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I love, love, love this book. I've spent more time badgering friends to read it than any other book I've ever loved. It's rather long, and there's no protagonist, and nothing resembling a traditional plot (except for the last 50 pages or so, which is certainly no accident...). But it's mind-blowingly good! A brilliantly self-referential study of a network of characters, their interiority and relationships with one another, as "deep," so to speak, as its contemporary To The Lighthouse, but much "broader." So amazingly perceptive and quotable and gorgeously-written. I could re-read this book every year for the rest of my life and I don't think I'd ever get sick of it.
"'It can't be too queer,' said Philip. 'However queer the picture is, it can never be half so odd as the original reality. We take it all for granted; but the moment you start thinking, it becomes queer. And the more you think, the queerer it grows. That's what I want to get at in this book--the astonishingness of the most obvious things. Really, any situation would do. Because everything's implicit in anything. The whole book could be written about a walk from Piccadilly Circus to Charing Cross. Or you and me sitting here on an enormous ship in the Red Sea. Really, nothing could be queerer than that. When you reflect on the evolutionary processes, the human patience and genius, the social organization that have made it possible for us to be here, with strokers having heat apoplexy for our benefit, and steam turbines doing five thousand revolutions a minute, and the sea being blue, and the rays of light not flowing round obstacles, so that there's a shadow, and the sun all the time providing us with energy to live and think--when you think of all this and a million other things, you must see that nothing could be queer enough to do justice to the facts.''All the same,' said Elinor after a long silence, 'I wish one day you'd write a simple straightforward story about a young man and a young woman who fall in love and get married and have difficulties, but get over them, and finally settle down.'"
Rather confusing book with an also rather weird ending, but with some excellent thoughts on life, self, death, music, ....
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
"He had loved, not Susan, but the mental image of Susan and the idea of love ... His ardours for this phantom, and the love of love, the passion for passion which he had managed to squeeze out of his inner consciousness, conquered Susan, who imagined that they had some connection with herself."
"'That's what I want to get in this book--the astonishingess of the most obvious things. Really, any plot or situation would do. ... you and I sitting here on an enormous ship in the Red Sea. Really, nothing could be queerer than that. When you reflect on the evolutionary processes, the human patience and genius, the social organization that have made it possible for us to be here, with stokers having heat apoplexy for our benefit, and steam turbines doing five thousand revolutions a minute, and the sea being blue, and the rays of light not flowing round obstacles, so that there's a shadow, and the sun all the time providing us with energy to live and think--when you think of all this and a million other things, you must see that nothing could well be queerer and that no picture can be queer enough to do justice to the facts.'"
"It's incomparably easier to know a lot, say, about the history of art and to have profound ideas about metaphysics and sociology than to know personally and intuitively a lot about one's fellows and to have satisfactory relations with one's friends and lovers, one's wife and children. Living's much more difficult than Sanskrit or chemistry or economics."
"'In the abstract you know that music exists and is beautiful. But don't therefore pretend, when you hear Mozart, to go into raptures which you don't feel. ... Unable to distinguish Bach from Wagner, but mooing with ecstasy as soon as the fiddles strike up. It's exactly the same with God. The world's full of ridiculous God-snobs. People who aren't really alive, who've never done any vital act, who aren't in any living relation with anything; people who haven't the slightest personal or practical knowledge of what God is. But they moo away in churches, they coo over their prayers, they pervert and destroy their whole dismal existences by acting in accordance with the will of an arbitrarily imagined abstraction which they choose to call God.'"
Ouch.
"'That's what I want to get in this book--the astonishingess of the most obvious things. Really, any plot or situation would do. ... you and I sitting here on an enormous ship in the Red Sea. Really, nothing could be queerer than that. When you reflect on the evolutionary processes, the human patience and genius, the social organization that have made it possible for us to be here, with stokers having heat apoplexy for our benefit, and steam turbines doing five thousand revolutions a minute, and the sea being blue, and the rays of light not flowing round obstacles, so that there's a shadow, and the sun all the time providing us with energy to live and think--when you think of all this and a million other things, you must see that nothing could well be queerer and that no picture can be queer enough to do justice to the facts.'"
"It's incomparably easier to know a lot, say, about the history of art and to have profound ideas about metaphysics and sociology than to know personally and intuitively a lot about one's fellows and to have satisfactory relations with one's friends and lovers, one's wife and children. Living's much more difficult than Sanskrit or chemistry or economics."
"'In the abstract you know that music exists and is beautiful. But don't therefore pretend, when you hear Mozart, to go into raptures which you don't feel. ... Unable to distinguish Bach from Wagner, but mooing with ecstasy as soon as the fiddles strike up. It's exactly the same with God. The world's full of ridiculous God-snobs. People who aren't really alive, who've never done any vital act, who aren't in any living relation with anything; people who haven't the slightest personal or practical knowledge of what God is. But they moo away in churches, they coo over their prayers, they pervert and destroy their whole dismal existences by acting in accordance with the will of an arbitrarily imagined abstraction which they choose to call God.'"
Ouch.
Originally published on my blog here in November 1999.
Point Counter Point is about contrasts (hence the title) as well as Huxley's perennial themes of dehumanisation and futility in the modern world. It is full of mismatched couples, people committed to psychological and political opposites. It is one of Huxley's longest novels, and is full of philosophical argument.
There is no single central character. Rather, it is about a dozen or so equally important people, vaguely connected through mutual acquaintance. They are mainly English upper class, though popular politics is an important part of the novel. It is set in the thirties, possibly the heyday of extremism in British politics, and includes both Fascist and Communist characters.
The plot is virtually non-existent; this is a novel of ideas, of characters. The events that happen - deaths, affairs, separations - are there to parade a series of people before the reader, to show us their differences. It is superbly written, and rather more subtle than (say) Brave New World. The philosophical discussions, mainly revolving round the question of whether human beings are purely mechanistic of whether there is more to life than that, have dated somewhat, but are at the core of the contrasts which are the heart of the novel.
Point Counter Point is about contrasts (hence the title) as well as Huxley's perennial themes of dehumanisation and futility in the modern world. It is full of mismatched couples, people committed to psychological and political opposites. It is one of Huxley's longest novels, and is full of philosophical argument.
There is no single central character. Rather, it is about a dozen or so equally important people, vaguely connected through mutual acquaintance. They are mainly English upper class, though popular politics is an important part of the novel. It is set in the thirties, possibly the heyday of extremism in British politics, and includes both Fascist and Communist characters.
The plot is virtually non-existent; this is a novel of ideas, of characters. The events that happen - deaths, affairs, separations - are there to parade a series of people before the reader, to show us their differences. It is superbly written, and rather more subtle than (say) Brave New World. The philosophical discussions, mainly revolving round the question of whether human beings are purely mechanistic of whether there is more to life than that, have dated somewhat, but are at the core of the contrasts which are the heart of the novel.
I give this book two stars but not because I consider it mediocre. It's just an average of two extremes: some moments superb and some moments catastrophically bad. Particularly if you're a feminist, or have any investment in a non-rapey world.
THE GOOD:
Huxley pays attention to class. A person's position of power or disenfranchisement is shown as the foundation for the most intimate of thoughts (you can only believe certain things when you have a guaranteed weekly income). It is latent in any physical object (a house is described not just architecturally but historically, through political economy: meaning you trace the rounds of theft and disenfranchisement behind the splendour of the rich). I began the book with excitement, thinking somebody had combined the delicate social psychology of Henry James -- which bathes a reader’s brain in the jubilation of being a social primate, capable of reading thoughts into actions and faces that in turn can read your own -- somebody had joined this with a subject matter that actually mattered. James is all the petty interplay of the frivolously rich; Huxley promises to delve straight to all the big questions.
Most of the action of the novel is gathering to talk (until the very end, where Huxley throws in several astonishing events). Sometimes the conversations are marvellous, like the rousing argument between a right-wing paramilitary leader and an upper-class scientist about phosphorus.
THE BAD: At other times it's all impossible to believe. In an actual life, when very intelligent people get together, no one ever is allowed to monologue for an entire chapter, with only occasional three-word questions here and there to keep the good lecturer going. It feels too obvious that Huxley had written an essay and wanted to push it in there somewhere. As Huxley himself writes in the book: "people who can reel off neatly formulated notions aren’t quite real; they’re slightly monstrous. Living with monsters becomes rather tiresome in the long run." So does reading about them.
And of course you'll get uneasy about the gimmick of a novelist writing a novel about a novelist writing a novel about a novelist writing a novel . . . "And so on to infinity, like those advertisements of Quaker Oats where there's a Quaker holding a box of oats, on which is a picture of another Quaker holding another box of oats, on which etc., etc." Very cool idea . . . for an oat package.
THE TERRIBLE: RAPEY! ALERT!
I mentioned Henry James earlier, who could do one thing Huxley can't: write of a woman who thinks. In PCP, women can be funny, shrewd, wicked or good, but they cannot be thinkers.
There’s more, and there’s worse: Rape is real, and a legitimate subject for literature. A crucial subject for literature, even. But while I live in the world with soaring sexual abuse rates, I’m not about to have any patience with an author -- particularly a male author -- who presents rape as a great way to win your girl.
It's all throughout the book, but the real rapey-charmer is the paramilitary strike-breaker, Webley, who writes this gem of a letter to the lady he fancies:
I warn you: one of these days I’ll try the good old methods. I’ll do a slight Rape of the Sabines and then where will your ineffable, remote superiority be? How I hate you really for compelling me to love you so much! It’s such a damnable injustice -- getting so much passion and longing out of me and giving nothing in return. And you not here to receive the punishment you deserve! I have to take a vicarious revenge on the ruffians who disturb my meetings [. . . at which point he describes beating up some commies . . .] it was really you I was fighting. If it hadn’t been for you I wouldn’t have been half so savage. [. . .] The next fight will be against the real enemy -- against you. So be careful, my dear. I’ll try to stop short of black eyes; but in the heat of the moment one never knows.
Whew, what a charmer! So MANLY! Nothing says I love you like a “slight rape” threat!
The female characters appear to be into this bruise-your-face 'uncontrollable passion.' It feels like I'm reading an Ayn Rand novel.
When rape isn't happening or being threatened, misogyny can be more versatile. Philip, the character stand-in for Huxley himself, gets irritated that a woman he thinks is hot wants to actually talk to him. He thinks: "A woman who uses the shapeliness of her breasts to compel you to admire her mind -- [. . .] trying in private life, very trying indeed." You heard right -- she's just using her boobs to make a man listen to her ideas. Very bad manners.
When he pushes for sex, and she is clear she doesn't want his "pouncing and clawing," Philip leaves her with this lecture: "if you were really and consistently civilized, you'd take steps to make yourself less desirable. Desirability's barbarous. It's as savage as pouncing and clawing. You ought to look like George Eliot. Good-bye."
She sexually assaulted me first . . . by not making herself ugly enough for me to not want sex.
If Huxley had been interested in doing some of the same insightful analysis of gender that he does with class, this could be one of the best books, even if it couldn't escape the inevitable problems of a "novel of ideas." But he fails spectacularly.
THE GOOD:
Huxley pays attention to class. A person's position of power or disenfranchisement is shown as the foundation for the most intimate of thoughts (you can only believe certain things when you have a guaranteed weekly income). It is latent in any physical object (a house is described not just architecturally but historically, through political economy: meaning you trace the rounds of theft and disenfranchisement behind the splendour of the rich). I began the book with excitement, thinking somebody had combined the delicate social psychology of Henry James -- which bathes a reader’s brain in the jubilation of being a social primate, capable of reading thoughts into actions and faces that in turn can read your own -- somebody had joined this with a subject matter that actually mattered. James is all the petty interplay of the frivolously rich; Huxley promises to delve straight to all the big questions.
Most of the action of the novel is gathering to talk (until the very end, where Huxley throws in several astonishing events). Sometimes the conversations are marvellous, like the rousing argument between a right-wing paramilitary leader and an upper-class scientist about phosphorus.
THE BAD: At other times it's all impossible to believe. In an actual life, when very intelligent people get together, no one ever is allowed to monologue for an entire chapter, with only occasional three-word questions here and there to keep the good lecturer going. It feels too obvious that Huxley had written an essay and wanted to push it in there somewhere. As Huxley himself writes in the book: "people who can reel off neatly formulated notions aren’t quite real; they’re slightly monstrous. Living with monsters becomes rather tiresome in the long run." So does reading about them.
And of course you'll get uneasy about the gimmick of a novelist writing a novel about a novelist writing a novel about a novelist writing a novel . . . "And so on to infinity, like those advertisements of Quaker Oats where there's a Quaker holding a box of oats, on which is a picture of another Quaker holding another box of oats, on which etc., etc." Very cool idea . . . for an oat package.
THE TERRIBLE: RAPEY! ALERT!
I mentioned Henry James earlier, who could do one thing Huxley can't: write of a woman who thinks. In PCP, women can be funny, shrewd, wicked or good, but they cannot be thinkers.
There’s more, and there’s worse: Rape is real, and a legitimate subject for literature. A crucial subject for literature, even. But while I live in the world with soaring sexual abuse rates, I’m not about to have any patience with an author -- particularly a male author -- who presents rape as a great way to win your girl.
It's all throughout the book, but the real rapey-charmer is the paramilitary strike-breaker, Webley, who writes this gem of a letter to the lady he fancies:
I warn you: one of these days I’ll try the good old methods. I’ll do a slight Rape of the Sabines and then where will your ineffable, remote superiority be? How I hate you really for compelling me to love you so much! It’s such a damnable injustice -- getting so much passion and longing out of me and giving nothing in return. And you not here to receive the punishment you deserve! I have to take a vicarious revenge on the ruffians who disturb my meetings [. . . at which point he describes beating up some commies . . .] it was really you I was fighting. If it hadn’t been for you I wouldn’t have been half so savage. [. . .] The next fight will be against the real enemy -- against you. So be careful, my dear. I’ll try to stop short of black eyes; but in the heat of the moment one never knows.
Whew, what a charmer! So MANLY! Nothing says I love you like a “slight rape” threat!
The female characters appear to be into this bruise-your-face 'uncontrollable passion.' It feels like I'm reading an Ayn Rand novel.
When rape isn't happening or being threatened, misogyny can be more versatile. Philip, the character stand-in for Huxley himself, gets irritated that a woman he thinks is hot wants to actually talk to him. He thinks: "A woman who uses the shapeliness of her breasts to compel you to admire her mind -- [. . .] trying in private life, very trying indeed." You heard right -- she's just using her boobs to make a man listen to her ideas. Very bad manners.
When he pushes for sex, and she is clear she doesn't want his "pouncing and clawing," Philip leaves her with this lecture: "if you were really and consistently civilized, you'd take steps to make yourself less desirable. Desirability's barbarous. It's as savage as pouncing and clawing. You ought to look like George Eliot. Good-bye."
She sexually assaulted me first . . . by not making herself ugly enough for me to not want sex.
If Huxley had been interested in doing some of the same insightful analysis of gender that he does with class, this could be one of the best books, even if it couldn't escape the inevitable problems of a "novel of ideas." But he fails spectacularly.
It questions the novelty of much contemporary social criticism if not the distinction of contemporary society itself.
At the beginning I didn't have much time for reading the book, so it was hard to keep up with the large number of characters Huxley introduces in the novel. When I was able to understand who was who, I started enjoying the reading. The reflections made by the characters (about politics, love, philosophy and life in general) are fascinating, and the story, and it´s surprising ending, is really good.