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Brave New World:
Aldous Huxley's Most Popular Classic Novel
by Aldous Huxley
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I recall very well the very day, a great deal of what happened that day - and a great deal did happen - when someone brought me thus book as a birthday gift; it was over several decades ago, on my birthday. The friend who'd brought it wasnt much of a reader, and had consulted the elder brother of a friend and neighbour who - the elder - was not only a reader but familiar with world literature and its trends, and i was told this book was avant-garde in literature. This was the beginning of seventies.
But at seventeen, I was still naive, and perhaps had read Austen, certainly a good deal of Indian literature in several languages, but not much more in avant-garde category in English. I found this difficult to get beyond the few pages, and can't recall exactly what, now when I read it this time.
Why did I pick it to read, can only be because it had always felt like defeat, not reading it through - like trying a new food, and giving up in first bite, even if everyone else appreciated it. I found it difficult this time too, until I was past all the modern stuff Huxley had imagined.
I even tried picking out, for review online, the edition I was given as a gift, mid March 1971, in India, probably a fresh edition, and all I recall of it, is that it was of a bright sunny colours - closest that come yo it are ones in cream, of what I've seen so far.
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It got easier, and patterns began to emerge, just as they can when one looks at a work of modern art long enough, sometimes.
What struck me at some point is that someone else who'd attempted predicting horrors of future had succeeded far more than Huxley had - George Orwell wrote books where horrors were simpler, as was technology that he foresaw, and much of it has come to pass unlike the scenario Huxley began his Brave New World with, where human breeding is left to factories using high technology and no human gestation.
But their visions, and attempts to warn about a future, arent that diverse, nor are the things they portray as future horrors. Both paint a future where humans are controlled by state and arent allowed, not only to think, but to feel. Huxley paints a horror where it's clear that isnt merely a totalitartan dictatorship or two that filled him with horror, but a West substituting consumerism and allowing no alternative, as well.
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Another reason Orwell was satisfactory to most, and hence more successful, must be that his resolutions were more acceptable. People accept love triumphant and liberating, and they accept a tragedy on the genocide lines, but love rejected by the lover because obtaining it - her - was too easy? Instead of a happy acceptance of a position, house, even possibly converting her, the violence of the lover that is medieval in its reaction? That probably clashed with those who were, in the first place, attracted to the glamour of the beginning of thus Huxley work, which later Ian Fleming in creating James Bond came close to - unless it wasnt fleming but the film producers who did that.
But whoever did it, even they didn't evolve a universal philosophy of the freedom, only asserted James Bond having the chutzpah if not a right to it, by his lifestyle of risking life for his nation. In today's scenario, that's jihadist - but they don't allow women even to wear sandals, and use "others" as slaves, bought and sold in markets they conduct for last two decades.
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I had reviewed it, years ago, when on Shelfari I began to write down all I could recall and think of about books I'd read over the decades since sixties, and found it liberating. Those reviews were largely absorbed into Goodreads, which isn't easy to check - there were close to a thousand, and Goodreads makes it extremely difficult if not impossible, to see even ones own books, much less reviews; Shelfari had made it easy.
Then, on Feb 05, 2016, I had written -
"Some writers were thought to be way ahead of their time and this one - this work - was one. But then no one could have predicted the speed of advance of the last century in various fields of science - most of all in computers and information technology - and the changing of world as a consequence."
True - computers, mobile phones, and more than anything, internet, have taken it beyond what was foreseen.
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"Near Shepherd's Bush two thousand Beta-Minus mixed doubles were playing Riemann-surface tennis."
"'No, the real problem is: How is it that I can't, or rather--because, after all, I know quite well why I can't--what would it be like if I could, if I were free--not enslaved by my conditioning.'
"'Don't you wish you were free, Lenina?'
"'I don't know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody's happy nowadays.'"
"'I thought we'd be more... more together here--with nothing but the sea and moon. More together than in that crowd, or even in my rooms. Don't you understand that?'"
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" ... It was the sort of idea that might easily de-condition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes--make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible. ... "
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"You can't make flivvers without steel--and you can't make tragedies without social instability."
" ... Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.' ... "
"' ... The optimum population,' said Mustapha Mond, 'is modelled on the iceberg--eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.' ... "
" ... It isn't only art that's incompatible with happiness; it's also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.'"
"'One would think he was going to have his throat cut,' said the Controller, as the door closed. 'Whereas, if he had the smallest sense, he'd understand that his punishment is really a reward. He's being sent to an island. That's to say, he's being sent to a place where he'll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world. All the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren't satisfied with orthodoxy, who've got independent ideas of their own. Every one, in a word, who's any one. I almost envy you, Mr. Watson.'"
" ... Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. ... "
"What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?'
"'Then you think there is no God?'
"'No, I think there quite probably is one.'"
"'How does he manifest himself now?' asked the Savage.
"'Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren't there at all.'
"'That's your fault.'
"'Call it the fault of civilization. God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe. They're smut. People would be shocked if...'"
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"'You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons--that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to believe in God.'"
"'But industrial civilization is only possible when there's no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning.'"
"'My dear young friend,' said Mustapha Mond, 'civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency."
"The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving any one too much. There's no such thing as a divided allegiance; you're so conditioned that you can't help doing what you ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really aren't any temptations to resist. And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears--that's what soma is.'"
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"From his carefully constructed hide in the wood three hundred metres away, Darwin Bonaparte, the Feely Corporation's most expert big-game photographer, had watched the whole proceedings. Patience and skill had been rewarded. He had spent three days sitting inside the bole of an artificial oak tree, three nights crawling on his belly through the heather, hiding microphones in gorse bushes, burying wires in the soft grey sand. Seventy-two hours of profound discomfort. But now the great moment had come--the greatest, Darwin Bonaparte had time to reflect, as he moved among his instruments, the greatest since his taking of the famous all-howling stereoscopic feely of the gorillas' wedding. 'Splendid,' he said to himself, as the Savage started his astonishing performance. 'Splendid!' He kept his telescopic cameras carefully aimed--glued to their moving objective; clapped on a higher power to get a close-up of the frantic and distorted face (admirable!); switched over, for half a minute, to slow motion (an exquisitely comical effect, he promised himself); listened in, meanwhile, to the blows, the groans, the wild and raving words that were being recorded on the sound-track at the edge of his film, tried the effect of a little amplification (yes, that was decidedly better); was delighted to hear, in a momentary lull, the shrill singing of a lark; wished the Savage would turn round so that he could get a good close-up of the blood on his back--and almost instantly (what astonishing luck!) the accommodating fellow did turn round, and he was able to take a perfect close-up."
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August 05, 2021 - August 21, 2021.
Kindle Edition
Published March 4th 2020
by Prabhat Prakashan
(first published 1932)
Original Title Brave New World
ISBN0060929871
(ISBN13: 9780060929879)
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