Customer Reviews

Brave New World (A Play)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a very thought-provoking, interesting book, and also quite an enjoyable read, telling some unpleasant truths with a liberal touch of subtle and rather offbeat humor. Still, I can't imagine why it enjoys the spectacular reputation that it has; it is good, but it isn't THAT good. It's a fairly typical anti-scientific distopia, warning of all the horrors that will surely accompany modern society's move toward comfort, ease, and lack of personal responsibility, and away from all those marvellous old-fashioned virtues of suffering, sacrifice, self-flagellation, and martyrdom. Granted, some of its points are very true, but a great many of them are overstated past the point of caricature, and others are very debatable. (Does anyone REALLY think that the culture that created John ("the savage") and all of his foolish self-abasement is REALLY any better than the majority society in the book? Does anyone REALLY think that by quoting Shakespeare without truly understanding what he's quoting, he's any better than the "normal" folks quoting hypnopaedic brainwashing without understanding what they're quoting? The author seemed to; I don't.) Still, as I said, this makes for a very interesting and thought-provoking book, even if the thoughts it provoked in me are very different from those the author intended to provoke. And it IS a very well-crafted book.