Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)

Strange experience to finally a read a book one knows so much about. Similar to my experience reading The Odyssey. It’s not quite as interesting as I thought it would be. It’s very English and dated, and I never really cared that much for any of the characters. The set up is interesting and enduring, obviously, but I’m not sure reading the book added that much to the ideas within the book. The use of Ford as the “god” of the society was clever and apt. The emphasis on not just the pleasure-seeking society, but the consumerism and infantilizing goals of the orchestrators of the society were all too true. I can’t remember the book "We" enough to appreciate the charges of plagiarism. All in all good and worth reading, but a little clunky and bloodless.
I just went and reread my blog post about "We" and, I will state that there is no comparison. "We" had a humor and wit that is not really present in "Brave New World" which in comparison seems just…angry.… (mais)

Brave New World is definitely a trope setter for dystopia and sci-fi books that would come later. However, the prose is very overwhelming, so if you have trouble focusing when reading, you're better off listening to an audiobook version or reading the physical book alongside listening to an audiobook. It's a slog to read if you have trouble focusing because the prose is very heavy, at times abstract, easy to get lost in because it can go from explaining how the world works, to yelling in writing, describing a certain process, to describing characters and the world - and it can easily become word soup. A very overstimulating word soup.

So I found an audiobook version and listened to it wheel reading the book and that helped me focus a lot better. Then I just gave up on reading the book because I found the story more fun to listen to in order to imagine what was happening, rather than reading about it and having to focus on the words in front of me while also trying to imagine what was happening.… (mais)

This book was described in another I read as being semi-fictional - having read it, I can see what they mean. In places, the author imagines how things must have been between people where no record exists of their interactions or in some cases their private thoughts and emotions.

The book starts off as being about the campaign against Urbain Grandier, a parish priest in the town of Loudun who was unpopular with many influential men due to his arrogance - he once insisted on precedence in a church parade over a visiting prelate who was technically his superior (something that cost him dearly years later when the man he snubbed had great power and a long memory for a grudge) - and his tendency to seduce female parishioners. The clergy had always had a poor reputation up until the middle ages, with many monks etc having common law wives, but by the 17th century, the Catholic church was trying to clean up its house as part of the Counter Reformation. Grandier's tendency to be his own worst enemy told against him when he made an implacable enemy out of a former friend due to this behaviour. He was also advised on a couple of occasions to obtain a posting elsewhere and leave town, but would not believe that his enemies could prevail against him. The author believes he loved disputation too much - he was embroiled in various court cases - but this can only be guesswork.

Originally thwarted in their attempts to ruin him, his enemies finally came up with the more drastic idea of staging a demonic possession of the local nuns who had become obsessed with his reputation although they had never actually seen him. The nuns blamed Grandier who became condemned as a sorceror, and the author spells out the involvement of various enemies of Grandier's and their cynicism in accusing him. His fate is truly horrific. The book then rather loses focus as it meanders on, describing the subsequent career of the various actors involved in the possessions, and includes a lot of material on a priest called Surin who was called in subsequently and had his own neuroses which became much worse due to his involvement. An appendix gives the author's ideas on the psychology of crowds and mass hysteria although rather belabouring the point I felt.

A weakness of the book is that there are no footnotes as would be usual in a historical account. There is only a bibliography of works consulted. So it isn't possible to tell exactly what certain assertions by the author are based upon. There is also quite a lot of untranslated French, references to very obscure people in history, and a lot of material at one point about spirituality but written in a style rather like Pseud's Corner from Private Eye. So although the material about Grandier is fascinating, the book balances out overall for me at a 3 star rating.… (mais)