Customer Reviews

Jacob's Hands

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The narration of this story is more simplistic than Brave New World, but keep in mind that Jacob's Hands was written as a screenplay, not a novel. Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood have created a wonderful story and though the reading is easy, the questions brought to life in this tale are anything but. Jacob is the shy, gentle antagonist (who reminds me of John Steinbeck's Lenny)blessed and cursed simultaneously with the gift of healing. Exploited and heart-broken, he must determine the true benefit of mending the broken bodies brought to him when he can do nothing to repair their souls. Ideas in this story range from the physical hardships of the lame, to the role of spirituality in healing, to first loves and betrayal. Enjoyable and thought-provoking, I recommend this book to anyone who likes to ponder over Huxley's logic, or just enjoys to read.

Jacob's Hands is a tantalizing account of one man's eyes opening. Poor Jacob, so ingnorant of the world. He truly believes in goodness. This book is a look into the evils of human nature. Human nature is greedy and self serving, unfortunately, Jacob does not realize this. In attempt to give his love all that he can, he opens himself up to exploitation. This book is a reader's journey into the souls of the pure and the corrupt. Perhaps the authors whished us all to take a good deep look into our own souls and the manner in which we treat others. This book is just one more glorious demonstration of life by Adlous Huxley, this time with the help of Christopher Isherwood.

The story goes that in 1997 actress Sharon Stone was reading the diaries of playwright/novelist Christopher Isherwood and discovered that Christopher has collaborated on a screenplay with novelist/essayist Aldous Huxley. She asked permission to search the estate, and in a dusty trunk was found a yellowed copy of Jacob's Hands. The best guess is that the fable had been written in the late 1930's, when (as the back jacket says), "a large sector of the intellectual community of Europe immigrated to the United States, to California in particular. What they found there was Nirvana - sunshine, freedome, mysticism, and the burgeoning movie industry." The two great thinkers met amidst this illectual Utopia and wrote this work together.

This is a short book, an easy read in an hour's time. As such, it is hard to say too much without giving it all away. Jacob is a good, honest, decent, sound, strapping young man. The kind of man that sees no ill will in others because he has none in himself. He learns as a farmhand on a California ranch that he has the power to heal. The power makes other love him, suspect him, and ultimately exploit him. He loves Sharon, the daughter of his former boss on the ranch. He meets Earl, a young millionaire with need of his healing powers. The three of them form a triangle that sort of reminds me of the ending of Ethan Frome (don't ask me why, though, since it's kind of a stretch).

The overriding theme, I believe, of the book is this question: is it more important to heal the soul or to heal the body? Are they ultimately connected or mutually exclusive? There is also some discussion of how sometimes we hold on to our illness, our weakness; we are wont to let them go. Because somehow they come to define us, and we survive more with the fear than we can live without it.

There is a brief introduction to the book by Aldous' wife, Laura Archera Huxley. It is useful in the fact that she gives some background into Aldous' thoughts on healing and the moral and religious implications of such a gift. It helps to set an informed backdrop to this interesting and thought-provoking fable.

We owe it to Sharon Stone that we even have this short fable at all -- she found it thanks to her perseverance tracking down a reference made to the screenplay.

I agree with the writer below who notes that Jacob reminds him of Lenny in Steinbeck's work. He's not retarded, but he's immune to the lures of wealth and privilege. Despite the material promises stemming from his incredible ability to heal, he just wants a simple life with Sharon, the fallen character. Jacob has always loved Sharon -- the moment he cures her of her childhood disease, she literally runs off to be a singer. When Jacob finds her years later, they have the chance to go back and live in the "desert" (so many biblical allusions and overtones), but Sharon cannot give up the money left to her by a rich benefactor who was cured by Jacob but killed by his own inability to give up his disease.

The writing is vivid and reads very much like the screenplay that it is. There is something very moving about Jacob's simplicity and inability to be corrupted. A powerful little fable, worthy of rediscovery.

Saying that Huxley and Isherwood are slumming by writing a screenplay is really an unfair comparison to the Hollywood of then and the Hollywood of now. Hollywood has always produced junk, but back then they were also more likely to look for those scripts that wrote about the human condition, looking to make a picture that talked about bigger issues. The introduction and the product description on the back cover tell us that Isherwood and Huxley fled Europe for the comparative freedom of Hollywood.

"Jacob's Hands" really is more of a Twilight Zone effort than a traditional novel. It can best be described as a John Steinbeck type of simple 30 year old farmhand has the power to heal animals and most people with has hands. But, this wonderful gift has a lot of burdens, too.

The novel is clearly written for the movies. Lots of the description and scene-setting is done in that sparse style you'll see when reading scripts. Some of the characters are straight out of the stereotypes you'll see in movies from the 1930s (happy African American household servants and rich society women to name a couple). I found myself imagining a black and white movie in my head and found that it moved along remarkably well. It takes about as long to read as a movie would have to have watched the movie if it had been made. It was an enjoyable read.

I discovered this while teaching Honors for three years. Our focus was to read a sampling of both Orwell and Huxley. Well, Sharon Stone "discovered" this book in the ancestral Huxley estate while filming a short story in England. At the time, I thought that this might well be her one claim to fame, but she has resurfaced as a fine actress. An amazing read and a filmscript within a book, we come across a farm couple from North Dakota who have escaped the Dust Bowl (Most of us went to Seattle or Yakima, Washington) and their farm hand/cowboy discovers that he has the power to HEAL! This goes beyond just you basic "Hot Hand", which is still popular up here, but he must then decide how to use these powers. A strong female heroine, also, and just a sad, sad and poignant book. My students, sadly, no longer believe in any sort of "Magic", so most really didn't "GET" the book! (Honors Students are awfully narrow, surprisingly!) Anyone with ANY appreciation of literature will love this short novel: it's a newly discovered masterpiece! Buy this book NOW from Amazon.com! Use it in your classes and pass it on to friends!

First off, let me say I enjoy most of Huxley's work. The style of this book is totally different from the usual Huxley method. I've never read anything else by Christopher Isherwood. This book starts out boring, and ends boring. That's really the sum of it. The characters are flat and extremely simple. In his early work (say, pre "Brave New World"), Huxley's characters are an embodiment of one single trait. However, they are always developed well, and their thought processes are complex while remaining within this one trait. This book has the same characterization - Jacob, for example, is moronically kind and simple (think Forrest Gump). There are also the classic evil tricksters, and so on. It's not done well at all, and I left this book with a bad taste in my mouth.

Its been a very long time since I've sat down and read a book from cover to cover all in one sitting. It couldn't be helped in this case. I know this was written as a rough draft for a screenplay, but so what, I think it is complete as it is. It does what a book should do. It starts the little theater of the mind and lets you fill in the blanks. If you lack imagination, for heaven sake don't pick up this book, wait for the movie. If you prefer to create your own details, however, you can't beat this for a good read.

When I read the book, I hadn't realized it was the result of a film project. But in restrospect that makes all the sense in the world. We meet Jacob in the 'present', shift to the 'story' which explains it all, and then return to the 'present'. We follow our protagonist through the adventures presented by his natural healing powers and his genuine love for a dreaming young women. Written in a clear straightfoward style, it was all too easy to forsee the results of each action. Description leads to the obvioius mental visualization, very cinematic. The main characters are well drawn, the plot flows smoothly, and the book is a compelling read. Not particularly challenging, just simple enjoyable recreational fiction.

Interesting how Hollywood types embrace such spiritual ideas without commiting to one chosen path. This work starts with an incredible insight into some of Jesus' words yet speaks to healing as a natural and mystical experience. I'd think the Creator would be more included in the reasoning.
Well worth reading. Many, many thanks to Sharon Stone for recognizing the beauty of this fable and giving it new life at this end of the century.