Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point

Author: Aldous Huxley Title: Point Counter Point Place: Harmondsworth Publisher: Penguin Books Date: 1965 Description: 434p, 18cm, paperback ISBN:

Why did I read this book?

Because it had sat on my parents' bookshelves, intriguing me, for years; and then had sat on my bookshelves, accusing me, for years more. My holiday in Switzerland at Easter provided a perfect opportunity to get round to reading lots of long-deferred books; see also: Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman; Jack Kerouac, On The Road; Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan; Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet.

Where's the bookmark at?

'But it can't be too queer,' Philip said. 'However queer the picture is, it can never be half so odd as the original reality. We take it all for granted; but the moment you start thinking, it becomes queer. And the more you think, the queerer it grows. That's what I want to get in this book - the astonishingness of the most obvious things. Really any plot or situation would do. Because everything's implicit in anything. The whole book could be written about a walk from Piccadilly Circus to Charing Cross. Or you and I sitting here on an enormous ship in the Red Sea. Really, nothing could be queerer than that. When you reflect on the evolutionary processes, the human patience and genius, the social organization, that have made it possible for us to be here, with stokers having heat apoplexy for our benefit and steam turbines doing five thousand revolutions a minute, and the sea being blue, and the rays of light flowing round obstacles, so that there's a shadow, and the sun all the time providing us with energy to live and think - when you think of this and a million other things, you must see that nothing could well be queerer and that no picture can be queer enough to do justice to the facts.'

'All the same,' said Elinor, after a long silence, 'I wish one day you'd write a simple straightforward story about a young man and a young woman who fall in love and get married and have difficulties, but get over them, and finally settle down.'

(pp 196-7)

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