![]() ![]() It starts off with Walter Bidlake's "trials and tribulations", only to extend to the entire social network of the London elite of the 1930s. The novel doesn't have a front-to-back storyline, a precise plot, or a main character. ![]() The deepest corners of human nature - that's where he goes, and that's where I haven't seen anyone else being able to. To this day, Aldous Huxley's "Point Counter Point" remains my favourite novel. In summary, Point Counter Point is really good But Point Counter Point seems much more natural, less clunky, than Brave New World’s 1932 attempt to be 24th century seems in 2008. So many little ideas, compared with Brave New World, which has one huge, overarching notion that there must be more to life than the simple pursuit of pleasure, or even happiness. Or possibly indulging in one of those orgies (although, says Huxley, wickedness becomes as routine and uninteresting as anything else after a while). One should be undertaking some arduous proletariat task, or at least interacting with one’s fellow man. ![]() Yet he is so cutting about the intellectual pursuits that one can’t but feel guilty that one has the leisure and self-indulgence to be reading such a clever book. Huxley is so sharp, so clever and so observant that it is a pleasure to be in his company. Any attempt to live a super-pure existence by living entirely in the mental will result in one becoming simply less than human (d) You cannot properly separate the mind from the rest of the body. In the sense that lurid accounts of orgies never discuss fatigue, boredom or hiccoughs (c) Art is so much purer and more discriminating than life. (b) It is easier to live the life of the intellectual, to live in a world purely of ideas, than it is to succeed in the art of life – to be on good terms with your colleagues, friends, spouse and children. (a) Why do people bother with worrying about liberty, democracy and politics, when they should just get on with living their lives Despite cynical and fun-making elements, Huxley allows his characters to formulate a series of profound and serious ideas, amongst them being: Point Counter Point is a tragicomedy about a group of London intellectuals and/or members of the leisured class in the 1920s. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |