Rating: 
Summary: 5 stars+
Review: I first read Ape and Essence in a single sitting about 1950. I was then 29 or 30 and so deeply impressed by the novel's power and its comment on the state of our world that I felt it was the end-all of literature and there was no need to read any more fiction. Indeed, my appetite for novels remained sated for more than a year. I read the novel again with its second edition a few years ago and was scarcely less impressed. This novel fully ranks with Brave New World and Point Counter Point, and deserves to be recognized as one of the best 100 novels of the 20th century.
Rating: 
Summary: Clear Influence on Planet of the Apes and Clockwork Orange
Review: I read this book quite rapidly (two days) and really liked it.
It's 1948, Ghandi has just been assassinated, and two guys connected to the movie business come across a script that's just fallen from a trash truck. They set out to find the author, whose script makes up the bulk of the novel.
There are a lot of wonderful "postmodern" touches here -- for example, one of the main characters in the script picks up a copy of Shelley that's about to be burned, and ends up reading it at the grave of the fictional author of the script saved from the trash heap.
In addition, this book's scenes of apes lording themselves over human beings unquestionably inspired Planet of the Apes.
And finally, the novel's descriptions of classical music in its portrayal of a dystopia probably influenced A Clockwork Orange. In fact, Anthony Burgess named Ape and Essence one of the best novels in English since 1939:
"Novels like Ape and Essence seem now to be very much products of their time [immediately post-Hiroshima] and rather dated. But this is Huxley -- clever, brutal, thoughtful, original -- and his fictional tract clings to the mind....It is a nauseating vision of a still possible future...."
Well worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Monkey in the Middle
Review: I remember the first time I tried to read this book and couldn't shake the "Planet of the Apes" image that danced around my head. So I set the book aside, let the images fade. After almost a year I pick up the book never to set it down until the end, and still scenes haunt me. Huxley creates a distopia that equally disturbes and intrigues, frightens and consoles, a world where god is feared and suffering is happiness. "Ape and Essence" is the shadow of "Brave new World," where one's brightest spot is the other's darkest. Truly a novel of ideas.
Rating:
Summary: Monkey in the Middle
Review: I remember the first time I tried to read this book and couldn't shake the "Planet of the Apes" image that danced around my head. So I set the book aside, let the images fade. After almost a year I pick up the book never to set it down until the end, and still scenes haunt me. Huxley creates a distopia that equally disturbes and intrigues, frightens and consoles, a world where god is feared and suffering is happiness. "Ape and Essence" is the shadow of "Brave new World," where one's brightest spot is the other's darkest. Truly a novel of ideas.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and Intriguing
Review: I was glued to this book. Huxley has amazing foresight, and although some of the ideas in the book are a bit out there, it doesn't detract from the important ideas that the book presents. He makes many good points on where the world could all to easily lead with just the push of a button.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and Intriguing
Review: I was glued to this book. Huxley has amazing foresight, and although some of the ideas in the book are a bit out there, it doesn't detract from the important ideas that the book presents. He makes many good points on where the world could all to easily lead with just the push of a button.
Rating:
Summary: Aped and Essenced?
Review: It is too bad that one cannot give eight stars out of five for this book. Ape and essence is a very funny novel about a movie writer, William Tallis who wrote a screenplay. Unfortuanately the screenplay got rejected after it got discovered by a couple of studio writers who found the screenplay after it fell off of a truck. The screenplay was one of thousands being sent to the incinerator. In fact, on the screenplay cover, was written in pencil, "Rejection slip sent, 11-6-47, for the incinerator." Twice underlined.
The two studio writers decided to visit William Tallis at his ranch in California only to discover that he died 6 months before.
However, we readers are treated with the script in its bawdy entirety. The book is funny because it is a parody of the Hollywood mentality and that any writer would take the time and have the audacity to write such a script and hand it in to a studio for consideration. And that this script would be rejected as a matter of course, for Ape and Essence was written in 1947, and can you imagine a moviegoing audience of that era walking away after seeing such a film?! The film Ape and Essence includes such surrealistic imagery such as a female baboon frying sausages, Michael Faraday and Albert Einstein on a leash, held captive by baboons, a Chief wearing a jacket freshly plucked from an exumed corpse, the scream of the slaughter by bulls' pizzles and priests expectorating and spitting when confronted by the spectacle of the manin character, Alfred Poole, having sex with various women. "Don't mind us," a priest explains,"after all, Belial day comes only once a year."
The movie ends with a scene of eggshells falling onto a grave.
That is a very Eraserhead, and Pink Flamingos type of ending for a movie. Tim Burton might produce a movie version of this, but it would be far better if David Lynch were to do so.
A leech's kiss, a squid's embrace
The prurient ape's defiling touch
Do I like humanity?
No, not much
THIS MEANS YOU KEEP OUT!
- a sign on the gate of William Tallis' ranch.
I do not know if I will discover a book as funny again in the foreseeable future. Those in the audience who don't walk out of the movie version of this book would have their minds blown! And that includes not only the audience of 1947, but today's too!
Rating:
Summary: Aped and Essenced?
Review: It is too bad that one cannot give eight stars out of five for this book. Ape and essence is a very funny novel about a movie writer, William Tallis who wrote a screenplay. Unfortuanately the screenplay got rejected after it got discovered by a couple of studio writers who found the screenplay after it fell off of a truck. The screenplay was one of thousands being sent to the incinerator. In fact, on the screenplay cover, was written in pencil, "Rejection slip sent, 11-6-47, for the incinerator." Twice underlined.
The two studio writers decided to visit William Tallis at his ranch in California only to discover that he died 6 months before.
However, we readers are treated with the script in its bawdy entirety. The book is funny because it is a parody of the Hollywood mentality and that any writer would take the time and have the audacity to write such a script and hand it in to a studio for consideration. And that this script would be rejected as a matter of course, for Ape and Essence was written in 1947, and can you imagine a moviegoing audience of that era walking away after seeing such a film?! The film Ape and Essence includes such surrealistic imagery such as a female baboon frying sausages, Michael Faraday and Albert Einstein on a leash, held captive by baboons, a Chief wearing a jacket freshly plucked from an exumed corpse, the scream of the slaughter by bulls' pizzles and priests expectorating and spitting when confronted by the spectacle of the manin character, Alfred Poole, having sex with various women. "Don't mind us," a priest explains,"after all, Belial day comes only once a year."
The movie ends with a scene of eggshells falling onto a grave.
That is a very Eraserhead, and Pink Flamingos type of ending for a movie. Tim Burton might produce a movie version of this, but it would be far better if David Lynch were to do so.
A leech's kiss, a squid's embrace
The prurient ape's defiling touch
Do I like humanity?
No, not much
THIS MEANS YOU KEEP OUT!
- a sign on the gate of William Tallis' ranch.
I do not know if I will discover a book as funny again in the foreseeable future. Those in the audience who don't walk out of the movie version of this book would have their minds blown! And that includes not only the audience of 1947, but today's too!
Rating:
Summary: Ape and Essence
Review: It really is too bad that I cannot give this book eight stars out of five. Firstly, Ape and Essence is a topical satire of Hollywood that remains true today. The story starts with one Hollywood writer who has been turned down for a raise, walking with his friend in a Hollywood lot when out of a truck falls a script, one of thousands of such scripts; written on it, is " Rejection Slip sent, 11-6-47, for the Incinerator. 'Twice Underlined".
It is a hilarious story, ribaldly funny in its imagery and implications with a hilarity that is unmatched. The audacity for a writer to send in such a script, some of the images the reader is treated with, are a stout housewifely baboon, frying eggs, Michal Faraday on a leash held captive by a female ape, two Albert Einsteins, each on a leash held by apes. The Einsteins are placated with sugar cubes while the apes gorge on rum and bologna. A Chief wearing clothes freshly plucked from a corpse. A religious high patriarch expectorating as Poole, just finishes making love to two women."After all, Belilal day come once a year", the scenes are hilarious and end with eggshells from a boiled egg falling on to a grave. A very Pink Flamingos and Eraserhead type ending.
Now can you imagine an audience in the late 1940s watching such a movie. Half of the audience would walk out and those that did not would have their minds totally blown!!!
I wonder if I will ever read a novel as thoroughly funny and entertaining as Ape and Essence?
Rating:
Summary: Prophetic and eerie
Review: Not as well-crafted as Huxley's better-known _Brave_New_World_, and I think I can guess why. Huxley, despondent over contemporary events and trends, must have felt crushed with utter despair and yet spurred by the conviction that he could not remain silent. Under such stress it's hard to attend to belleletristic niceties. Huxley also was experimenting with form. The story is presented as a stylized movie script, in the same sense that Goethe's _Faust_ is a stylized drama.Nevertheless, this is a powerful, passionate, and haunting book. I cannot think of any other book which makes such a frighteningly real case for Evil as an operative principle in the world. Even more amazing, this case is presented under the guise of what looks and sounds like a B-grade horror flick. Imagine if, say, Dostoevsky had written his great novels as comic books -- and they still had the same terrifying, probing depth as the novels. That's essentially the effet that Huxley achieves, and it is uncanny. Huxley is speaking of the condition of modern civilization *as it is*, under a set of grotesque, phantasmagoric masks. Unforgettable.
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