A Wednesday for the Perplexed
What I've Finished Reading
The Island by Aldous Huxley. Let's be honest with ourselves for a second: the only reason I'm haunted by the feeling that I'm not being fair to Aldous Huxley is that I know he has fans whose taste I respect, not because I'm actually of two minds about the thing. It's not like Lawrence Durrell where I couldn't shake the compulsion to make fun of him but also couldn't help admiring the writing, and never knew how I felt about it from one page to the next. I don't admire a single thing about The Island and I'm too uninvested to make fun. At the same time it's obvious that my impatience with Huxley has taken on a life of its own. There's a mental barrier to my sympathetic understanding that is totally out of proportion to anything Huxley might have done to deserve it.
In short: The Island bored me half to death but I read it all. This is probably not Huxley's fault - but actually I'm just saying that because I can't justify my dislike: in my heart I think it's totally Huxley's fault.
Let's see what Anthony Burgess has to say!
As with so much of Huxley's later fiction, one is not sure whether or not to call this book a true novel. It is less concerned with telling a tale than with presenting an attitude to life, it is weak on characterization but strong on talk, crammed with ideas and uncompromisingly intellectual. Huxley shows us an imaginary tropical island where the good life can be cultivated for the simple reason that the limitations and potentialities of man are thoroughly understood [. . .] The people themselves are a sort of ideal Eurasian race, equipped with fine bodies and Huxleyan brains, and they have read all the books that Huxley has read. [. . .]
For forty years his readers forgave Huxley for turning the novel-form into an intellectual hybrid - the teaching more and more overlaid the proper art of the story-teller. Having lost him, we now find nothing to forgive. No novels more stimulating, exciting, or genuinely enlightening came out of the post-Wellsian time. Huxley more than anyone helped to equip the contemporary novel with a brain.
If you say so, Anthony Burgess!
What I'm Reading Now
THE OUTSIDERS by S. E. Hinton. This was my sister's favorite book when we were in middle school, and it's fifty years old this year, so I decided to overcome my old animosity and give it a chance! Ponyboy Curtis is a gentle young tough from the wrong side of the tracks. His friends steal cars and cut up a lot but their love is pure, not like the gangs of rich kids who terrorize the working-class neighborhoods in their Mustangs. The rich kids are called Socs, which is short for "Socials," and which consequently I have no idea how to pronounce. Ponyboy has just met a nice rich girl who has informed him sternly that rich kids have problems too. What will these turn out to be? Will these sweet young men all get killed in a street fight? I hope not! It's ok so far. S. E. Hinton has a clean, simple writing style that is ready to bear the weight of any melodrama that develops.
I don't know how I feel about A Confederacy of Dunces. There's a commonplace that comedy ages worse than tragedy, but it probably depends. This is a comedy that has not aged well, but what does that mean? You can see some of the bits where the Literary Establishment would have rolled in the aisles back in 1981, most of them of the type "Ignatius tries to impose his deliberately anachronistic ideals on assorted Hot Topics of the Sixties," and these are mostly just dead in the water now. It's hard to say if they were "really" funny in 1981 or not - part of the problem is that the characters in the big Hot Topic set pieces - the black factory workers and the gay party stereotypes - are as flat and unreal, or almost as, on the page as they are in Ignatius' mind.
I like it when Mrs. Reilly is just talking to her neighbors - the observational humor about how people talk to each other holds up well for the most part. The (constant) gut troubles and masturbation bathos stuff I can't really speak to. I was never much of a fart joke fan. I know fart jokes are supposed to be universal, but they go right over my head - there's probably a joke in that.
What I Plan to Read Next
A Fox Under My Cloak for real this time!
The Island by Aldous Huxley. Let's be honest with ourselves for a second: the only reason I'm haunted by the feeling that I'm not being fair to Aldous Huxley is that I know he has fans whose taste I respect, not because I'm actually of two minds about the thing. It's not like Lawrence Durrell where I couldn't shake the compulsion to make fun of him but also couldn't help admiring the writing, and never knew how I felt about it from one page to the next. I don't admire a single thing about The Island and I'm too uninvested to make fun. At the same time it's obvious that my impatience with Huxley has taken on a life of its own. There's a mental barrier to my sympathetic understanding that is totally out of proportion to anything Huxley might have done to deserve it.
In short: The Island bored me half to death but I read it all. This is probably not Huxley's fault - but actually I'm just saying that because I can't justify my dislike: in my heart I think it's totally Huxley's fault.
Let's see what Anthony Burgess has to say!
As with so much of Huxley's later fiction, one is not sure whether or not to call this book a true novel. It is less concerned with telling a tale than with presenting an attitude to life, it is weak on characterization but strong on talk, crammed with ideas and uncompromisingly intellectual. Huxley shows us an imaginary tropical island where the good life can be cultivated for the simple reason that the limitations and potentialities of man are thoroughly understood [. . .] The people themselves are a sort of ideal Eurasian race, equipped with fine bodies and Huxleyan brains, and they have read all the books that Huxley has read. [. . .]
For forty years his readers forgave Huxley for turning the novel-form into an intellectual hybrid - the teaching more and more overlaid the proper art of the story-teller. Having lost him, we now find nothing to forgive. No novels more stimulating, exciting, or genuinely enlightening came out of the post-Wellsian time. Huxley more than anyone helped to equip the contemporary novel with a brain.
If you say so, Anthony Burgess!
What I'm Reading Now
THE OUTSIDERS by S. E. Hinton. This was my sister's favorite book when we were in middle school, and it's fifty years old this year, so I decided to overcome my old animosity and give it a chance! Ponyboy Curtis is a gentle young tough from the wrong side of the tracks. His friends steal cars and cut up a lot but their love is pure, not like the gangs of rich kids who terrorize the working-class neighborhoods in their Mustangs. The rich kids are called Socs, which is short for "Socials," and which consequently I have no idea how to pronounce. Ponyboy has just met a nice rich girl who has informed him sternly that rich kids have problems too. What will these turn out to be? Will these sweet young men all get killed in a street fight? I hope not! It's ok so far. S. E. Hinton has a clean, simple writing style that is ready to bear the weight of any melodrama that develops.
I don't know how I feel about A Confederacy of Dunces. There's a commonplace that comedy ages worse than tragedy, but it probably depends. This is a comedy that has not aged well, but what does that mean? You can see some of the bits where the Literary Establishment would have rolled in the aisles back in 1981, most of them of the type "Ignatius tries to impose his deliberately anachronistic ideals on assorted Hot Topics of the Sixties," and these are mostly just dead in the water now. It's hard to say if they were "really" funny in 1981 or not - part of the problem is that the characters in the big Hot Topic set pieces - the black factory workers and the gay party stereotypes - are as flat and unreal, or almost as, on the page as they are in Ignatius' mind.
I like it when Mrs. Reilly is just talking to her neighbors - the observational humor about how people talk to each other holds up well for the most part. The (constant) gut troubles and masturbation bathos stuff I can't really speak to. I was never much of a fart joke fan. I know fart jokes are supposed to be universal, but they go right over my head - there's probably a joke in that.
What I Plan to Read Next
A Fox Under My Cloak for real this time!