After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

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Summary: After Many A Summer, Does the Swan Indeed Die?
Review: After Many a Summer Dies the Swan is a book set in America in the thirties. Jeremy Pordage, is an English scholard who was hired by millionaire Jo Stoyte to study and decipher the Hauberk papers which Stoyte acquired in England. Jo Stoyte, with his millions, his castle on the hill, his acquisitions, and his mistress, young Virginia, may very well have been Huxley's parody of William Randolph Hearst, who was very much alive when this book was written.
Stoyte had in his employ, a Dr. Obispo who was searching for a modern medical solution to immortality, also had the job of keeping Soyte alive as long as possible perhaps to one day eventually benefit form Obispo's findings. However, it is Jeremy Pordage who uncovers in his readings of the Hauberk papers, the secret to the indefinite extension of life, and that is through the eating of triturated carp entrails, as metal rings put through the tail of some carp in a pond by the great grandfather Hauberk, could be seen by the great grandson Hauberk.
The surprise ending in this book which occurs in the last five pages is nothing short of a Rod Serling, Twilight Zone type of Tour de Force. Money may buy a bed but not comfort, money may buy a house, but not a home, money may buy food, but not an appetite, and money may buy art, and furniture, but not taste, and this book shows that maybe too much money and too much time to live may not be the best thing after all.

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Summary: a Swan's Final Dance
Review: An aging millionaire, living in fear of his own mortality, becomes the test subject of a doctor who is trying to uncover the mystery of longevity. The beauty that one man's weakness is dependant on another man's strength and the duality of understanding through actions and ideas sets up the stage which Huxley's imaginative characters dance. How melodiously they intertwine and circle amongst themselves yet collide with such dissonance. Huxley's satirical genius and his ability to reflect moral philosophy upon images and actions fortifies that "After Many a Summer Dies the Swan" is one of the finest novels that he has ever written.

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Summary: Mortalist Propaganda--'The ImmorTalist Manifesto' Rebuts
Review: Huxley tries a bit too hard to preach that we should not desire immortality. The physical kind, that is. Not one of his better works. Brave New World much, much better. But if you care to read that, or this, read it with "The ImmorTalist Manifesto" which is also available on amazon. And which Wired Magazine's biotech writer Brian Alexander has called a "classic." And Life Extension Magazine describes it as "an extraordinary book (which) challenges the belief that we must grow old and die." I was admirer of Huxley and thought he was persuasive. Until I read The ImmorTalist Manifesto! Read for yourself. And see why this book is so controversial and provocative. Not to mention consciousness-transforming.

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Summary: After Many a Summer...Huxley Natters On
Review: I first read this book thirty years ago as an adolescent, and it made a big impression on my impressionable, snobbish mind. And it was (is) funny!

Reading it and some other Huxley material this year, I am struck by how singleminded AH is in his ideas. Every essay, every story, at least after the 1930s, is driven by his desire to show how humanity is lost in a maze of materialist illusion. He is a mystic, and if that tickles you, perhaps his extended intellectual diaglogs in this book will interest you. Otherwise, just read the deliciously satirical parts. (His detached verse describing the movements of the nearly naked young starlet's body are a tour de force of clinical eroticism).

His literary skills are enormous, his description of southern california in the 30s rang true in the 70s when I lived there and read it, and still do. His humour, arch, esoteric, but sharp, can be a joy. When he gets serious, that's when he has a problem as he lapses into portentous nonsense about the ground of being, the One, etc. Huxley was a acid head long before he started dabbling with drugs - and his mystical discussions make little sense, unless you are already of that mind. Aesthetically, they are highly repetitive and rather irritating.

Readers who want an introduction to his work would do better, I think, to begin with his best, Brave New World. In that one, he used his considerable gifts to their best advantage, and kept his endless and indulgent maundering to a minimum.

Rating:
Summary: After Many a Summer...Huxley Natters On
Review: I first read this book thirty years ago as an adolescent, and it made a big impression on my impressionable, snobbish mind. And it was (is) funny!

Reading it and some other Huxley material this year, I am struck by how singleminded AH is in his ideas. Every essay, every story, at least after the 1930s, is driven by his desire to show how humanity is lost in a maze of materialist illusion. He is a mystic, and if that tickles you, perhaps his extended intellectual diaglogs in this book will interest you. Otherwise, just read the deliciously satirical parts. (His detached verse describing the movements of the nearly naked young starlet's body are a tour de force of clinical eroticism).

His literary skills are enormous, his description of southern california in the 30s rang true in the 70s when I lived there and read it, and still do. His humour, arch, esoteric, but sharp, can be a joy. When he gets serious, that's when he has a problem as he lapses into portentous nonsense about the ground of being, the One, etc. Huxley was a acid head long before he started dabbling with drugs - and his mystical discussions make little sense, unless you are already of that mind. Aesthetically, they are highly repetitive and rather irritating.

Readers who want an introduction to his work would do better, I think, to begin with his best, Brave New World. In that one, he used his considerable gifts to their best advantage, and kept his endless and indulgent maundering to a minimum.

Rating:
Summary: After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
Review: I'll let you read the other reviews for the details. I wish only to add that I read this book more than forty years ago and its images are still bright and clear in my mind to this day.

True, it may not qualify as "a literary masterpiece" in academic circles, but surely the clarity of those images in my mind after all these years qualifies it for some kind of prize! I was delighted to find it back in print.

Huxley may not have had a scientist's clear understanding of Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Indeed the artistic license he took with that theory may well have given many fighting the Creationism vs. Evolution battle some misinformation to fuel their firey debates, but his insights into human nature, his fascination with and revulsion for America and Americans rings as true and insightful today as it did in 1939.

Read this book! It will tickle your funny bone and keep you thinking for decades to come.

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Summary: A lesser-known Huxley work that is well worth reading
Review: Most people read Huxley's Brave New World (under duress, maybe, in school) and possibly Chrome Yellow and Eyeless in Gaza, his two other popular novels. However, After Many a Summer is a wonderful, not-very-long novel that displays Huxley's superb sarcastic wit.

In this novel, Huxley plays on man's fear of death. He creates a somewhat W. R. Hearst-like rich businessman who wants to use his money and power to cheat Death, and a scientist who has no compunctions against using any means to lengthen life, without questioning what quality that extended life really has. The ending is a real surprise.

This is one of Huxley's most enjoyable novels to read. It is also a timely one that can be read in the light of the new genetic research pusing the boundaries of science. As in Brave New World, Huxley was frighteningly accurate in his prophesies.

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Summary: For the love of litterature-Read This Book!
Review: Read it. You will be amazed. Interspersed between essay-like monologues by the characters unfolds a plot unlike any morally ambitious sci-fi novel. Huxley's ability as an author is proven once again by his knack to boil together science, romance, religion, ignorence, government theory, and one hell of a dramatic climax, into a delectable stew that will have you curseing your inability to read any faster. It is unforgettable.

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Summary: One of Huxley's best.
Review: This book is one of my favorite Huxley books. The characters are unique and interesting, and it's hard not to learn something from each one of the characters. The conversations, themes, thoughts and plots in this book are wonderful and make one think.

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Summary: An amazing (and philosophical) novel
Review: This is a suberbly-crafted novel with a gripping plot. Set in Beverly Hills in the l930s, the plot revolves around a lonely, aging millionaire, Jo Stoyte, and his obsession with putting off death. Stoyte surrounds himself with art, beauty, literature, historic works and the company of intellectuals -- all of which fail to satisfy or even interest him. He retains a British man of letters, Jeremy Pordage, to review and catalog 27 crates of papers and memoirs which Stoyte has purchased from the last of the Hauberks, a British titled family. Stoyte also keeps a cynical doctor, Sigmund Obispo, as his personal physician, provides Obispo with a laboratory and bankrolls his research into longevity.

Obispo believes that the longevity of a species of carp is due to the carp's unique intestinal bacteria. In his research, Obispo is trying to i) find a method of introducing the bacteria into the digestive tracts of research mice in such a way that the effect of the bacteria isn't neutralized and ii) determine whether successful introduction of the bacteria into mammalian digestive tracts will lengthen the life of the host mammal.

In reviewing the Hauberk papers, Jeremy discovers that a member of the Hauberk family, the 5th Earl of Gonister, was himself obsessed with retaining vitality and youth. Jeremy further discovers that the 5th Earl conducted his own research into the rejuvenating properties of carp intestines some two hundred years previous. Jeremy reveals these facts to Obispo. Obispo then heads for the Hauberk estate with Stoyte and his young mistress in tow.

Through the characters of Mr. Propter, a humanities professor who lives adjacent to the Stoyte estate, Pete Boone, Obispo's idealistic, young assistant and Jeremy Pordage, Aldous Huxley provides several chapters' worth of deep philosophical dialog. The topics of these discussions range from linguistics and ethics to the impending doom of mankind. These chapters are surprisingly fascinating and should not be skipped over.

This novel's theme is that the collective mindset (which gave rise to the industrial revolution and its ensuing technological advances) will result in the annihilation of mankind. In that sense, 'progress' is a moral regression where "men pay divine homage to ideals which are mere projections of their own personalities". Huxley blames war, pograms, persecution and famine on this collective mindset. He states that "evolution is arrested devlopment". Development run amok results in degeneration and decay. He masterfully drives home his message via the book's startling conclusion.

This is worthwhile reading!