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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
All of Crome Yellow and the first 100 pages of Point Counter Point had their parallels. They both played out like Jackson Browne's "Somebody's Baby" with a bad ending. From that point on, Point Counter Point gets considerably more complicated. The reader is faced with the challenge of keeping several characters straight and they all seem to be introduced rapid fire. Generally, one can untangle the web of relations if he remains tuned in. What unfolds is a tapestry of clashing personalities of varying degrees of the passionate and reasoning type. However, one is never of wholly one or the other type.
"A man's a creature on a tightrope, walking delicately, equilibrated, with mind and consciousness and spirit at one end of his balancing pole and body and instinct and all that's unconscious and earthly and mysterious at the other. Balanced. Which is damnably difficult."
The contradictions resident within the human heart spill over into the relationships, and reciprocal amounts of pain and love are dealt to life's unfortunates and favorites.
The construction of the novel is very original and skillful, and this is reflected in the fact that though the course of events is difficult to follow it never loses appeal. It demands effort without becoming wearisome. How this was done easily eludes the sense of an amateur like myself, but I believe Huxley was great at combining humor, aesthetically pleasing passages, biting sarcasm among other human elements so that his reading never feels like it is too much of one thing which I felt was a tendency of his contemporary D.H. Lawrence.
"A man's a creature on a tightrope, walking delicately, equilibrated, with mind and consciousness and spirit at one end of his balancing pole and body and instinct and all that's unconscious and earthly and mysterious at the other. Balanced. Which is damnably difficult."
The contradictions resident within the human heart spill over into the relationships, and reciprocal amounts of pain and love are dealt to life's unfortunates and favorites.
The construction of the novel is very original and skillful, and this is reflected in the fact that though the course of events is difficult to follow it never loses appeal. It demands effort without becoming wearisome. How this was done easily eludes the sense of an amateur like myself, but I believe Huxley was great at combining humor, aesthetically pleasing passages, biting sarcasm among other human elements so that his reading never feels like it is too much of one thing which I felt was a tendency of his contemporary D.H. Lawrence.
I don’t want to discourage people from picking this book up… some chapters and ideas discussed were downright fascinating. But at a point, this book gets really repetitive. The characters are just vessels for Huxley to lay out every philosophical idea he’s ever had… an interesting idea, but it feels like a draft.
Enjoyed it from start to finish. The last few chapters hurt deeply, but that's how it goes sometimes.
It's like Plato's dialogues, but with a plot. Entertaining as a story as well as an exploration of philosophy and belief, this book deserves a place in any thinking person's library.
An incredibly wonderful book that captures the struggles between man's intellect and his emotions. The great argument between seeking non-human truths and human truths. A must read that will truly give a person great insight into his own workings as well as those around him. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is willing to take a look at himself and discover what it is that makes him tick.
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Typical of Aldous Huxley, "Point Counter Point" is a beautifully written novel which ranges from beautiful, subtly depicted scenes to intense internal dialogues to tragedy to joy. He focuses primarily on the interplay and tension between freedom and duty and the tug-of-war which these two forces play with each other. One cannot exist without the other. Things exist in terms of their opposite. The existence of evil necessitates the existence of good (since evil is the lack of goodness). The existence of a purely evil devil necessitates the existence of a purely good God. The complex web of stories and wide array of characters and intermingling experiences presents an interesting view of reality. Life is messy, and so are the stories behind these characters. We think we want freedom, but then we are scrambling to find some duty to tie ourselves to. Once we've found that duty, we are scrambling to escape to freedom. The book also presents an interesting look at the topic of beauty, such as in this quote: "Unadulterated, like distilled water. When truth is nothing but the truth, it's unnatural, it's an obstruction that resembles nothing in the real world. In nature there are always so many other irrelevant things mixed up with essential truth. That's why art moves you-- precisely because it's unadulterated with all the irrelevancies of real life. Real orgies are never so exciting as pornographic books."