"Brave New World: Revisited" ...revisited
There are some books you just know you need to own before you ever read them. This is why I bought Brave New World before I ever read it. I figured that I'd read the story and then come back some time later for all of the essays about the story which comprise the "revisited" portion of the book. It took a few years, but I finally got around to it.
There are the usual assumptive essays that explain why everything is all about the author's personal life...and other essays explaining how the author had intricately intertwined numerous political statements within each sentence of the book... Why does something great have to be assumed to be more than what it really is? I don't believe an absence of subtle ennui detracts from the story's greatness.
Let's face the facts here: Aldous Huxley is not a great writer in an artistic sense. He can be confusing sometimes because he uses words in contexts that defy their definition. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what "pneumatic" actually means; though it is used many times in the story... He concedes that his characters have little depth because they are merely puppets used to illustrate his ideas. That is what makes Brave New World so great: it is more of a thought experiment than anything else...imagine this type of society...these types of people...this type of outlook. It gets the gears going in the same way that Borges or Kafka do... I think many people can also identify with Bernard Marx and his suspicions that the garden of social progress has its roots in jaundiced soil.
I have been immersed in nothing but Philip Roth for the last month. It is good to be reminded that there are many different attributes to be disinterred from many different works.
There are the usual assumptive essays that explain why everything is all about the author's personal life...and other essays explaining how the author had intricately intertwined numerous political statements within each sentence of the book... Why does something great have to be assumed to be more than what it really is? I don't believe an absence of subtle ennui detracts from the story's greatness.
Let's face the facts here: Aldous Huxley is not a great writer in an artistic sense. He can be confusing sometimes because he uses words in contexts that defy their definition. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what "pneumatic" actually means; though it is used many times in the story... He concedes that his characters have little depth because they are merely puppets used to illustrate his ideas. That is what makes Brave New World so great: it is more of a thought experiment than anything else...imagine this type of society...these types of people...this type of outlook. It gets the gears going in the same way that Borges or Kafka do... I think many people can also identify with Bernard Marx and his suspicions that the garden of social progress has its roots in jaundiced soil.
I have been immersed in nothing but Philip Roth for the last month. It is good to be reminded that there are many different attributes to be disinterred from many different works.