When Aldous Huxley's Brave New World first appeared in 1932, it presented in terms of purest fantasy a society bent upon self-destruction. Few of its outraged critics anticipated the onset of another world war with its Holocaust and atomic ruin. In 1948, seeing that the probable shape of his anti-utopia had been altered inevitably by the facts of history, Huxley wrote Ape and Essence. In this savage novel, using the form of a film scenario, he transports us to the year 2108. The setting is Los Angeles where a "rediscovery expedition" from New Zealand is trying to make sense of what is left. From chief botanist Alfred Poole we learn, to our dismay, about the 22nd-century way of life.
Editorial Reviews
"Alduous Huxley transports us, in dire and dreadful fancy, to the year 2108. The setting is Los Angeles, a century or so after the Third World War. Atomic and bacterial warfare have left it, and nearly all the world, in blighted ruins. From spared New Zealand a 'Rediscovery Expedition to North America' has been dispatched, and it is from the experiences of Chief Botanist Alfred Poole that we learn about the 22nd-century way of life....A beautifully modulated, lucid and incisive prose style....It confirms again his sensitive, barometric relationship to his time, and to its changing 'climates of opinion.'" --Theodore Kalem, Christian Science Monitor
"It was inevitable that Mr. Huxley should have written this book: one could almost have foreseen it since Hiroshima is the necessary sequel to Brave New World; without it, his collected works and his experience of America would not be complete." --Alfred Kazin
"The book has a certain awesome impressiveness, its sheer, intractable bitterness cannot but affect the reader as Huxley chants his litanies over modern civilization." --Time
About the Author
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death in 1963. Best known for his novels and wide-ranging output of essays, he also published short stories, poetry, travel writing, and film stories and scripts. Through his novels and essays Huxley functioned as an examiner and sometimes critic of social mores, norms and ideals. Huxley was a humanist but was also interested towards the end of his life in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent intellectuals of his time.
!["The three plays in this volume all deal with the misery of man, but we note at once that the misery is not immediate and physical, not social, but ultimate and, as it were, metaphysical. In each play the central character is one of the insulted and injured: one an [African American], another a stoker, the third a postitute. But whereas for most of us the plight of such people immediately evokes the social forces that have insulted and injured them, for O'Neill the social insult and injury are not so much facts in themselves as symbols of man's cosmic situation. Thus the "emperor," Brutus Jones, does not typify the [African American]. He typfies all men with their raw ignorance and hysterial fear under the layers of intellect. The Hairy Ape is not a play about the proletariat. Yank Smith is the embodiment of our modern pride of power. Anna Christie is no less symbolic of the darkness of man's ultimate fate." --Lionel Trilling](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-ezptpblrxu/images/stencil/500x659/products/1368/2139/EugeneOneil__62991.1666558303.jpg?c=2 "\"The three plays in this volume all deal with the misery of man, but we note at once that the misery is not immediate and physical, not social, but ultimate and, as it were, metaphysical. In each play the central character is one of the insulted and injured: one an [African American], another a stoker, the third a postitute. But whereas for most of us the plight of such people immediately evokes the social forces that have insulted and injured them, for O'Neill the social insult and injury are not so much facts in themselves as symbols of man's cosmic situation. Thus the \"emperor,\" Brutus Jones, does not typify the [African American]. He typfies all men with their raw ignorance and hysterial fear under the layers of intellect. The Hairy Ape is not a play about the proletariat. Yank Smith is the embodiment of our modern pride of power. Anna Christie is no less symbolic of the darkness of man's ultimate fate.\" --Lionel Trilling")
