual seeking age. A book for the heart as well as the mind.

Not too bad
The book came in good quality but because I ordered it for a gift, it took forever to get here and I missed giving it to them on their birthday. Good thing they are forgiving. Overall good sale.

Mystic Heroism
At the beginning of the book Huxley says that the heart of the actual world is Absolute Mind. To integrate your own mind with that of the Absolute Mind, you have to give up your own self, and hence your own mind. Therefore, you wil never objectively be able to describe the Absolute Mind, because, once you have given up your own mind, you no longer have any distance toward the Absolute: you just become it. You cannot speak about 'our world' as the absolute mindbecause when you have become the servant of the Absolute your world has been transfigured, and you do not share it with 'us' any longer.

Throughout, Huxley insists that 'this world' is the Real world, and that we must not think of despising it, or rereating.

At the end, Huxley, with the paternal care typical of writers from a distant era, and with the disdain for our modern age typical of such relics as he (and I), says that when somebody can give up their self or personality, they become a saint. The saintly mystic alone keeps the decadent West going, and has made himself a conduit for Godhead to come on to earth.

What an inconceivably great task, and yet here and so simple: to give up being yourself so that you can become what you really are, what you were really made for. So few have and will ever achieve it. This book makes you think that it is possible, and that the Absolute Mind within our paltry world is really there. So sweet a book. A masterpiece.

I would like to challenge anybody to say that this is not the meaning of life. But laying down such a challenge would constitute an affirmation of my own personality, and would not be right.

Metaphorically speaking: A main branch
that comes directly from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.What Huxley has done in a nearly apotheosis like manner, is bring to the fore the common threads which pervade and are deeply inherent in all major religions.Quoting sources from such manifold schools of thought as: Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen, Islam, Christian Mysticism ad infinitum, the author clearly demonstrates that the roots of these major religions are quite similar and that the main tenant of these practices is singular - in order to turn towards God one must turn away from the self.

This work is quite grand in scope and hybridized in that it is part philosophy, part religious study, part historical review with a healthy smattering of psychological and sociological discourse thrown in for good measure.And while this work is replete with excellent insights and wisdom it harbors certain detractions and distractions as well.For example: it is abundantly clear the author is highly intelligent and a gifted writer, yet the way he formulates and communicates his thoughts is inordinately complex owing to superfluous content.Huxley routinely uses multi - compound sentences complete with parenthetical thoughts and hyphenated asides, which too often served to confound this reader.It is said that 90% of the English language is redundant; well, that point is well evidenced in this book.The next most prominent distraction found in Aldous' writing style is his use of undefined quotes and/or statements given in foreign languages such as Latin, French, and I think there were a couple in Spanish.

This book is of high value, but is a rather slow study, thus I offer 4 stars for this perennial masterpiece.
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Product Description
Crome Yellow is the first novel by British author Aldous Huxley. In the book, Huxley satirises the fads and fashions of the time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

"I had such genius then."
This is early Huxley at his funniest. The romp takes place at the Wimbush home, Crome Manor, where Ms. Wimbush drains the estate finances with horse betting by horoscope and mild Henry Wimbush records the long history of the manor, particularly its plumbing. Diverse with ideas, as well as varied psychological types, the novel is a predecessor of Point Counterpoint and the darker, more humanistic novels. This is light and comic. Denis Stone, the protagonist, is a Huxleyen self-portrait, bright, sensitive, literary, self-absorbed, preoccupied with his sense of genius, and somewhat ineffectual in practical matters and in love. Old Scogan is a portrait of the "saurian" Bertrand Russel, with dry, humorless observations, while other characters embody known literati and artists of the day. Whiling away their time in the remote estate, they sample dalliance, leisurely conversation, and a treatment of the history of eccentrics that have lived in the manor over the centuries, amidst a pleasantly lazy and refined atmosphere. This is a nice portrait of a world that hardly exists anymore--the somewhat idle wealthy post world war one set in England, savoring the new intellectual trends, and revolting against the Victorian past in their cultured, mannerly way. This is perhaps the most humorous and kindly of Huxley's self-portraits, of the serious but shyly ineffectual artiste Denis Stone. A nice portrait of the fatuousness of the twentysomeething artist, who remarks while idling time away of his work a year or two ago, "I had such genius then." And for those interested in psychology, a nice depiction of what RD Laing the antipsychiatrist called, a generation later, "implosion," "objectification" and ontological insecurity. Damon LaBarbera, PC, FL

Hilarious
This was probably one of the funniest books I've read in a while.Satires, if not done properly, can get dull very quickly.There's typically a point where you can actually feel the dead horse being whipped by the author as he panics for something else to say.Crome Yellow seems to stay fresh all the way through.If you're expecting Brave New World subject matter, totalitarian governments and that, then you will not find it.I'd say its worth it just for Harry Wimbush's family history.

Good Service
The book was in the condition that the seller stated it was in. The price was right and it arrived in a timely manor. This is all that mattered to me.

A slice of a forgotten way of life
This book transports you to 1920's English countryside estate life. Plenty of time for ennui, long sermons, elaborately constructed ideas (included several which later appear in Brave New World), coming-of-age angst, and a set of interesting characters.

I had much more fun reading this than I had expected. A verynice, light surprise.

Much better than I had expected.
Crome Yellow is actually the second novel by Huxley that I have attempted to read this year. The first one, Island, was one of those few books that I find so unreadable that I have to put it down without completion. I won't go into all the reasons that I hated Island-- suffice to say that it wasn't my cup of tea on any level. In any case, I approached Crome Yellow with some trepidation.

This wasn't helped, by the way, by the back cover of the book. It informed me gravely that this book was "blamed for...the downfall of post-Victorian standards of morality". It also describes the book as a "bold exploration into love and sex". I rather doubted the first statement and was rather put off by the second. All the same, I had carted the book to Singapore to read, so read it I was determined to do.

To my surprise, rather than a crude broadside on 1960s utopian ideals, I read a rather delicate satire of country manor novels. Granted, it was a satire with a sharp edge, which took the opportunity to take some nice little rabbit punches at society in general. But still-- not at all what I was expecting.

I was particularly impressed by Huxley's hand with character. After a generation of sighing sensitive young men who tremble with love for their older ice princesses, it was quite a relief to meet a sensitive young man main character who was just as gormless and ineffective as he appeared. Huxley uses a combination of smart word choice, good dialogue, and a cynical eye to make his point. There is some real stink dressed up as clever froth-- and that's a skill that I really admire.

I have the feeling that the book is so much of the time that I was missing part of the point. Sort of like a child listening to grown-ups talk scornfully about people that you only vaguely know.

Anyhow, glad that I read it since it washed the taste of Island out of my mouth. A curious little book, and worth reading, even if it didn't single-handedly cause the downfall of Victorian morality. ... Read more

Product Description
For the first time in twenty-five years, Nicholas Murray provides new insights into the life of this colorful writer. A fashionable figure of the 1920s, Aldous Huxley produced several witty and daring novels. However, it is his celebrated portrayal of a nightmare future society in Brave New World for which Huxley is re-mem-bered today. A truly visionary book, it was a watershed in Huxley's worldview-coinciding with his move to Cali-for-nia and experimentation with mysticism and psyche-delic drugs in later life. Aldous Huxley possesses the greatest virtue of literary bio-gra-phies: It will make readers want to read its subject's work all over again. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Aldous Huxley: A Biography
I found Huxley to be an interesting character.I was aware of his involvement at a certain level in the free love movement of the last century.He had what is known as an open marriage, and surprisingly enough when his wife was gravely ill she was concerned anough about his future that she picked out a new wife for him.I call that, going the extra mile. What I did not know about Huxley was his disabilities and how hew managed his life in spite of them.His Brave New World forecast many trends and perhaps even some possibilities not realized in society to date.

An intellectual biography of an intellectual
The biographer has done excellent exhaustive research which has pieced together much of what has been missed previously.I would caution a casual reader with limited exposure to Huxley that it may be wise to not only familiarize yourself with a majority of Aldous' works but also his contemporaries; you will also want a very good command of the English language with a bit of French, Latin and a handful of others thrown is for flavor.Further to this I, personally, thought that there was maybe a little too much of the author in the book where there could have been a little more of his subject.All in all a good read; though a bit presumptuous and lacking in perfect fluidity very illuminating and well worth the effort.

exceptionally grand
a remarkably thorough and eloquent work that captures all the essentials and much, much more. Every chapter proves to be a highly entertaining trip through the mind and life of the subject.

This marvelous work is easily one of the best biographies I have ever read and far more satisfying in most ways than many others.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book.

More Than Just a One-Book Author
Most people today know Aldous Huxley, assuming they know him at all, as the author of "Brave New World," which was no doubt inflicted on them in a High School English class.

But Huxley was more than just a one-book author.Having been spared the carnage of the Great War due to his defective eyesight (which probably saved his life -- remember that 60,000 young Englishmen were killed in the Battle of the Somme in one day), he epitomized the weary, cynical post-war mood of the post-War 1920s in novels such as "Crome Yellow" and "Antic Hay" (the latter of which, all 100,000 words, was written in two months).These books were admired by fellow authors (among them F. Scott Fitzgerald, who would portray Huxley, who by that time had moved to Hollywood, as the author "Boxley" in his last, unfinished novel "The Last Tycoon").

But Huxley turned towards mysticism and theology as he aged, helped, no doubt, by his move to California in the late 1930s.Instead of having friends like D.H. Lawrence (whose letters he edited), he instead began hanging out with Hollywood celebrities like Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx -- the latter of whom he once regaled with the idea of the Marx Brothers making a film about Marxism with Groucho playing Karl (Harpo didn't realize that Huxley was teasing, telling him that such an idea would never fly in Hollywood).His biggest credit as a screenwriter was the M-G-M adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" with Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy.

His later books, such as "Ends and Means" (much admired by the American monk Thomas Merton) and "The Doors of Peception" (which would inspire the name of the famous rock band fronted by Jim Morrison) would chart his spiritual quest, which would eventually involve Huxley's experimentation with such drugs as Mescalin and LSD.

It's a fascinating life, and the author tells it well, feeling free to be considerably more frank about the Huxleys and their marriage then was Huxleys previous biographer, Sybille Bedford (perhaps because Bedford had aparently bedded both of the Huxleys).The author is hampered to some extent due to the fact that a considerable amount of Huxley's papers were destroyed in a fire in the early 1960s, but he manages to tell the story of Huxley's long and interesting life in such a way that makes you want to hit the library and find some of his books.

You know, for a literary biography, you can't ask for much more than that.

Highly recommended!
Nicholas Murray's new work is the first full-length biography of Aldous Huxley--author of Point Counter Point (1928), a satiric examination of early 20th-century society, and Brave New World (1932), a sharp indictment of modern technology--since the authorized biography by Sybille Bedford, published in two volumes (1973, 1974).

Seeking to justify a new biography of Huxley, Murray points out that the last thirty years have seen the publication of many collected editions of letters and diaries of those who knew him--D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and many others.

Murray also notes that, in addition to these published works, there is now a wealth of unpublished material, which necessitates a bringing up to date of the Huxley story.

"The intimate life of Aldous Huxley and his remarkable wife, Maria, can now be more fully documented," writes urray. "Maria's bisexuality, the extraordinary menage a trois in the 1920s of Aldous, Maria, and Mary Hutchinson ["this extraordinary triangulation"]--absent for obvious reasons from previous biographical accounts--are described here for the first time."

With the key dramatis personae in Huxley's life now deceased, the fully story of one of the most distinguished writers of the 20th century can now be told.

A member of a distinguished scientific and literary family, the British novelist, essayist, poet, and critic Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963) was the grandson of the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), a scientist who gained fame as "Darwin's bulldog" (the staunchest supporter of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, and notoriety as a tenacious debater against antievolutionists, including scientists as well as clergy).

Aldous Huxley was also the great-nephew of Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), a literary artist who, incidentally, was the author of this reviewer's favorite poem, "Dover Beach."

Huxley was prevented from studying medicine because of an eye ailment that partially blinded him at the age of 16, causing a lifelong struggle with defective eyesight. Nevertheless, he became a voracious, omnivorous reader, holding his eyes close to the books he read and using a thick magnifying glass. His wife Maria also often read to him.

While still a student at Balliol (Oxford University), Huxley published two volumes of poetry. T. S.Eliot, one of Huxley's friends, observed that Huxley was "better equipped with the vocabulary of a poet than with the inspiration of a oet." "Eliot was almost certainly right," says Murray, "in his view that [Huxley's] talent was for prose."

Murray writes of Huxley's early days at Balliol: "Another inconvenience was having rooms opposite the Chapel, as he confided to his young friend, Jelly D'Aranyi, the concert violinist: 'one is made unhappy on Sundays by the noise of people singing hymns.' Clearly, neither Chapel nor the 'awful noise' of the hymn-singers which 'rather gets on my nerves' would appeal to the grandson of the man who invented the word 'agnostic.' "

Huxley often commented that his forte was not in writing poetry, novels, or plays (to which he devoted much time and energy during his years in Hollywood), but to the writing of essays--the didactic exposition of aesthetic, social, political, and religious ideas.

Indeed, Huxley became of the great essayists of the 20th century (a fact underscored by the completion of an ambitious project by Ivan R. Dee Publishers: a six-volume edition titled Aldous Huxley: Complete Essays, completed last year).

Huxley's most celebrated work, Brave New World, is a bitterly sarcastic account of an inhumane dystopia controlled by technology, in which art and religion have been abolished and human beings reproduce by artificial fertilization. The inhabitants of such a "perfect world" suffer from terminal boredom and ennui.

The title of Huxley's famous novel is taken from Shakespeare's The Tempest (Act V, Scene 1, lines 184-186), in which Miranda says, "O, wonder! / How many goodly creatures are there here! / How beauteous mankind is! O, brave new world, / That has such people in 't"

Increasingly convinced that "modern man" suffered from spiritual bankruptcy, Huxley recommended two time-tested antidotes to nihilism: psychedelic drugs (he experimented with mescaline and LSD) and mysticism.

For example, in his novel Eyeless in Gaza (1936) he portrays the central character's conversion from selfish isolation to transcendental mysticism, and in The Doors of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956) he describes the use of mescaline to induce visionary states of mind and an expanded consciousness.

"I am not a religious man," wrote Huxley, "in the sense that I am not a believer in metaphysical propositions, not a worshipper or performer of rituals, and not a joiner of churches." And yet, regretting that the modern world lacked potent symbols, "cosmic symbols"--only nationalist flags and swastikas--he said, "One can be agnostic and a mystic at the same time."

In his later years Huxley turned toward an "undogmatic" mysticism found, he believed, in the "wisdom of the East": Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism. He was convinced that the truths of mysticism were profounder than those of science. But he also said, "Man cannot live by contemplative receptivity and artistic creation alone . . . he needs science and technology."

Science and spirituality: these were the twin foci of Huxley's oeuvre. Indeed, his entire life may be viewed as an attempt to synthesize, by literary means, the scientific and the spiritual--to arrive, as it were, at a rapprochement between the "two cultures."

Murray's biography reads like a Who's Who of the rich and famous. In its pages we meet, along with many others, Lady Ottoline Morrell, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, H. L. Mencken, Anita Loos, Christopher Isherwood, H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, Charlie Chaplin, Harpo Marx, and the astronomer Edwin Hubble.

Intelligent and sympathetic, rich and rewarding, Aldous Huxley: A Biography is an engrossing read. Highly recommended! ... Read more

Product Description

Written at the height of his powers immediately after Brave New World, Aldous Huxley's highly acclaimed Eyeless in Gaza is his most personal novel. Huxley's bold, nontraditional narrative tells the loosely autobiographical story of Anthony Beavis, a cynical libertine Oxford graduate who comes of age in the vacuum left by World War I. Unfulfilled by his life, loves, and adventures, Anthony is persuaded by a charismatic friend to become a Marxist and take up arms with Mexican revolutionaries. But when their disastrous embrace of violence nearly kills them, Anthony is left shattered—and is forced to find an alternative to the moral disillusionment of the modern world.

Customer Reviews (16)

Huxley's Middle Period
Eyeless in Gaza comes from Huxley's middle period, where he left his comic, iconoclastic style behind and become involved in humanistic concerns. The story is told asynchronously, to mirror the confused disorderliness of memory. The main character is Anthony Beavis, a public schooler at the turn of the century who loses his mother as a lad, attends Balustrade and befriends the almost holy but suicidally self-denying Brian Foxe. In the course of time, through weakness, he betrays Brian, causing his inadvertent death. Anthony's life proceeds aesthetically and detachedly, and he tries with vaired pursuits and adventures, some comically dangerous, to achieve a more real or engaged life. Finally, midst the world war sabre rattling, he embraces pacifism.This is a complicated book which makes demands on the reader's knowledge of 19th and 20th century English history, the idiosyncracies of Huxleyen thought, and some of the ideas fermented at that time, which eventually led to some of the new age beliefs of the early 60s in California. However, its literary style, almost omniscient intelligence, and quality of writing, as well as Huxley's ability to depict the course of character development over a lifetime,do provide enough incentive to attempt a read. It also provides a wonderful depiction of Borderline Personality Disorder, in the character of Mary Amberly, one of the most well dressed out descriptions of that very elusive, elliptical type of person. Damon LaBarbera, Ph.D.

Eyeless in Gaza
The Title was a bit misleading. I thought it was a story a bout the Gaza strip. However, this book is written very eloquently. Lots of words that I did not know and had to look up in the dictionary. A rather strange story about years in England between the first and second World Wars. The young men and how they were affected by their experiences both in school and afterwards. An interesting study of people.

Eyeless in Gaza
There is something tragic about a giant of 20th century English letters being known almost exclusively for one novel, and sadly, not his best.Cheers to Harper Classics for reissuing Huxley's masterpiece, //Eyeless in Gaza//.This is a rich, philosophical novel; by its non-chronological structure and shifting unreliable narration, it prefigures much of the later post-modern movement.The protagonist, Anthony Bemis, is a libertine intellectual, trapped in those "lost years" between the world wars.Surrounded by Oxford chums, Bemis watches as together and separately they search helplessly for meaning.Initially, he tries carnality with Helen, one of the most complex women of 20th century English literature and the wife of his friend. When this fails to satisfy, Bemis turns to radical politics, embracing violence that nearly leads to his death.

For those interested in the interwar period and the philosophical currents which swept over Europe, //Eyeless in Gaza// is a must-read.Huxley muses on a wide range of topics: Shakespeare, politics, psychoanalysis, socialism, gender roles.Yet in the end, it is the characters he paints, helpless against their unrealized urges, that will hold readers' attention as they follow Anthony Bemis through tumult, war, and heartbreak.

Reviewed by Jordan Magill

Eyeless
I read this after Brave New World, his subsequent set of essays (Brave New World Revisited), and Island. I found the latter disappointing, partly due to my (mistaken) expectation that it would contain Huxley's "answer": it outlined his utopia in almost excessive detail, only to conclude that it was indeed impossible. Whilst the last of his set of essays contained a prescriptive outline, only when I'd read Eyeless in Gaza did I feel that I'd begun to understand his message properly. These four books are clearly not intended to amuse and entertain. However to anyone that wishes to understand how Huxley thought about these problems, I would recommend reading all four sequentially. The whole was, for me, more than the sum of the parts.

on the TOP 50 for me!!
Pretension? Perhaps. But, for pure innovation in storytelling and riveting prose, this is on my TOP 50 of my favourite books of ALL time. (TEN days that shook the WORLD, Animal FARM, Curtain, The Magic Mountain are among the other 50) Huxley's use of flashbacks is quite novel at the time it was published.
The main characters journey of self-satisfaction and ego-centrism is complex and very fufilling. i highly recommend it. ... Read more

Product Description
Both a document and a handbook The Art of Seeing records Aldous Huxley's victory over near-blindness and details the simple exercises anyone can follow to improve eyesight. Using the method devised by Dr. W. H. Bates, "the pioneer of visual education," as Huxley called him, and heeding the advice of Dr. Bates' disciple, Margaret D. Corbett, Aldous Huxley conquered a vision problem that had plagued him for more than a quarter century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Seeing again
An important work for those of us who have poor eyesight. Glasses are not necessary!

Much Better than Relearning to See
Several months ago I bought the book "Relearning to See" and I never finished reading it.Talk about boring.The author of that book goes into how the eye works and gives way too many examples of people he knew that lost their eyesight from trying to see too much or gained it back by using the Bates method.When I say a too many examples, I mean to the point where I had to put the book down.In the end (or at least as far as I got, which was a little over halfway), he discussed the theory of the Bate's Method, but didn't get into the nitty-gritty.

Huxley's book, on the other hand, is about a third of the length counting pages only.When you consider his font is much bigger and there is less type on each page, it's probably 20% of the size of "Relearning to See".But it's because he cuts the crap and get's to the point; he tells you what you need to know to improve your eyesight without ranting for over 700 pages.

I don't care about the structure of the eye because it has absolutely no bearing on relearning to see.I just got Huxley's book this week and I already finished it.He concisley describes each major point of the Bate's Method and because it's to the point, you actually remember the main points come the end of the book.Furthermore, he tells you exactly what to do.

In "Relearning to See", when I read about palming, I thought you were supposed to actually push on the eyes.The author didn't get into detail aobut what it was.It turns out you are just supposed to cover the eyes and block out light.In "Relearning to See", the author says blink frequently.Huxley tells you what drills you should do and how often to do them.He gives specific exercises to do for central fixation and sunning the eyes.Don't waste your time on any other book if you want to relearn to see.This book has everything you will need.

From the dustjacket:
An Adventure in Re-education by Aldous Huxley, Author of Point-Counter Point, Eyeless in Gaza, Etc. --

A victim in youth of near-blindness, Aldous Huxley went through the experiences of thousands who have faced the loss of sight.

He tried by every known medical and scientific means to save his vision, and this book tells how he achieved what many thought impossible.

It is a book of hope for all similarly afflicted -- a rediscovery of the basic rules of vision.

Save your eyes - read this book
I read this book twenty years ago when my eyesight was good. Twenty years on, still no glasses.

As a programmer looking at a screen all day, that's not too bad. My whole family (Sister & both parents) wear glasses.

Whenever my eyes start feeling weak, I refresh myself with the "art of seeing correctly" & continue a life without any form of optical crutches.

The instructions are sensible & practical.

Whatever you do, avoid the downward spiral of artificial vision correction. Think about it, how can you strengthen a mans legs in a wheel chair?

Instead, buy this book. Cheaper than glasses!

Try this first
I read this book with skepticism, I did the exercises with skepticism, and I watched my prescription go from -2.25 to -1.25 in three months.Not bad for a method that "doesn't work" according to the people who sell me glasses, contacts and laser surgery.I highly recommend anyone considering laser surgery to atleast check this out first.Someone please republish this book. ... Read more

Product Description
A Hollywood millionaire with a terror of death, whose personal physician happens to be working on a theory of longevity--these are the elements of Huxley's caustic and entertaining satire on man's desire to live indefinitely. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

Eloquent snobbery
I enjoy Huxley's style, which is refreshing compared to many comtemporary books that seem short on vocabulary and long on grammatical errors. His descriptions are wonderful. But-- I found his snobbery hard to take after the first chapter. His dislike of California, and maybe all of America, is obvious.
I also found his philosophical rants difficult to wade through. But most importantly for me, I could not like the main characters.

Excellent
After reading Brave New World, Point Counter Point, and Ape and Essence, I was almost burnt out on Huxley Fiction. After Many a Summer is a superb example of Huxley's craft AND a page turner.

Short of epic, but well worth your time
"After Many a Summer" is a rambling affair, more philosophical exercise than narrative, but beautifully written and rewarding for the reader who sticks with it past the first few chapters.

The book, a rumination on greed and a statement against the suppurating wound that is Hollywood, concerns a moronic, self-loathing mogul hidden away in his Xanadu-like castle who nevertheless fears death and wants to live forever. With the help of his sex-crazed doctor, hilarity ensues involving carps that have been around since Napoleon was in his diapers, and a member of British nobility and his housekeeper who have devolved into ape-men -- all interspersed with a nearly nihilistic discourse between the mogul's sagacious neighbor and a naive research assistant: ("Pleasure cannot be shared; like Pain, it can only be experienced or inflicted, and when we give Pleasure to our Lovers or bestow Charity upon the Needy, we do so, not to gratify the object of our Benevolence, but only ourselves" or "In relation to Pain, that empty word, Infinity, comes near to having a meaning. This is not the case with Pleasure; for Pleasure is strictly finite and any attempt to extend its boundaries results in its transformation into Pain.")

Huxley has turned in a great satire on the American Dream that is no less relevant or biting 70 years after it was first published. It's like "The Picture of Dorian Gray" without the beauty, or "Citizen Kane" without the grandstanding.

If it were just for the ideas alone, "After Many a Summer" might not be enough to turn the pages, but Huxley's flair for weaving the tiniest details into startling prose are as evident here as in the more accessible "Brave New World." For example, this description of the naive research assistant in the midst of a sea change, after taking off his glasses in preparation for sleep: "Deprived of their six and a half diopters of correction, his eyes were instantly reduced to a state of physiological despair. Curved crystal had become their element; unspectacled, they were like a pair of jellied sea creatures, suddenly taken out of water. Then the light went out; and it was as though the poor things had been mercifully dropped for safe keeping, into an aquarium."

A tedious little number by a tedious little writer
The amusing thing about this book is that it followed me through graduate school. When I was taking an American Lit course, it was mentioned in comparison to Day of the Locust as a book that eviscerated Los Angeles and Hollywood. When I was taking a radical British writers of the 30s class, I read a lot of Huxley's essays about the sad state of popular culture when I was trying to get a handle on my final paper about the artistic vacuousness of the "dystopian novel" (it ran twice as long as the 20 pages because I truly hated Swastika Night and found Homage to Catalonia so much better than Orwell's dystopian works.)

I particularly remember Huxley saying that the youth of today should be lead away from their vulgar entertainments. If they are exposed to enough Mahler, they will abandon this awful "jazz" that they seem so keen on. If they are forced to read Crime and Punishment they will see how trivial their detective novels are. It's interesting to think that Huxley was trying to say that we shouldn't censor entertainment; but he's still a bloody snob.

And it's even more ironic considering that one of those vulgar detective novelists went and wrote The Big Sleep which is definitely a more important novel about Los Angeles than this tripe.

So what is the point of this book? Los Angeles is vulgar. And all those Hollywood types are vacuous. And then they start talking. And talking. And talking. Their conversations aren't interesting but Huxley is enamored with his own "insights" into the vulgarity of Los Angeles. I have to confess that I read this for the 50 pages that I give myself with a book and I could read it no more.

And it was the longest 50 pages of my life.

I saw one commentator saying that I'm pathetic for only reading 50 pages, but as George Bernard Shaw said "You don't have to eat the whole egg to know it's rotten."

Somewhere, somehow, publishers thought that it'd be a good idea to publish books by Philosophers without characterization or narrative. This book might be better than The Mandarins (another gab fest of tedious little people being tediously intellectual) but that's only because it's shorter. I guess they figured that Sartre and Camus were selling and Dostoyevski always took the time to babble on and people dig him, right? But unfortunately that little experiment led to terrible garbage like this. Granted, you can still love intellectual books. Umberto Eco is excellent in his talky way. But he actually has something to say. Huxley is just spinning in circles of his snobbery.

Huxley's California Novel
This is a satire of California life and a vehicle for Huxley's pet ideas with various recognizable types--the Hearst like tycoon afraid of dying, the balanced, self-sufficient Jeffersonian farmer, the precious but ineffectual English academician, the stridently confident physician, and so forth. No, this is not a masterpiece, but a more spirited, if ocassionally caricatured, parade of Huxleyen characters and ideas, presented in a pleasant form, and for those wishing to follow's Huxley's oevre from the 20's to the 60's, a pleasant interlude in his more ambitious works. The plot, timeley and engaging, is one that Huxley, given his lineage, is particularly suited to write, veering off into scientific speculataion and absurdity. After reading the many hundreds of Huxleyen essays, chapters and novels, the more neatly adumbrated charaters of After Many a Summer, are sometimes easiest, at least for this reviewer, to recall distinctly. And from a psychological view, the antics of the characters provide that funny shock of recognition that give Huxley's works, almost inadvertently, their truthful humor. Damon LaBarbera ... Read more

Product Description
Twenty-one distinguished stories, confirming Huxley's stature as one of the giants of modern English prose and of social commentary in our time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Jewels
These are very funny, witty, and ironic stories. Of the group, the most famous might be The Giaconda Smile, later made into a well known play, and involving murder, adultery, mayhem, and an ironically detached protagonist falsely condemned to death. The Tillotson Banquet is a winsome story about an ancient, decrepit, once famous artist who is made, for having been the favorite of a wealth baron,the center of an honorary, ultimately humiliating banquet.Sir Hercules is excerpte from the novel Crome Yellow and is the story of the Lilliputia lord of Crome Manor who only a few feet tall creates a household of other miniature people--wife, servants, friends--all happy and content in their miniature world until the unforeseen happens--their child grows to normal size and tramples their happy Eden. The Monocle presents an unctuous aristocrat who, wearing a monocle, manages to capture the ridiculing attention of peers and passerby, eventually reaching an apotheosis of disdain, while becoming drunker and drunker, against the privilege and poverty around him, losing the monocle in the process. The story Fairy Godmother conveys a similar theme--a self-absorbed lady of wealth who, though charitable in an obvious and patronizing way, terrorizes and controls others with an oblivious air of superiority. Young Archimedes is the story of a promising youngster, a genius, destroyed by the pedants around him, while Half Holiday tells the story of a down at his heels young man longing to meet the love of his life but defeated by the shibboleths of his class--his poor clothes, accent, boots falling apart. If you like English writing from this period, these stories will make you laugh, and experience a shock of recognition at these recognizably types. Yet remote and pretentious as they are, Huxley is never mean, but writes out of an ironic, humorous, accepting understanding of human nature, even at his relatively early age at the time. Damon LaBarbera, PhD

The third most famous person who died on November 22, 1963
If your idea of Aldous Huxley as a writer of fiction begins and ends with "Brave New World," rejoice, my friend, because you may be happily surprised by the wit, clarity, ironic charm, and impressive variety of these short stories.Two of them, "Young Archimedes" and "The Tillotson Banquet,"by themselves repay the cost of admission, but most of the pieces should beguile nearly any serious reader.Huxley was of course a very successful novelist of manners and mores before he emitted his "classic," ("Brave New World") and as that excellent piece of science fiction has unjustly overshadowed the other novels, the novels have unjustly overshadowed the stories.(BTW: Have you ever noticed how many really strong writers of fiction -- particularly Americans -- in fact did much of their best prose work in the shorter, less prestigious form?Try Poe, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Cheever, Sherwood Anderson, Welty, Chekhov, Maupassant, Carver, Borges, maybe Thomas Mann, etc.)

Sadly, Huxley the man was also destined to be put in the shade.Despite being born into arguably the most intellectually eminent family in Britain over the last two centuries, and despite building a tremendous reputation while he lived, this purblind, stooped-over tall man disappeared from the earth as silently as a drop of dew, since he died within hours of both John F. Kennedy and C.S. Lewis.These two are names to conjure with, one must admit.But in another two centuries, it might well be Huxley, of the three that died on that day, who most reliably entertains and instructs.You can be part of this revival, and have fun doing it, by reading these stories. ... Read more

Product Description
At their best, Huxley's essays stand among the finest examples of the genre in modern literature. From 1938 to 1956 Aldous Huxley continues to explore the role of science and technology in modern culture, and seeks a final level of foundational Truth that might provide the basis for his growing interest in religious mysticism. It is in this period that his philosophy of history took its final form. Here is the fifth volume of a projected six. He writes with an easy assurance and a command of classical and modern cross-references. --Christopher Hitchens, Los Angeles Times. There is much to enjoy in these volumes...they are important as a document of his times, and of a window on to a stage in the evolution of his mind. --Economist. Aldous Huxley very early in life became one of the leading essayists of the 20th century. --Michael Potemra, National Review ... Read more

Product Description

Thirty years ago, ecstasy and torment took hold of John Rivers, shocking him out of “half-baked imbecility into something more nearly resembling the human form.” He had an affair with the wife of his mentor, Henry Maartens—a pathbreaking physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize, and a figure of blinding brilliance—bringing the couple to ruin. Now, on Christmas Eve while a small grandson sleeps upstairs, John Rivers is moved to set the record straight about the great man and the radiant, elemental creature he married, who viewed the renowned genius through undazzled eyes.

Customer Reviews (3)

The Genius and the Goddess
It can be a bad gamble to pick up a book based on the author's name and one or two titles that carry the connotations of "classics." This may be true with Aldous Huxley's//the Genius and the Goddess//. The work starts out with some clumsily framed philosophical ramblings, but once the reader gets past the waxing and waning, the plot--a scientist's protégée has an affair with his "goddess" wife--the questions raised and love triangles revealed are fascinating, and the end gratifying. Parts of this book, such as the morals (or lack of them) projected on the wife, seem to carry a nod toward enjoying life, and enjoying a hedonistic "here and now" lifestyle.

Reviewed by Allena Tapia

An excellent and intelligent fiction
I have never really read much of Huxley's fiction and always had the sense of him as a quiet thin, and light writer. He is generally considered more a 'novelist of ideas' than one capable of creating powerful characters. My expectations were pleasantly upset by this work which is much better than I thought it would be.
This book has a frame- story in which two old friends , suitors of the same woman meet again. The woman has since died, and her husband tells of an earlier involvement. This involvement is the main story of the work. The son of a deceased Lutheran Minister and an over- possessive mother John Rivers is invited as a young scientist to be the assistant of the 'genius of the story, Henry Marteens. Marteens is married to Kathy, the goddess of the story, who is described as the most beautiful woman the narrator has ever seen. The senior scientist is a kind of crazy genius who lives in his own inner world and is sustained by the loving care of his wife. They have two children a teenage girl and a younger son. The narrator Rivers becomes a member of the household. The teenage girl falls in love with him but he refuses her advances. The beautiful Kathy 's mother becomes ill and she travels to see and care for her. During the vigil Marteens who cannot live without the help of his wife also becomes critically sick. He has done this before as a way of blackmailing his wife to come back to him. He has wild imaginings when she is away about her sexual infidelities. When he is at the point of death finally, his wife leaves her dying mother to come back to him. He does not immediately respond. In the meantime the virgin very Christian conscienced Rivers is fallen upon by Kathy, who emotionally lonely desperate, and empty needs to have her soul restored though passionate love. Rivers succumbs and it is his sexual awakening on April 23, the day of Shakespeare's birthday. The two conduct briefly a clandestine affair which is sensed by the jealous rejected daughter who all along has resented her mother. The lovers decide that for the good of all they must part. On the day of his departure on the way to the station the mother and daughter in the same car quarrel and while the mother is distracted they are in a fatal accident, which only injures the young brother who later dies a more horrible death in the war at Okinawa. Rivers goes on a short time later to meet Helen, who will his wife and was also loved by the writer he is telling the story to. Marteens will marry in a short time his wife's quite unattractive sister, and after she dies marry yet again. Another carer who will nurse him out of the world when he is in his late eighties.
The book in the opening contrasts the writer's ethic of living by the muse of memory, as opposed to the narrator's ethic of being wholly absorbed and living in the 'Now'. One senses this latter view corresponds more to that of Huxley if his late- life parapsychological and drug experiments are indicative.
The work is carefully crafted . It has a seemingmessage of deriding Christian conscience and promoting a pagan ethic of surrending to the immediateness of sensual experience. The goddess of the story is taken to be an embodiment of the pagan spirit of living sensual life to the full.
Despite my own personal objection to the what is for me immoral 'moral' of the story I find the work an excellent and intelligent fiction.

Pretty good
Being an Aldous Huxley fan, when I found this at the library I picked it up. It's a recollection of a man who lived in the house of an absent-minded genius with a gorgeous wife and dramatic daughter. The philosophies the man spits out at the beginning are interesting, and the story is worth a read. I wasn't blown away by the book, but it fared fine. It's a quick read, so check it out at the library like I did if you are a Huxley fan, if not, don't go out searching for it. ... Read more

Product Description
Drawing on the rich content of the scriptures, tradition and history, this book offers a comprehensive roadmap of the quest for both the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

God and us
This discussion of God and our relationship with all of creation could have been written today.Its relevance is timeless and its comments inspire and give comfort....

Unbelievably Brilliant!I wish I read this earlier in my life.
I started out with Huxley's Perrenial Philosophy and am 3/4 of the way through Huxley and God.The effect these two books have had on my way of thinking about most anything religious or spiritual, and matters of daily existence and reality can't be understated.If asked what my belief is about God, I would recommend that someone read both of these books.No one in my mind has written about God, Godhead, the Divine Ground and our times existant relation to that reality better than Aldous Huxley.I found my self completely awed by what and how he describes the things he does. He makes so much sense out of really complicated verse and Mystical thought, and always has really profound insights to all that he discusses, which is immense.I hope more people find these books and have the same appreciation that I do for Mr. Huxley.You are in for a wonderful read, one that will force you to stop, and make you think about and recognize the enormity off all that he speaks.

At the intersection of Western Blvd and Eastern Way
Huxley's brilliance shines in this collection.I do not like to use the word "God" as it has little meaning since the many concepts that people dump into the word are so varied that the word does little to communicate.But with Huxley, a master comunicator, and key figure in the exciting merging of East and West mystic philosophy, the word illuminates.I could use the word sitting down talking to Aldous.

Buy it
buy this book.then by The Perennial Philosophy. both will change your life.in a most descriptive way it describes that "All you need is love."A simple but extremely difficult concept to master and live.

A five-plus star book
This book is a collection of 26 essays and two poems written by Aldous Huxley during the last twenty years of his life. Each essay is about man's relationship with God, with the environment and with his fellow man. Huxley started out life as an agnostic and, at times, took a sarcastic, almost caustic attitude towards religion. However, certainly by 1939, his attitude had changed, as those familiar with Huxley's later works will recognise. In fact, several of the essays contained in this book appear in Huxley's later novels such as DEVILS OF LOUDON and TIME MUST HAVE A STOP.

Huxley believed that those who wholeheartedly and sincerely seek God will find what they're looking for.He tried to strip religion of all the tradition and trappings to find a common thread running through all religions. What he found was, in part, that God is One and that God is love. In these essays, he shares his methods for seeking (and finding) God. He also shares his thoughts on the destructiveness of misguided religious idealism and nationalism. There's alot of deep thought in this book. I really can't do Huxley justice in a review of one of his religious works. The man was in a class all by himself. I will say that this book makes its readers stop and think. The essays contained in this book are particularly apropos to a warring and terrorism-stricken society such as ours.I especially recommend two essays, "On a Sentence from Shakespeare" and "A Minimum Working Hypothesis".You'll see life differently after reading them. ... Read more

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Aldous Huxley's acclaimed and gripping account of one of the strangest occurrences in history

Customer Reviews (21)

The love of Huxley peering in
What I like about Huxley is his fairness to whatever he's describing, his willingness to keep looking, keep turning a matter, digging, uncovering. There's something almost quiet about his writing, like a calm, bemused, detached and somewhat humored observer, puzzling over the peculiarity and what to make of it all.

Much of the book, for me, reinforces the power of suggestion, the desire to appear special, the personal intrigue of going to extremes, the terribly delightful play of indulging in worst behaviors then revitalizing into highest ideals. It all looks like a captivating mind game, a trip of consciousness, everyone playing their various roles, the universe investing itself into personalities, fears, drives, opportunism. Oh, what strange relations it can conjure of itself. And this book is abundant evidence that that which one believes does tend to manifest to reinforce the belief. Believe in devils and devils will appear. Believe you are destined to burn in hell for eternity, and by golly, life will afford you that entryway. What's most peculiar is how willing mind is to believe its own beguilement -- and yet, there is evidence of the characters being at times somewhat aware of their own self-indulging folly. Not enough to entirely give it all up, but some sense that one is choosing to play out whatever charms or haunts prove sufficient to allow oneself to be enticed that way.

Great read.
Not only does this book present an incredibly vivid portrayal of a not to distant past full of scandal and political intrigue (not to mention sorcery!), it is full of the brillaint insights of Aldous Huxley.Both are equaly eye opening and valid today.

The Ultimate Trials of Real Life
What devils come through our minds when we read this charming historical novel by Aldous Huxley?It's the 1620's in France.The church rules supreme.We are immersed in an era of kings and queens, noblemen and clergy.Everyone knows his place, everyone except for a certain parson, the young, smart and ostensibly virile Urbain Grandier.His wit and charm captures the interest of every female participant in the entire church enclave.His very presence disturbed the otherwise tranquil tenets of the seventeenth century French church.He also possessed a special gift.He acquired a knack for tantalizing the lay sisters, arousing their interests in unthinkable ways and provoking impious behavior, so we are led to believe, further instigating those with power.His superiors despise his manner of inciting hysteria and question their ability to control him.Even the prioress's reaction to the parson's elegance leaves her in a state of demonic possession.

Many of his colleagues proposed various remedies including exorcisms.With his smart, invincible attitude, he thought he could do no wrong and the clergy led him to believe that was so.But in the shadows, they deploy a clandestine plan to infiltrate his works, sabotage his intentions and derail him once and for all.The exorcisms lay the groundwork for the trial, finally accusing Urbain Grandier of sorcery.That was the only way they could justify their attack on the parson, to rid themselves of his disturbing behavior in the face of the solace of Loudun.

Huxley is dynamic and brave with his powerful and rich literary style, contagious wit and whimsical interpretation of the events of the time.This is an in-depth study of demonic possession and superstition at its highest form.We see parallels in modern times of those who thought they understood how to rule over people's beliefs in order to control their behavior.Huxley works hard to piece together the many historical facets to understand what motivates people to wield such power. The parson's accusers had political agendas and used his cheeky entanglements to ambush him and make an example of him to discourage others who might venture to take his place.I cannot help think how Urbain Grandier's accusers and trials remind me of the John Gotti trials in that John Gotti also thought he had the audacity to blow off the feds.

Demons in the church
For the serious reader interested in witchcraft, demonic possession in 16th century. Book is very well written and researched. The uninitiated in church history and philosophy should have a dictionary and a primer on church history re: Catholics & Protestants Or Huguenots in France. Brilliantly researched with impressive bibliography of primary French sources, so brush up on your French and Latin. If you can manage Huxley's ruminations on what these behaviors and belief systems mean, then it will be an amazing experience. For those who don't want to read anything negative about the Catholic church as an institution or the hypocrisy of both church, state, and ultimately man's imperfection may be disturbed. Not an easy read. This is a bizarre bit of history written in an engaging though high-brow level. Gabi's Gifts.

The urge to self-transcendence
I was fascinated by Huxley's use of this story as a way of trying to explain his thoughts on "man's deep-seated urge to self-transcedence, of his very natural reluctance to take the hard, ascending way, and of his search for some bogus liberation either below or to one side of his personality" - as revealed by our dependecies on religion and in joining mass movements like fascism or communism, as well as sexuality and substance use and abuse.
In Chapter Three he focuses on the religious aspects of these tendencies to "desire - and desire, very often, with irresistable violence - the consciousness of being someone else."
In the Epilogue ["In amplification of material in Chapter Three)"], he expands on these ideas by discussing substance use and abuse: "Alcohol is but one of the many drugs employed by human beings as avenues of escape from the insulated self." He adds to this the use of "From poppy to curare, from Andean coca to Indian hemp and Siberian agaric, every plant or bush or fungus capable, when ingested, of stupifyingor exciting or evoking visions....seems to prove that, always and everywhere, human beings have felt the radical inadequacy of their personal existence, the misery of being their insulate selves and not something else.."
He then continues with the "crowd delirium" of mass movements:
"The professional moralists who inveigh against drunkeness are strangely silent about the equally disgusting vice of herd-intoxication - of downward transcendence into subhumanity by the process of getting together in a mob." leading to "The final symptom of herd-intoxication is a manical violence. Instances of crowd-delirium culminating in gratuitous destructiveness, in ferocious self-mutilation, in fratracidal savagery without purpose and against the elementary interests of all concerned, are to be met with on almost every page of the anthropologists'textbooks and - a little less frequently, but still with dismal regularity - in the histories of even the most highly civilized peoples."
His concluding sentence: "Every idol, however exalted, turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice."

This book is not merely an historical essay describing the lurid details of the events at Loudun [other books on the subject do that job], Huxley covers far more ground and delves far deeper into the experience of being human than that; it can be disturbing at times, but also illuminating.
Huxley's own later use of psychedelic drugs [mescaline, and, as has been said, LSD while on his death-bed] - which he describes in "The Doors of Perception" [1954] - indicates that he was still trying to reach an understanding of self-transcendence - in a more positive light.
... Read more

Product Description

The astonishing novel Brave New World, originally published in 1932, presents Aldous Huxley's legendary vision of a world of tomorrow utterly transformed. In Huxley's darkly satiric yet chillingly prescient imagining of a "utopian" future, humans are genetically designed and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively serve a ruling order. A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, it remains remarkably relevant to this day as both a warning to be heeded and as a thought-provoking yet satisfying entertainment.

Customer Reviews (64)

I should read this
I tend to use Amazon to fulfill the book needs for my children's reading assignments, so I don't often read the things I buy.Considering how my son gave raving good comments about the book as he was reading it, it's now on my must-read list.5-stars for prompt delivery of a great classic by Amazon.

great book
i love the whole book. I love that Christopher Hitchens introduces the book and that it has the revisited edition in the back. Its everything a reader would want for a classic like this.

solid edition
You're probably familiar with the story, and its rather coded genius narration of where we are/headed. This edition presents some nice extras worth the read, Brave New World Revisited, and some further thoughts by the author. A solid book to add to your Huxleyian library.

Brave New World
One of the most extraordinary books of the last century. Originally published in 1932, Brave New World introduces concepts such as cloning, virtual reality and computers. It is rather frightening to consider how many of Aldous Huxleys ideas have become reality in our world, was he foreseeing the future and if so is our world heading for disaster as his Brave New World. Something to think about definitely. The book also features an excellent foreword by Christopher Hitchins.

Why are there reviews of this book before 2010?
If this book was just released in January 2010, whey are all the reviews dating from 1999-2008 before its release?It's called Brave New World (P.S.).I just want to know what the difference is between this version and the original. ... Read more

Product Description
These first two volumes of a projected six collect the complete essays of one of the major writers of the 20th century. His reading was immense, his taste impeccable, and his ear acute....His place in English literature is unique and is certainly assured. --T. S. Eliot. Edited with Commentary by Robert S. Baker and James Sexton. ... Read more

Product Description

Best known for his dystopian novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley was a prolific and respected author of many works of fiction and social satire. This CD presents recordings from the BBC archives spanning nearly thirty years of Huxley’s career.

      The recordings include: a broadcast on The Causes of War, in which Huxley explains the psychological reasoning used by governments to encourage people to fight; a discussion of  Ape and Essence, a fantasy about a future world after biological and atomic war; a look at the effects of drug-taking on the writing process; an excerpt in which Huxley discusses his move from England to California—which was due in part to his fear that many of the prophecies of Brave New World had come true; and a conversation about Island that attempts to show how utopian ideals may be put into effect.

      Many of the recordings here have not been available since they were first broadcast, and they offer unique insight into one of the most intriguing authors of the twentieth century.

Product Description
From a calypso tent in Trinidad to the Mayan ruins of Copan, Huxley's account of his journey through the Caribbean, Guatemala and Mexico during the 1930s is a travel writing classic. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Superior White Man Among the "Primitives"
A travel writing classic it says in the Product Description. I found Huxley's account of his trip round Guatemala, Mexico and the Caribbean boring. For him, Indians are uncivilized. "The village Indian can read, but his mind is so conditioned that he cannot understand what he reads," he says. Still, it seems Huxley doesn't think much of the masses in general; "The intrinsic and congenital stupidity of the majority is as great as it ever was. Universal education has created an immmense class of what I may call the New Stupid."

After reading this, I would classify Huxley among his ranks of the New Stupid. He states on page 152 that "to civilize primitives may be impossible". He seems to have been influenced (brainwashed?) by D.H. Lawrence's book The Plumed Serpent. According to Huxley, "No-one has ever written more forcibly than Lawrence in The Plumed Serpent of the hopeless squalor and stuffiness of human beings who have not yet reached the spiritual and mental stage of consciousness." In an Indian colonel he sees "a profound, hopeless melancholy". Huxley's explanation: "He had, I suppose, enough of our education to make him aware of his own Indianness."

After reading this, I suspect that people like Huxley and Lawrence had reached the stage of hopeless stuffiness, although it's not clear if Huxley shared Lawrence's view, as expressed in vol 3 of the Letters of D.H. Lawrence, that "To learn plainly to hate mankind, to detest the spawning human being, that is the only cleanliness now," but it seems he was at least on the way to such a perspective. ... Read more