Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by wordmaster
Ape and Essence by Aldous Huxley
4.0
Somewhat akin to tying Pope's "Essay on Man" to a short stick and being whapped upside the head with it, this is admittedly heavy-handed but it rubbed me the right way. I love an allegory and I'm a sucker for explorations of Reason vs. Instinct, the inner war between Impulse and Civilization, and so on. Reflecting on the time it was written (shortly after World War II, the bombing of Hiroshima, and the assassination of Ghandi) the question on Huxley's mind must have been: is all this worth it? Is civilization really going anywhere or are we all doomed to fall prey to our base animal nature?
4 stars out of 5. Some very promising early writing (seriously, just the first fifteen pages are higher-quality prose than I've read in a while) but the format of a film script felt gimmicky, almost like an excuse to not develop a more sophisticated book.
4 stars out of 5. Some very promising early writing (seriously, just the first fifteen pages are higher-quality prose than I've read in a while) but the format of a film script felt gimmicky, almost like an excuse to not develop a more sophisticated book.