Huxley was connected to many of the leading literary figures of his time. These artists influenced his work and thinking, especially D. H. Lawrence, who was a great friend and mentor. Nonetheless, Huxley was able to carve a niche for himself in speculative fiction in the form of science fiction, drawing on the traditions of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne and influencing later science fiction novelists like George Orwell and even more recently David Mitchell.
Satirical Science Fiction Brave New World is certainly Huxley’s most famous novel. It has been in print ever since its publication, is taught widely, and remains a point of reference for political scientists, editorialists, newscasters, and freelance pundits. The book has many passages of intellectual interest; however, its enduring success is probably best explained by Huxley’s mastery of the form. Economical in structure and sure-handed in its treatment of scene and character, the novel is moralistic without being essayistic. Perhaps only George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) rivals Brave New World in rendering as a story for millions of readers the enduring perplexities of technology, social development, and political enfranchisement.
Influence Huxley was connected to many of the leading literary figures of his time. These artists influenced his work and thinking, especially D. H. Lawrence, who was a great friend and mentor. In Brave New World, Huxley produced an enduring novel in the science fiction genre, and one of the most brilliant satires in English literature. Although other intellectuals before Huxley—H. G. Wells, E. M. Forster, Yevgeny Zamyatin, and Karel Capek—had experimented with science fiction romances as a method of social criticism, Huxley’s novel remains a seminal work and a remarkable achievement, which influenced many later writers from George Orwell to Robert Silverberg.
Works in Critical Context
Although Huxley wanted to be remembered as a social novelist and essayist, he was aware that his extraordinary emotional detachment limited his ability to create sympathetic characters. In addition to noting his limitations as a fiction writer, many critics who admired his satire deplored his rejection of rationalism and his long devotion to the cause of mysticism. Yet Huxley’s later work testifies to the seriousness of his religious quest. However, Huxley will probably owe his enduring reputation not to the writing describing his spiritual search but to his efforts as a satirist, and ultimately, perhaps, to the brilliant, imaginative satire in Brave New World.
Brave New World The numerous concepts suggested by Brave New World have made the novel a study centerpiece for social scientists, teachers, and technology mavens, and a favorite among readers for several generations.
While critic Edward Cushing found Huxley’s narrative technique of average strength, he did admire the author’s intent and the novel’s moral. Cushing wrote in the Saturday Review of Literature that ‘‘Mr. Huxley is eloquent in his declaration of an artist’s faith in man, and it is his eloquence, bitter in attack, noble in defense, that, when one has closed his book, one remembers.’’ New York Times Book Review contributor John Chamberlain found Huxley’s novel a humorous attack on progressive global thought. In his review he contended that Brave New World satirizes ‘‘the imminent spiritual trustification of mankind, and has made rowdy and impertinent sport of the World State whose motto shall be Community, Identity, Stability.’’
Brave New World Revisited In 1958, twenty-six years after the appearance of Brave New World, Huxley published Brave New World Revisited, a book that examines Western life in the prosperous era following World War II. Contending that the society depicted in Brave New World will eventually come to be, Huxley calls for the human race to take note of, and reverse, its course. Brave New World Revisited received a substantial amount of attention upon its publication, partly due to the book’s relation to Huxley’s most famous novel. Many critics, however, felt that the book was an important work in its own right, one that related significant detail on modern society. ‘‘Brave New World Revisited is of the utmost importance for the knowledge of growing psychic pressures in a world in transition,’’ appraised New York Times Book Review contributor Joost A. M. Meerloos. While viewing the book as a departure from Huxley’s fiction, Saturday Review critic Granville Hicks commented that ‘‘if we have lost something in the way of entertainment, what we have gained is more important.’’ Commenting on the author’s talent for presenting invigorating arguments, Christopher Sykes wrote in the Spectator that ‘‘Mr. Huxley’s writing remains as compelling and as brilliant as ever.’’ Huxley also used Brave New World Revisited to clarify the intentions of his 1932 novel. Whereas critics such as the New York Times Book Review’s Chamberlain saw Brave New World as a satirical take on complacency and conformity, the book’s author clearly felt otherwise. As Huxley states in Brave New World Revisited: ‘‘Any culture which, in the interests of efficiency or in the name of some political or religious dogma, seeks to standardize the human individual, commits an outrage against man’s biological nature.’’
Responses to Literature
1. Using the Internet and the library, research some of the controversies involved in the debate over whether cloning should be legal. In a short essay, reflect on these issues as they relate to Brave New World. Consider, for example, whether you think cloning is a step toward the dystopia described in the novel.
2. Read Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet and compare it in tone, content, and message to After Many a Summer Dies the Swan. Both Gibran and Huxley have been described as mystics or as being highly concerned with mysticism. Based on these readings, try to analyze what it means to be a ‘‘mystic’’—is it a philosophy, a way of reasoning, or a state of mind?
3. Read Doors of Perception. Given what is now known about the harmful effects of the drugs Huxley took in order to write this text, how do you think this text would be received if it were written today?
4. Read both Brave New World and Jonathan Swift’s ‘‘A Modest Proposal.’’ In some way, each of these texts is a work of satire. In a short essay, compare the tones of these texts.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Books
Bedford, Sybille. Aldous Huxley: A Biography. New York:
Carroll & Graf, 1973. Birnbaum, Milton. Aldous Huxley’s Quest for Values.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971. Brander, Laurence. Aldous Huxley: A Critical Study.
Cranbury, N. J.: Bucknell University Press, 1970. Carlson, Jerry W. ‘‘Aldous Huxley.’’ Concise Dictionary
Of British Literary Biography, Volume 6: Modern
Writers, 1914–1945. Detroit, Mich.: Gale, 1991. Dasgupta, Sanjukta. The Novels of Huxley and
Hemingway: A Study in Two Planes of Reality. New
Delhi, India: Prestige, 1996. Deery, Jane. Aldous Huxley and the Mysticism of Science.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Firchow, Peter. Aldous Huxley: A Satirist and Novelist.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972. Greenblatt, Stephen J. Three Modern Satirists: Waugh,
Orwell, and Huxley. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1965. Izzo, David Garrett. Aldous Huxley and W. H. Auden: On
Language. West Cornwall, Conn.: Locust Hill Press, 1998.
Kuehn, Robert E., ed. Aldous Huxley: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974.
Periodicals
Meerloos, Joost A. M. ‘‘How Will Man Behave?’’ New York Times Book Review (November 16, 1958).
Sykes, Christopher. ‘‘Teacher without Faith.’’ Spectator (February 20, 1959).
Aldous Huxley
Home
Download
