Ape and Essence [Paperback]

Aldous Huxley (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Bantam (1968)
• ASIN: B00125UDXG
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 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

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Give me Detumescence!, July 12, 2002

By 

Jeffrey Leach (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ape and Essence (Paperback)

The only other Aldous Huxley book I ever read was "Brave New World," and that was at least ten years ago. For most people, I think that is the only Huxley book they know about. It's a shame, because this book, "Ape and Essence," is a true Huxley gem. The back of the book says Huxley wrote this in 1948 as a response to the use of atomic weapons in WWII and the emerging Cold War. "Brave New World" showed us a future of soma-laden people cared for by the state from cradle to grave. "Ape and Essence" doesn't have anything nearly as pleasant as soma. In this new world, people are ruled by a satanic theocracy after a nuclear war.

The book is pretty easy to describe. Two Hollywood types find a manuscript that dropped off a truck bound for the incinerator. The script is entitled, "Ape and Essence," by a William Tallis. Somebody didn't care much for his script; they marked it incinerate and underlined that word twice. The two read the script and try to find Mr. Tallis, only to discover that he died a few months earlier. What follows this brief introduction is the script, in its entirety.

"Ape and Essence" is about a post-nuclear holocaust world. New Zealand escaped the holocaust, and now they are sending explorers to America to see how the world is coming along. The main character here is Dr. Poole, a botanist. The survivors who roam the ruins of Los Angeles capture Poole and agree to let him live if he can improve crop production. Poole witnesses some unusual behavior amongst the natives, behavior that is explained to him by the archpriest of Belial.

Huxley uses this odd world as a backdrop for his own views on humanity in the 20th century. Huxley feels that mankind never got past the beast (or ape) inside. The beginning of the script shows apes dressed as humans, engaging in such delightful activities as chemical warfare and mass killing. These apes even keep Albert Einstein on a leash, signifying man's inability to use our genius to overcome our basest instincts. While strange at times (almost David Lynch-like), I don't think this is too strange for an intellectual like Huxley. He relies on extreme images to capture his despair over the state of mankind. The time frame in which Huxley writes is telling. It's 1948, only a few years after Hiroshima and just about the time the Cold War is really cranking into gear. Huxley must have been appalled that just a few years after the most destructive war in human history, even more horrors are starting to lurk on the horizon.

Huxley makes special mention of a few of man's ideas that lead to this type of nightmare. Both progress and nationalism are killers of mankind, according to Huxley. Nationalism, or the idea that one state is divinely sanctioned over all others, leads to useless killing. As Africa and the Balkans clearly show today, Huxley is not only insightful for his own time, but also prescient for today, as well.

The idea of progress is just as important. Why, with man's ability to create, does he so often use his talents for destructive purposes? It is progress that led to industrialization, which led to cities full of people with created needs. These needs found expression through war, when one set of people decided to take things from others to fulfill their own needs.

Huxley is insightful and his views on what makes humanity tick are dead on. I thought his use of a movie script to convey his ideas was clever, even though it is uneven at times. Huxley does seem to recognize the growing importance of media in disseminating ideas, and perhaps that is why he chose the format he did. I had to chuckle over the idea of this becoming a film in Huxley's day. The Catholics, who were keeping a close eye on Hollywood at this time, would have had a field day with this script-Satanism and unusual mating rituals would send them into histrionics. You can't go wrong with Mr. Aldous Huxley by your side.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Prophetic and eerie, November 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Ape and Essence (Paperback)

Not as well-crafted as Huxley's better-known _Brave_New_World_, and I think I can guess why. Huxley, despondent over contemporary events and trends, must have felt crushed with utter despair and yet spurred by the conviction that he could not remain silent. Under such stress it's hard to attend to belleletristic niceties. Huxley also was experimenting with form. The story is presented as a stylized movie script, in the same sense that Goethe's _Faust_ is a stylized drama.

Nevertheless, this is a powerful, passionate, and haunting book. I cannot think of any other book which makes such a frighteningly real case for Evil as an operative principle in the world. Even more amazing, this case is presented under the guise of what looks and sounds like a B-grade horror flick. Imagine if, say, Dostoevsky had written his great novels as comic books -- and they still had the same terrifying, probing depth as the novels. That's essentially the effet that Huxley achieves, and it is uncanny.

Huxley is speaking of the condition of modern civilization *as it is*, under a set of grotesque, phantasmagoric masks. Unforgettable.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Novel is the Message, November 3, 2004

By 

Gary C. Marfin (Sugar Land, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ape and Essence (Paperback)

Aldous Huxley's Apes and Essence is science fiction combined with the allegorical drive of a Swift's Gulliver's Travels. It ought to assume a proud place beside other works on retro-futures -- novels like, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and films of the Mad Max genre. Huxley is convinced that we opted for the worst of both worlds -- East and West -- by failing to curb the capability of science with the wisdom and moderation of Eastern mysticism. Here too is the brave new eugenicsl, and insofar as Huxley is trying to point to this as a future dilemma, he is decisively on track.