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Brave New World

Aldous Huxley

Start date: June 1, 2017

Finish date: June 30, 2017

Discussion: New School Classics- 1915-2005

Why we're reading this: Revisit the Shelf Classic Reread, June 2017

Previous Group Reads:
Revisit the Shelf Classic Reread, August …more
[close] Revisit the Shelf Classic Reread, June 2017

Previous Group Reads:
Revisit the Shelf Classic Reread, August 2015
Contemporary Classic Group Read, December 2013

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New School Classics- 1915-2005

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What Members Thought

Apr 30, 2020 Ozge rated it really liked it · review of another edition

My initial reaction to the book was one of horror. I didn't particularly like it, and the word choice in the second ever paragraph of the whole book; with words like "harsh", "glare", pallid", "bleakly", "wintriness", "corpse-coloured", "frozen", "dead", and "ghost" was enough to set the mood for me. Even before all the horrible conditioning parts kicked in. I hated Bernard, for the record.

But what bothered me greatly while reading and what still bothers me is that after my initial determined di
My initial reaction to the book was one of horror. I didn't particularly like it, and the word choice in the second ever paragraph of the whole book; with words like "harsh", "glare", pallid", "bleakly", "wintriness", "corpse-coloured", "frozen", "dead", and "ghost" was enough to set the mood for me. Even before all the horrible conditioning parts kicked in. I hated Bernard, for the record.

But what bothered me greatly while reading and what still bothers me is that after my initial determined dislike of this brave new world order I was unable to decide whether I would want to live in that world. And seriously how similar are we already? Our fear of age and ageing? How many would glady accept being youthful to the end? And like me during those long nights a few years ago, how many of us would embrace a couple half-grammes of soma after a dreadfully long day, after a traumatic event, after heartbreak? How many of our deep convictions are mere repetitions? Does "sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth", really? And how different are those people of London from the people around me? People with heads bent on phones and games?

The one thing I greatly disliked was its approach to women, maybe not so surprising for a book published in 1932. Sex is always a man using a woman, it is the motherhood that is the real obscenity, and it is Lenina that gets flogged to satisfy the deathly sexual desires of John, presumably to death? We don't know, but the misogyny in that scene stayed with me. But in other ways, I understood John. what would life be like without art, and literature, and family, and without pain and heartbreak and tears? Like John "...I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin." I do want to claim the right to be unhappy, in a moody Romantic heroine way. Not necessarily the right to syphilis, though.

I still can't decide and I might never will. Margaret Atwood summarizes the dilemma so much better than I ever could in her 2006 introduction: “Look in the mirror, do you see Lenina Crowne looking back at you, or do you see John the Savage? If you're a human being, you'll be seeing something of both, because we've always wanted things both ways. We wish to be as the careless gods, lying around on Olympus, eternally beautiful, having sex and being entertained by the anguish of others. And at the same time we want to be those anguished others, because we believe, with John, that life has meaning beyond the play of senses, and that immediate gratification will never be enough.”

Now I need to go reread my Shakespeare. Couldn't place half the references. Such disgrace. ...more

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Sep 21, 2020 Kendall rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

"Identity. Community. Stability."
Forsaking truth in favor of happiness.
Making of science a cookbook that no one dares challenge for truth's sake.

If you think your politics has the answers, . . . . ...more

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