Matthew's review
Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited (P.S.)
by Aldous Huxley
Matthew's review
Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited (P.S.) by Aldous Huxley
Matthew's review
rating:
I never read Brave New World in high school; I was never given an academic reason to, and had I been I probably still wouldn't have read it. My knowledge of the book has been of not the text itself but rather of its cultural privilege, of its dystopian foreboding. I don't know how many times I heard dissenters in the effort to get stem cell research funded in California screech above the "Yeas": "Brave New World! Brave New World!" Between this book and its thematic partner 1984, there is more than enough commentary on bleak, autocratic futures for appropriators everywhere. For whatever that's worth.
I have two comments on the work as a literary construct. First, nobody citing it rhetorically ever mentions that the novel is blisteringly funny. I laughed out loud - on my couch, on the train - consistently. Every character, except perhaps Mustapha Mond, is a train wreck. Even the Savage, who is probably the novel's closest thing to a protagonist, is a piti...more
I have two comments on the work as a literary construct. First, nobody citing it rhetorically ever mentions that the novel is blisteringly funny. I laughed out loud - on my couch, on the train - consistently. Every character, except perhaps Mustapha Mond, is a train wreck. Even the Savage, who is probably the novel's closest thing to a protagonist, is a piti...more
