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A review by jonfaith
Ape and Essence by Aldous Huxley
4.0
Cruelty and compassion come with the chromosomes
I've elected to storm into the ranks of Huxley, like a Korean antihero in a Vengeance film. This is a peculiar fruit. There was much from which I recoiled. I feel at moments that History had made the novel look foolish and impotent.
The reasons to dislike this were Legion
The novel's thrust is a rejected screenplay
The narrative then is couched
in satirical and cinematic terms
speaking of a future
a world devastated by nuclear exchange
Kiwis having no strategic importance
Set out to trawl the ruins
Sub-Saharan Africa as well
Though Huxley leaves us with but
an ill humored parenthesis
Back to the New Zealanders
Broaching the California shores
100 years after the mushroom clouds
He finds a strange tribal society
One worshiping the Diabolical
For what else could govern their
Haphazard hungry lives?
Sex is outlawed except for
yearly festival of frenzy
the mutated offspring are
sacrificed for their inherent
Misdeed
There is a classic information dump
The devil obviously arrived
in the Scientific Method
Without a humanizing temper
Radioactive fallout was Destiny
It is this final exchange of ideas which redeems the novel, so similar to Brave New World --though here we substitute Shelley for Shakespeare. There is an annoying glibness to this but it appears more a farce than anything meaningful or resonant, whereas the Orgy-Porgy scenes in Brave New World will haunt me forever. There wasn't a corresponding moment in Ape and Essence of the timeless. Parody, just parody.
I've elected to storm into the ranks of Huxley, like a Korean antihero in a Vengeance film. This is a peculiar fruit. There was much from which I recoiled. I feel at moments that History had made the novel look foolish and impotent.
The reasons to dislike this were Legion
The novel's thrust is a rejected screenplay
The narrative then is couched
in satirical and cinematic terms
speaking of a future
a world devastated by nuclear exchange
Kiwis having no strategic importance
Set out to trawl the ruins
Sub-Saharan Africa as well
Though Huxley leaves us with but
an ill humored parenthesis
Back to the New Zealanders
Broaching the California shores
100 years after the mushroom clouds
He finds a strange tribal society
One worshiping the Diabolical
For what else could govern their
Haphazard hungry lives?
Sex is outlawed except for
yearly festival of frenzy
the mutated offspring are
sacrificed for their inherent
Misdeed
There is a classic information dump
The devil obviously arrived
in the Scientific Method
Without a humanizing temper
Radioactive fallout was Destiny
It is this final exchange of ideas which redeems the novel, so similar to Brave New World --though here we substitute Shelley for Shakespeare. There is an annoying glibness to this but it appears more a farce than anything meaningful or resonant, whereas the Orgy-Porgy scenes in Brave New World will haunt me forever. There wasn't a corresponding moment in Ape and Essence of the timeless. Parody, just parody.