Gin Rickey's Reviews > Brave New World

When I was starting to think about reviewing this book, I was happy to find that my edition (Harper) had some fun peripheral information-- bio, discussion questions, history of publication-- and the reviews included from the time the book was published best summed up my thoughts on the writing. "This squib about the future is a thin little joke, epitomised in the undergraduate jest of civilization dated A.F., and a people who refer reverently to 'our Ford'-- not a bad little joke, and what it lacks in richness Mr. Huxley tries to make up by repetition; but we want rather more to a prophecy than Mr. Huxley gives us.... The fact is that Mr. Huxley does not really care for the story-- the idea alone excites him," wrote the reviewer for the New Statesman. The writing falls flat, many scenes are overwritten or underwritten which distances the reader, and the narrative often isn't compelling. However, Huxley's audience probably doesn't remember him much for his narrative.

As for Huxley's forecast, perhaps the most interesting and reflective point in a modern assessment is the presentation of failure of engaging with society resulting in violent misogyny and block-headed machismo. The Savage, John, though informally classically educated repeatedly poisons his own ethos with absurd defenses of austerity and violent paroxysms in which he tends to beat innocent women and children-- simply because they are women that don't live by his narrative. Or perhaps because they are the defenseless members of this civilization.

Huxley impresses me most with his ability to write a novel with apparently no heroes, but I suppose this depends on the reader's perception. Everyone's pettiness, minor beliefs, and prejudices, magnify and explode on the page in a utopian society raised without dire conflict. Perhaps not too unlike many average middle class citizens in West today?

My last point of discord with the book is that I suspect Huxley's mistake as a forecaster is that the populous will be pacified by soothing words and anesthesia, since really existing societies seem to be controlled by vapid, hateful ideologies and pitting one against all and all against one-- more akin to Orwell's suspicions.