Aldous Huxley's Timely And Stimulating Bock

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19124, 19 September 1936, Page 9

Aldous Huxley's Timely And Stimulating Bock

THE new novel by Mr. Aldous Huxley, "Eyeless in On/a," is likely to be keenly discussed.' i| s curious title is taken from Milton's description of Samson, " Eyeless in

Gaza at the Mill with Slaves.'' "In 'Eyeless in Gaza,' as in no other of his books, feeling does coino into its own," writes Mr. Joseph Sell in the Manchester Evening News.

"Mr. Huxley has noyov written i more human book. Plashes of tin old irony and bitterness there are, suit Mr. Huxley would not bo himself if In could not be amused by some of tin insincerer posturings .of his bourgeois •Some of the direct commentary, 100, i> brilliant, and there are whole page; one would like to lift into 'Texts am Pretexts.' But the main impression one retains is that understanding 11.*is come to temper tho dislike. Tout eomprendre is not perhaps yet loul pard.onner; nevertheless pity plays ii;pari. Most Positive of His Novels. "The effect is to make 'Eyeless in Gaza' not only tho must likeable but the most positive of Mr. Huxley's novels. Too often in the past he has been a merely ironic, critic or compere of this show called civilisation. 'What fools these mortals be.' The interim of four years since 'Brave New World'—four years in which the world has got morally and ethically steadily worse—his travels and reflection since then have led him to see certain issues as paramount and to advance the belief that unless ihey are tackled by the main body of tho intelligentsia (a hateful word, lacking a better) mankind in Europe will finally sink into the morass. 'The barbarians are at our gates.' as Ernst. Toller was proclaiming only a week or two ago. But Mr. Huxley would probably insist that our main enemies are still ourselves.

"Those who have followed Mr. Huxley's occasional writings during the past year or so will have been struck not only by a new note of urgency but by a positive firmness and strengthening of conviction. Nothing better could have happened than that he should now have expressed that conviction through the medium of what is bound to be a widely read novel." Constructive Thought,

"lis immediate significance," asserts the Evening News of London, "is that it marks tho transition of a first-rato contemporary mind, a mind of value to this generation, from brilliant, brittle, merely destructive Criticism to constructive thought,

"All the book's other many merits, its technical virtuosity, its faithful portrayal of contemporary types (from drug-taking .Mary to oafish Colin, from Beppo with his pathetic longing for beautiful friendship to ironic, twisted Mark, from good Brian to impossible Gerry), its long allusive analyses oi: contemporary politics, dwindle into unimportance beside this single fact, that Huxley has a gospel; that in his own way and his own time he has come to the pursuit of the good life. Going Out to Preach. "The morpliologist has turned moral philosopher. 'Anthropology,' his little .Scots doctor calls this new Huxleyan attitude to life, 'treating men as men,' believing in and tiding on the theory of the goodness of men and the theory of a positive, creative mind behind till life. Is not that the approach to Christian ethics?

"Al the end, Anthony, the child ■who ran from being hurt, who ran from facing reality into his dreamworld of sensualism and of intellectual advancement, is going out to preach what he believes in, in peril of being beaten-up by thugs.

"The fact that it is Mr. Aldous Huxley who has written this book, the matt who wrote in the irony of 'Antic Hay.' and the abysmal, gasping pessimism of 'Point Counter: point,' and the Wellsian dreariness of 'Brave New World,' is what gives it its significance. " 'Eyeless in Gaza' comes at the right time; it may well become a testament of this generation. As a novel its merits are many; but it is also an unequivocal proclamation, by someone who has the right to be heard, of faith in the ultimate values of love, goodness and courage; and on that it stal'.es everything, and, staking, certainly docs not lose."