Rolla Public Library's Online Book Club discussion

Here's hoping we can discuss this classic in person April 25 at the library! Until then, please share your thoughts here.

Have you read this before? For school, or on your own? Are you thinking of rereading it this month?

I will tell you, it's a dystopia, but very far removed from what we're experiencing with covid 19 that it counts as an Escape read. It is avl. in audio and ebook.

I did read it just last year and so won't again unless discussion (here or irl) happens. My review:

Neat ideas here. And some clever writing, in bits. But it seems more of a polemic than a story, and I think maybe the reason it's a classic is mainly because so many ideas do ring true. Still, I wasn't satisfied, and wish it were more thought out, with more developed characters and plot.

After I read the story itself I read the supplementary info. in 'The Everyman's Library' edition. And the intro. there clarifies my thinking a lot. For example, it mentions "Huxley's jackdaw mind.' Ayup. Lots of stuff to think about, stuff which doesn't actually necessarily go together but is shiny and gaudy. And in case the reader has been avoiding thinking and is only reading for the adventure, there's the big discussion between Savage and MM near the end... a bad case of telling rather than showing. Another flaw, imo, is the claim that everyone is happy, while at the same time everyone is taking soma regularly... the Epsilons are conditioned to love being Epsilons, MM says that they are happy, yet they get a daily ration of, what, 4 grammes of soma!

The intro. (by John Sutherland) also reveals that Huxley wrote this in just one year. Of course, he may have been stewing over it for longer, but still, that explains why I feel less craftsmanship and care. And most of the science and satire here are quite contemporary, as revealed by the included timeline. Of note in the timeline is the fact that in the year that this was published, 3 million people in Britain were unemployed. (And by people they probably mean men, so it would be 3M families without a breadwinner. That's out of a population of 46.3M.)

This edition also includes Huxley's intro. to the 1946 edition in which he scolds himself for not mentioning nuclear fission, which he admits he did know about and discuss w/ others. Then he consoles himself by stating, "The theme... is not the advancement of science as such; it is the advancement of science as it affects human individuals."

Also of note in Huxley's intro. is something Literary about lunacy vs. insanity and whether sanity is possible and was anybody in the book truly sane or insane. I didn't fully understand all that.

Chrome Yellow is the only other (adult) work by Huxley that I (tried to) read. At first it seems very different, but it turns out that the theme of poking fun at the consequences of the British class system, even as their Empire was fading, is in many ways similar to this one.

Btw, the racist and sexist attitudes in this are to be read purely in context. I do believe that Huxley thought that he was showing respect to women, 'negroes,' and most especially American Indians, compared to attitudes of other people in his milieu in his time. It's complicated.

So, what predictions came true? Hypnopedia probably wouldn't work. Conditioning of some sort could, but I believe the maternal drive (among mothers) to be too strong for creches (though 'decanting bottles' of some kind do have some appeal). Video games are a fairly effective 'soma'... and when we look around and see the effects of what's been called an 'opioid crisis' we know that a soma is desired.

Poor Lenina. Poor (George) Bernard (Shaw) (Karl) Marx.

3.5 rounded up because, flawed as it is, it is still worth reading, still relevant, still readable.