Antic Hay

Rating:
Summary: Aimless lives, aimless story
Review: As a huge fan of "Brave New World," I picked up "Antic Hay" anticipating the same depth of social commentary. I was sadly disappointed. Huxley does present an occasionally mildly entertaining picture of post-WW2, upper-middle-class life in London, much like Fitzgerald did for New York in "The Great Gatsby," but the meandering, pointless lives of the characters produced a meandering, pointless novel. In this regard, I was also reminded of "Catcher in the Rye," another novel whose place on the dais of great literature is undeserved. Altogether an unsatisfying read.

Rating:
Summary: Aimless lives, aimless story
Review: As a huge fan of "Brave New World," I picked up "Antic Hay" anticipating the same depth of social commentary. I was sadly disappointed. Huxley does present an occasionally mildly entertaining picture of post-WW2, upper-middle-class life in London, much like Fitzgerald did for New York in "The Great Gatsby," but the meandering, pointless lives of the characters produced a meandering, pointless novel. In this regard, I was also reminded of "Catcher in the Rye," another novel whose place on the dais of great literature is undeserved. Altogether an unsatisfying read.

Rating:
Summary: Crome Yellow
Review: Crome Yellow was Aldous Huxley's first book written when he was 27. The early Huxley was the best: when Huxley was young, he was fluid, enthusiastic, and his potential was limitless. As he grew older, he became more calcified, limited, and he spent the last years of his life in California, mired by his own mystic obscurisms. Crome Yellow centers around a house called Crome (like Wuthering Heights centered around a house -Abbey Grange) Crome was a gathering place of artists. The hero of the story is Denis Stone, a naive neophyte like Huxley was at the time. When Huxley grew more sophisticated, so did his characters. This book attacks the ennui, and existential malaise of life with a righteous indignation that is refreshing. He also uproariously endorses the common feeling of misanthropy that all refined cynics must feel. Huxley played the expatriate game, most of his life, to draw on his own words from Crome, he was "one of those distinguished people who for some reason or other, find it impossible to live in England." He spent most of the 1920's in Italy. Crome Yellow is a great introduction to Huxley, as well as a great way to know him better. It is difficult to believe that Huxley was so young when he wrote this. He writes like a 50 yr. old in this book.

Rating:
Summary: Inflatable pants for every one!
Review: Huxley I can usually take or leave, but not Antic Hay: there are just too many farces to decipher for me to put it down. Huxley's women are beautiful and easy; his men are amoral and excrutiatingly clever.

But underlying their antics is a novel of incredible complexity. Huxley makes his attentive readers squirm as we recognize our own pretensions and idiocies in his archetypal characters. Ouch, ouch, ouch.

The other gift in this novel is that it has helped me appreciate and understand the work of other writers such as Waugh and Mitford: i.e., in order to enjoy them, you have to suspend your own understanding of life and realize that there actually was a thriving class of people in England who didn't have jobs, relied on servants, and had no lives to speak of. And were bored to tears by their sumptuous privilege, believe it or no.

For modern readers, I'd say this is a pretty tough read. I know a respectable amount of both French and Latin, and I had to look up at least part of most of those passages. But if you're prepping for the vocabulary section of the GRE or the SAT...this book will provide you with myriad words to look up and learn, including the wonderful "callipygous".

Maybe I should give the rest of Huxley's work another reading...

Rating:
Summary: Classic insight into the English '20s and the fin de siecle.
Review: I have always admired the work of Aldous Huxley and this novel is one of the primary reasons. Set in post-war London, the story is focused on the attempts of a middle-aged Oxford Don (retired), Theodore Gumbril Jr., to break his middle-class shackles and become independently wealthy. He does this by inventing and marketing a pair of trousers with an inflatable backside, making long periods of sitting bearable. While this comes to fruition, Gumbril meets with, entertains and is entertained by his large and extremely colourful circle of friends. Each character is a perfect model for the varying classes, groups and styles of the '20s. To my knowledge, no one else captures so eloquently, humorously, and convincingly what it was like to be in London at the beginning of the century. The novel, luckily, is not confined to Gumbril and his associations, but delves in the lives of those associates as well. We learn of the intellectually and monetarily bankrupt artist, the impassioned physiologist, the wilting grand dame, the modern antichrist, the tailor and, of course, the father. The novel is a pleasure to read if for no other reason than to meet with and learn about these men and woman. Beyond the superficial pleasure of emersing yourself in the '20s and the lives of these individuals, Antic Hay offers something more. Huxley is both brilliantly insightful and cunningly witty, which provide his novels with a depth I thoroughly enjoy. Antic Hay, unlike so many other works, can be read again and again - each time offering you something amusing or interesting to enjoy and learn. I know this sounds cliché, but truly, Antic Hay tells the universal tales of men - loves lost and unrequited, mortality found and defended, knowledge found and lost. Reading this book I learnt that others have felt as I have, have thought as I have and most importantly, have acted as I have. There is nothing more reassuring than to learn that others have lusted after money, ruined relationships, and forgot what it truly important. I cannot recommend this book more highly. It provides wonderful entertainment for many a night as well accomplishing what all good literature should: telling us something important about ourselves. All my best, Justin.

Rating:
Summary: Like 'The Great Gatsby', only its actually good
Review: I'm a huge fan of Huxley's novels, and I believe Antic Hay is his best. Its a novel for intellectuals, being about the people in the 1920's who actually thought. The characterizations are rich and meaningful, and the disillusionment of the post-WWI era is poetically portrayed within a simple, realistic plot.

Rating:
Summary: Disaffected Rich
Review: In the early 1920s, Theodore Gumbril Jr, disenchanted with his teaching job in a boys' school, leaves for London determined to pursue his idea for "pneumatic trousers". After his arrival, Theodore enters the strange world of London's well-to-do dilettantes.

This satirical novel reminded me of Evelyn Waugh's early novels and of some of Anthony Powell's work (perhaps Huxley influenced those authors). "Antic Hay" is not a novel with strong plot development, rather Huxley concentrates on the attitudes of his characters. Theodore Gumbril soon ceases to be the main character of the novel, his importance being no more and no less than several others. This was a bit surprising given his prominence at the start.

Huxley satirises the opinions, actions and mores of the well-heeled young artistic "society" animals of the time. His style is at times very sharp and witty, and I felt that he was trying to scratch beneath the facade of their lifestyle, where lies a bitter meaningless to their existence, and a despair with the society they live in. "Antic Hay" is not, therefore, a novel for people who enjoy fiction based on a strong pplot, but it is an interesting period piece, reflecting the uncertainties and disaffection of one particular part of British society shortly after World War One.

G Rodgers

Rating:
Summary: Antic Hay
Review: When Huxley is on target there are few authors as witty, urbane, and casually erudite. But like all authors he had to perfect his craft and Antic Hay being one of his earlier novels it doesn't hold up to his more mature works. I don't think it's fair to subject the book to undue criticism because of that however. Without Antic Hay we wouldn't have Point Counter Point.

I like satire that embraces self-scrutiny. In other words, satire that isn't inclined to oversimplification of motive. Huxley, I am quite certain, is dead-on with his stereotypes, but one can't help but feel engaged in something akin to hunting cows with laser scope and night vision goggles. The dominoes are too easily set up to be struck down. Perhaps that's more indicative of the shallowness of the culture Huxley is writing about than his literary ability.

That said, the characters are amusing despite their lack of dimension. It's not as insightful as Point Counter Point or accessible as Brave New World (which I consider a good thing BTW), but Antic Hay is a tidy little work that reveals the potential Huxley was to fulfill in the remainder of his oeuvre.