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Summary: An amazing book
Review: Huxley portrays a perfect society, where everyone is healthy and happy. Disease is non-existant, war has ended, and everyone has plenty of free time, with nothing to worry about. This is an excellent book, and I highly recommend it.
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Summary: the good, the bad, the ugly
Review: This book disappointed me some in the middle and impressed me greatly at the end. Originally published in the 1930s, "Brave New World" can only be more relevant today. However, one does get tired of the "1984"/"Brave New World" faith in an all-wise authority able to crush so thoroughly human freedom. At the end of a 20th century which has seen much real life totalitarian government, we can witness that no man-made institution has proved as skillful as in Orwell's or Huxley's dysutopias. It is more like the totalitarian governments have been more sluggishly brutal and mindlessly inept! And even as one will find plenty of people in "consumer societies" ready to drug themselves senseless and to live only for pleasure, so you find plenty of people who still live for the beauty of the poets and according to the wisdom of the sages. I also suspect most people were not so much wiser or appreciative of beauty and philosophy in the 19th century and earlier. Huxley lady protests too much, methinks. Nevertheless, the part when John the Savage confronts the Controller is literature of the highest rank; and I look it as a powerful statement more to individuals than to societies. But all the test tubes and talcum powder and soma and banalities seemed to me artistically inferior to the stark brutality of Orwell's "1984." It is interesting to see how much Koestler's "Darkness at Noon" and "1984" and "Brave New World" and Bradbury's "Farenheit 451" feed on each other! But I wonder if we have not exhausted this genre?
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Summary: A characteristic manifestation of Huxley's intelligence.
Review: The wonderful thing about Huxley is that his supreme intelligence delights -- but never intimidates -- the reader. One is aware of being dominated , but pleasantly and ineluctably, in much the same way as one is overwhelmed by the playing of a virtuoso of the calibre of Jascha Heifetz or Glenn Gould. " Brave New World" is a characteristic product of Huxley's playful genius. One marvels at -- envies! -- his effortless resourcefulness and elegant prose. All these superlatives apply to any Huxley novel. But in BNW he achieved the virtually impossible feat of producing a work whose content exceeded the elegance of form that came naturally to him, thereby establishing his literary longevity. To echo one of my fellow electronic correspondents: Bravo Aldous! -- John L. Bell.
Rating:
Summary: Classic
Review: Huxley portrays a "perfect" society, where everyone is healthy and happy. Disease is non-existent, war has ended, and everyone has plenty of free time. Everyone knows there place in society. The "perfect" society has paid the price for stability by getting rid of things like religion, art, and love. Excellent book, not nearly as predictable or linear as I had expected.
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Summary: Much better than the movie
Review: For those of you who saw the NBC version of this, the book is much better! While the movie had that sappy ending, the book cuts no punches. I'm 15, and I think I grasped this book pretty well, so anybody, and everybody can, and should read this book! Very good!
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Summary: What Everyone forgets...
Review: This is a book which was written in the 1930's and had dramatic insight to the hippie revolution and even now with the genetic copying of species like Molly the sheep. Even though experimenting with halucinatory drugs in his life, Huxley was still a genius and visionary. He should deserve the utmost respect.
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Summary: Interesting insight into the truth of life
Review: this book was a bit slow starting out...but i think that was a good technique to show the lack of life in Society...then, in the scene when Lenina seduces John, the book really came alive...life, Life, LIFE!!! It was like society was a recipe ade without salt....and then John had the "salt" and while it was not always a good thing, it added flavor...the shadow that defined that on which the sun shone...then, when i put the book down i had the creepiest feeling that i was not safe....worse than Faulkner or a horror-movie...Brave New World is awesome
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Summary: The most frightful prediction of the future ever written.
Review: Most people have never heard of this book. A book which, in my opinion, is better then Orwell's 1984. Brave New World is an illustration of Huxley's prediction of the world after Henry Ford makes it possible for mass-production of the automobile. The world, as Huxley preceives it, is run by Ford and the Controllers. Humans are born in test tubes, Promiscuity is encouraged and Soma ( evidently prozac) is taken regularly. Huxley's future is a future where the word "Ford" replaces God and Lord...where the words "Mother" and "Father" are considered dirty and inapproriate. All together his portrayl is terrifying, his descripitions of events: horrifying, and his new invented concept of "Everyone belong[ing] to everyone else" (Huxley), is outrageous.
Recently; however, NBC has turned this wonderous classic into a sorrid love story of chaotic endings. Those of you who have seen this movie and now think that that is what Brave New World is really about, I urge you to think again. Read the book. Close your eyes and imagine. Step in to A BRAVE NEW WORLD.
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Summary: He didn't look into the future he projected his present
Review: The Key to understanding the meaning of this book are found within Aldous' eyes. To know his life and the history of his period, that is, the substance of his projection, the associations are clear. What experience,-what fuel, kindled his vision? This question is key. And realizing this, one is not as tempted to grade Huxley's prophetic accuracy. An awareness of how people conversed during his period is also helpful in reading some drawn out dialouge. What may seem boring to the young reader today, was rather brazen in his day. Respecting these differences is key to the analysis of intent. Also, any knowlege of his other works will also allow a better grip on his psyche. Point Counter Point and The Doors Of Perception are a couple. I was assigned this book in high school and have since read it a few times. I found a biography at a yardsale that's from 1973. It was written by Sybille Bedford. What a life ole Aldous had. This provides great insights into his perception, his times, and his visions.
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Summary: Not as straightforward as I remembered
Review: Having read this book for a high school English class about 10 years ago, I recently stumbled across it and decided to read it again. What struck me this time around was that Huxley's vision of "Utopia" was not as purely evil as it is often portrayed, but only excessive in its manipulation of every aspect of its citizenry's existence. Nor is the Reservation that John was raised on some sort of idyllic throwback to a happier time in human history, for it was just as unforgiving of difference, of variation from the norm, of free thought, as the "civilized" London. This time, I read the novel as an appeal towards finding a medium between these two extremes. That's what John set out to do at the end, to find a way of life that he felt that he had earned and that he deserved through patience and struggle, and not handed to him because he was decanted as a certain category or denied him because he physically differed from those around him. Huxley's greatest prophesy was the way the Savage's struggle was turned into entertainment for the masses. Our own culture seems to have become just like the one in the book, where if it isn't recorded and broadcast to the masses, it doesn't count. A world where every intimate detail of the private life of an individual is deemed the property of all, valid to commented upon and ridiculed, subverted and manipulated to fit the agenda of anyone who so chooses to use it.
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