The quote on the frontispiece is by Fulke Greville. Through his novels and essays Huxley functioned as an examiner and sometimes critic of social mores, norms and ideals. He fails in relation to Lucy Tantamount, but especially in relation to Marjorie, the mistress he has impregnated and more or less abandoned, she at least finding consolation in a workable sort of spirituality. It is, in fact, full of many dazzling passages of disparate flavour. Observer; As a piece of satire, often brilliant, sometimes wise, Point Counter Point is a monstrous exposure of a society which confuses pleasure with happiness, sensation with sensibility, mood with opinion, opinion with conviction and self with God. The character of Lucy Tantamount, devil-may-care hedonist, would be scorned or held up as a warning by most writers of Huxley’s generation. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Victorian-ish era classic, maybe, patriarch is a famous artist, son is married but obsessed with a young socialite [s], Michiko Kakutani's Gift Guide Book Recommendations. There was, as expected, some great dialog and a multitude of interesting characters, however, I cared for none of them nor did I care for this lengthy tale. It reminds me of a cross between Vile Bodies and The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir. As a teenager in the 1990s I would often take advice regarding authors and books to read from the stories, poems, and novels of Charles Bukowski. "Point Counterpoint" is the story of a writer named Philip Quarles, who decides to write a novel based on all the people he knows. The man was a very fine writer indeed. Rampion believes in congruence in a world where hardly anybody is halfway congruent. This segment originally featured James J. Kilpatrick representing the conservative side and Nicholas von Hoffman [14] for the liberal, with Shana Alexander [15] taking over for von Hoffman after he departed in 1974. [14] I am not at all comfortable calling POINT COUNTER POINT satire, as many understandably have, because the novel is too rich to be ghettoized in those terms, but I will happily concede that one of the many things it occasionally does is satirize. In his introduction to the Dalkey Archive edition, the very great Nicholas Mosley, a man only three years younger than Bukowski, discusses how he and his friends found Huxley’s novel, which they had caught up to in the aftermath of the Second World War, eye-opening in its depiction of a species of generalized libertinage which seemed to have disappeared from the English scene in subsequent years, the recent European conflagration doubtlessly having had something to do with that. This book had some indescribable quality about it that made it completely fascinating, although it was ostensibly about not very much at all. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.... Every answer in this quiz is the name of a novelist. But Huxley denied that he portrayed anyone straight: he proposed the novelist’s usual explanation that he took one trait from one person here, another from another there, and from these he fabricated a character.” The Rampion-Lawrence connection is an excellent case in point, as obviously Rampion both very much is and is not D. H. Lawrence; any reader with a cursory knowledge of Lawrence and his backstory will not fail to see how Rampion’s diverges. While this book was not an easy read (maybe I didn't get all the satire he was doing 90+ years removed), this book expresses a few emotions better than nearly any other I have read. It has some good elements but it has no central theme or idea, and no plot to speak of. Walter is one of many characters in this novel, the more privileged men from the older generation being especially dire, whose ideals will never hold up to scrutiny of their actions. Huxley is one of those important writers that are rarely read, outside of his famous work "Brave New World." Point Counter-Point. His major flaw, to my mind, remains his nostalgia for history he wasn’t around to experience in the first place. Over indulgence is undeniably his most persistent arch nemesis and it befuddles the authors best efforts in quite a lot of his creations and is well demonstrated here in PCP. Start by marking “Point Counter Point” as Want to Read: Error rating book. Phil, little Phil—the name was an abstraction, a title arbitrarily given, like ‘France’ or ‘England,’ to a collection, never long the same, of many individuals who were born, lived, and died within him, as the inhabitants of a country appear and disappear, but keep alive in their passage the identity of the nation to which they belong.” This is a way of framing the individual that looks forward to thinkers like Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, modern and exquisitely articulated. Walter reflects: “I was making love to a woman when I was interrupted, first by the screaming of a cockatoo, then by the arrival of a visitor.” He realizes that this is essentially “a smoking-room joke,” and despite its being such, “he could not be suffering more if he had lost his mother.” That in a nutshell is the tragicomedy of human pride. And finally: I cannot help but close by mentioning that Huxley isn’t necessarily easy on me either, just as D. H. Lawrence certainly would not be. Read this in the buildup to university exams in between college books and other things I had to read for UNI. But man’s true folly, everywhere in Huxley's novel, is a byproduct of his pride. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death in 1963. Stylistically Huxley offers some really great chapters, though after a while the writing process becomes a bit tedious. All this considered, please refrain from imagining that POINT COUNTER POINT is merely a novel about sexual mores in somewhat liberal times. Is it a roman à clef? It is far more than that. Point counter point; by Huxley, Aldous, 1894-1963. Rampion backs up his talk in a way few other characters can. “Pigs are human—all too much so, perhaps, but still human. Omissions? Civilization itself, as Flusser has it, is the apotheosis of envy and greed, and the political spectrum of POINT COUNTER POINT speaks to this. Walter Bidlake fails in a way I can most demonstrably relate to. It is not just modern, it has a quality of prophecy. It is the novel of a highly observant student of his surroundings. That is, when they're not engaging in the latter. There is the malign Spandrell, a bit like Iago or Mephistopheles and compared by Rampion to Stavrogin in Dostoevsky’s DEMONS, who muses bitterly of “the pride of an able man who is not quite able enough,” and whose shallow woundedness leads first to indolence and then to tragic, suicidal misadventure. His clarity in that regard would seem truly remarkable. Huxley has a readable style and mixes plot events with mystery while working in his point and counter points. Pulitzer Prize–winning literary critic Michiko Kakutani, the former chief book critic of The New York Times, is the author of the newly... Aldous Huxley's lifelong concern with the dichotomy between passion and reason finds its fullest expression both thematically and formally in his masterpiece. I recognized the character of DH Lawrence, and it was interesting to see how highly he was thought of at the time. “Marjorie unadulterated might have been worse than Marjorie tempered by irrelevancies.” Walter Bidlake is rendered pitiful by his own thinking and the absence of discipline born of it. It is certainly telling (and for reasons I will soon elaborate) that Lawrence's LADY CHATTERLY’S LOVER would appear the same year as POINT COUNTER POINT. It is a rare literary work that triumphs at both earnestness and irony. By the end of his life, he was widely acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent intellectuals of his time. Sometimes he can be both at once: his ranting disparagement of Percy Shelley and "To a Skylark,” for example, is a jocose ill-tempered delectation. It reminds me of a cross between Vile Bodies and The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir. “I wanted to change the world. But less expensive software can also support the plugins used as the standard for evaluating digital results. I can't do the book justice on the grounds that I lack the intelligence to truly convey what Huxley presents in Point Counter Point. From point + counterpoint. It is certainly a very complex work, something I'd recommend if you: a) can appreciate a fine difference between literature and a popular novel, b) are a fan of Huxley c) want to read something that might actually make to think. Are these qualities exclusive to those who are well enough off. There are connotations of satire, some sardonism, and in general blunt pessimism. And it seems clear that Huxley very much sees it that way. Huxley never disappointed me so far. Whereas hermit crabs are doing their best to be molluscs.” Well, fair enough. A case of Huxley being slayed by his own ambitions. Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership, This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Point-Counter-Point. I didn't mind rereading it, thought. Stylistically Huxley offers some really great chapters, though after a while the writing process becomes a bit tedious. May 11, 2021 Last Edited: 3 Nov 2013 1:29 am. Huxley wants to argue with himself in public, fine, let him do it in an essay not couched in the trappings of an otherwise entertaining piece of fiction. To see what your friends thought of this book, I read both. Certainly we have Rampion appearing to predict the Second World War, which is no small thing, but we also have the future author of THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION appearing at times to grasp the flimsiness of reality, analogous as reality perhaps is to his own fictive constructions. He figures that their struggles and problems actually are the … There can be no denying that basic fact. Yet the only deterrent to Huxley is perhaps Huxley himself. Top Contributors: JaredPetty-IGN, TheVestman, Remedy916Nos + more. Does man, in pursuing the intellectual, deny and suppress its natural (and often described as baser) instincts? Reviews Reviewer: Alex White - favorite - August 22, 2020 Subject: Missing pages . Rampion seems to speak for Huxley’s entire approach to life and especially to literature when he evokes a God that is “a quality of actions and relations—a felt, experienced quality.” This is the God of “living corporeal beings,” not of fanciful speculation, not of transcendence and nonsense. It is a tragicomic state of affairs, its implications universal and all too sound. Nearly every page has a line that's a total keeper: Huxley is quite the literary enigma. Point Counter Point Resolution Consultants offer a broad range of services to individuals and organizations . You'll get access to all of the Point Counter Point content, as well as access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts. Despite cynical and fun-making elements, Huxley allows his characters to formulate a series of profound and serious ideas, amongst them being: To this day, Aldous Huxley's "Point Counter Point" remains my favourite novel. These are just a few of the questions Huxley examines in Point Counter Point, an entire novel devoted ironically to engaging in the very actions described above. Point Counter Point. It can also be solemn, heartbreaking, virtuosic, digressive, expansive, or regal. Point Counter Point is extremely funny with passages of rich and gorgeous farce. Pride can pervert in all kinds of ways, leading to high comedy or miserable tragedy, wether it is the bitter communist scientist Illidge, raised in poverty and abjection, or various puffed-up high society imbeciles precipitating all manner of wreckage. As a teenager in the 1990s I would often take advice regarding authors and books to read from the stories, poems, and novels of Charles Bukowski. Its frankness about sex relations can no longer be considered terribly risky or outré, except when conceived of in terms of its historical context, but its insights into what we might call, in consonance with the novel itself, human zoology, sexual matters of course being central to the corresponding field of inquiry, remain profoundly relevant. All I can say is that this book is among the best I've ever read, on a whole range of issues. Of course, it happened now and then. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. 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