ANTIC HAY [Hardcover]

ALDOUS HUXLEY (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: CHATTO WINDUS (1930)
• ASIN: B000S5PW32
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) is the author of the classic novels Island, Eyeless in Gaza, and The Genius and the Goddess, as well as such critically acclaimed nonfiction works as The Devils of Loudun, The Doors of Perception, and The Perennial Philosophy. Born in Surrey, England, and educated at Oxford, he died in Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inflatable pants for every one!, June 13, 2000

By 

Lisa Schweitzer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Antic Hay (Paperback)

Huxley I can usually take or leave, but not Antic Hay: there are just too many farces to decipher for me to put it down. Huxley's women are beautiful and easy; his men are amoral and excrutiatingly clever.

But underlying their antics is a novel of incredible complexity. Huxley makes his attentive readers squirm as we recognize our own pretensions and idiocies in his archetypal characters. Ouch, ouch, ouch.

The other gift in this novel is that it has helped me appreciate and understand the work of other writers such as Waugh and Mitford: i.e., in order to enjoy them, you have to suspend your own understanding of life and realize that there actually was a thriving class of people in England who didn't have jobs, relied on servants, and had no lives to speak of. And were bored to tears by their sumptuous privilege, believe it or no.

For modern readers, I'd say this is a pretty tough read. I know a respectable amount of both French and Latin, and I had to look up at least part of most of those passages. But if you're prepping for the vocabulary section of the GRE or the SAT...this book will provide you with myriad words to look up and learn, including the wonderful "callipygous".

Maybe I should give the rest of Huxley's work another reading...

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic insight into the English '20s and the fin de siecle., January 15, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Antic Hay (Paperback)

I have always admired the work of Aldous Huxley and this novel is one of the primary reasons. Set in post-war London, the story is focused on the attempts of a middle-aged Oxford Don (retired), Theodore Gumbril Jr., to break his middle-class shackles and become independently wealthy. He does this by inventing and marketing a pair of trousers with an inflatable backside, making long periods of sitting bearable. While this comes to fruition, Gumbril meets with, entertains and is entertained by his large and extremely colourful circle of friends. Each character is a perfect model for the varying classes, groups and styles of the '20s. To my knowledge, no one else captures so eloquently, humorously, and convincingly what it was like to be in London at the beginning of the century. The novel, luckily, is not confined to Gumbril and his associations, but delves in the lives of those associates as well. We learn of the intellectually and monetarily bankrupt artist, the impassioned physiologist, the wilting grand dame, the modern antichrist, the tailor and, of course, the father. The novel is a pleasure to read if for no other reason than to meet with and learn about these men and woman.

Beyond the superficial pleasure of emersing yourself in the '20s and the lives of these individuals, Antic Hay offers something more. Huxley is both brilliantly insightful and cunningly witty, which provide his novels with a depth I thoroughly enjoy. Antic Hay, unlike so many other works, can be read again and again - each time offering you something amusing or interesting to enjoy and learn. I know this sounds cliché, but truly, Antic Hay tells the universal tales of men - loves lost and unrequited, mortality found and defended, knowledge found and lost. Reading this book I learnt that others have felt as I have, have thought as I have and most importantly, have acted as I have. There is nothing more reassuring than to learn that others have lusted after money, ruined relationships, and forgot what it truly important.

I cannot recommend this book more highly. It provides wonderful entertainment for many a night as well accomplishing what all good literature should: telling us something important about ourselves.

All my best,
Justin.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars rather good, November 19, 2008

By 

Nathan Stueve (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Antic Hay (Paperback)

criticisms of this book as being plotless or "a novel of ideas" make little sense to me. so far as i know great art is often unconventional, and i personally found this to be a very intelligent and entertaining meditation on society and human nature wrapped in precise, beautiful prose. sharp observations and a sadly humorous sense of absurdity permeate each page as huxley examines various facets of the human condition through his characters thoughts, pretensions, and actions. the book never reaches any conclusions about it's subject matter and is structured as a loosely interconnected series of vignettes, but there's nothing wrong with either unless you have very narrow ideas about what a book should be. enjoyed it immensely.