Customer Reviews

Point Counter Point

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Hearken back those of you who remember introductory literature classes and lectures on the difference between "story" and "plot." "Point Counter Point is rather short on story, but it's absolutely dripping in plot. Not much happens that could be easily summarized on a book cover, but so much happens in the way of character development and psychological insight that the results are nearly mind-boggling. How Huxley could develop such a large cast of characters so thoroughly is one of the greatest testaments I can make to his ability as an artist, and for those who love to sink their teeth into complex characterizations and psychological motivations, this book will have you frothing at the mouth.

One should read "Point Counter Point" not for the destination, but for the journey. The ending is eerily and disquietingly ambiguous; Huxley is not as interested in passing judgements on his characters as he is in illustrating how complicated the act of living is and how there is likely no one approach to life that will adequately prepare one for its tragedies and twists of fate. A somewhat cynical point of view perhaps, and certainly not comforting to those in search of the big answers to life's big questions, but very realistic. There's hardly a page of this novel that didn't strike a chord with me and put perfectly into words either an idea I have myself or a character trait that I can instantly recognize in someone else.

Though published nearly 80 years ago, this novel feels like it could have been written yesterday (some period differences aside, of course) so relevant do these characters' conflicts, escapades, fears and desires seem. Huxley's book is a reminder that 80 years isn't all that long in the course of human events, nor really is 200, 300 or 400 years. Despite superficial advancements in technology and science, the fundamental questions of being have been mankind's greatest preoccupation for centuries and will likely go on being so.

This is a marvelous novel and perfect for a book club or literature class, as the food for debate it offers are virtually endless.

Aldous Huxley's reputation as a writer of fiction rests on three works: _Antic Hay_, _Brave New World_, and _Point Counter Point_. In this book, the most ambitious and successful of the three, he examines in detail the ideas and personalities of the British intelligentsia of the late twenties. Their politics, their sexuality, their world view, their love of life, and their fear of death are ruthlessly dissected for our delectation.

Huxley accomplishes this by developing various themes with one group of characters and then reintroducing them with another group, whose members view similar developments from a different perspective. Situations, ideas, and figures of speech recur in altered form throughout the novel. Oftentimes, he accomplishes this effect with a great deal of gentleness and subtlety.

Two brothers-in-law, Walter Bidlake and Philip Quarles, are clearly projections of Huxley at different ages. They interact with each other and the other members of the large cast of characters. A third, diabolical character, Maurice Spandrell, is more or less Huxley's Jungian shadow. D.H. Lawrence is projected into the story as Mark Rampion, and John Middleton Murry appears as Denis Burlap. We are allowed inside the minds of these five men, letting us see the events of the story from many points of view. For that matter, we are allowed inside the minds of all the characters. In particular, we are allowed inside the mind of the frighteningly seductive femme fatale, Lucy Tantamount, who is a projection of Nancy Cunard.

Communists and Fascists, apolitical seekers of wholeness, God-seekers, and bored aesthetes offer their views on the events and ideas of the time and on each other. Sometimes these oppositions escalate into violence. The crippling effects of poverty on the poor are contrasted with the pathetic efforts of their economic betters to come to terms with their personal demons.

The young rich characters have for the most part dispensed with God and busy themselves searching for a good time. But the doddering rich, the elderly quietists, the weepy inepts, the smarmy bullies, the shameless exploiters, and the sinister diabolists continue the quest. The elderly quietists come off best.

The lusts of the flesh fail as miserably as religion. Philip Quarles and his wife cannot communicate. Spandrell humiliates his conquests, but is ultimately bored with them. Lucy Tantamount is also chronically unfulfilled. Rampion's vision of wholeness and marital fulfillment serves more to highlight the deficiencies of the other characters than to inspire emulation. The elderly members of the cast no longer possess the life force necessary to seduce, and such efforts as they make end in disaster. Burlap, the truly successful seducer of the novel, is so disgusting that he will make your skin crawl.

The novel is like a machine with a thousand moving parts. It delights, it captivates, it amuses and horrifies. It sparkles with Huxley's intelligence and wit. It is sufficiently vicious in spots to gratify one's intellectual bloodlust. I enjoyed it.

I thought Point Counter Point was probably one of the best books that I have ever read. What drew me in the most was the ability Huxley has to portray many characters, all of whom are very different. The subtle way in which Huxley questions the idle spirit of modern man are at once both funny and disturbing. It is amazing how little has changed since the publication of the book...

All in all, I was left feeling awed that someone could write a book that was so good.... and I was sad to have to finish it... it was the type of book you wish could last indefinately.

I, like many, with Brave New World as my only prior exposure to Huxley, was not quite sure what to expect with Point Counter Point. Rated the #44 fiction novel of the 20th Century by The Modern Library, I felt obliged to give it a read. Firstly, it is entirely unfair, and furthermore foolishly inane, to even begin to compare it to the dystopian genre of Brave New World. It's apples and oranges.

The true mark of a genius is the irrefutable fact that his work cannot, and should not, be fastidiously placed in a box, or in essence shortsightedly confined to a category. That is readily apparent with Huxley, and more importantly Point Counter Point. A prodigious and incendiary denunciation of 1920s English aristocracy and their partners in crime, the supercilious intelligentsia. Huxley exposes them for nothing short of morally bankrupt, intellectually vacuous, and hopelessly incorrigible.

Point Counter Point strikes me as a book for the more intelligent among us, i.e., those who strive to read challenging and illuminating literature that is not only profound, but highly enjoyable as well. You will treat yourself to intensely stimulating debates between Huxley's eclectic cast of characters as they argue the merits of science, religion, communism, fascism, capitalism, fidelity, etc, etc, etc. Although Brave New World receives all of the ink (and rightly so), Point Counter Point makes an incontrovertible case that it is a definitive classic in its own right.

Aldous Huxley's 1928 novel opens with a grand London party given by Lady Edward Tantamount. Music plays. Dozens of characters cross the stage, meet briefly, argue, and part. Some go on to a restaurant that stays open past midnight; there, they meet still more characters and argue some more; several of them continue to yet another party in the early hours of the morning. We are now 100 pages into the book, a quarter of the way through. The numerous characters will continue to bump into each other over the next days and months, but the essential texture of the opening will not change.

If you Google the title, the question comes back "Did you mean Point Counterpoint?" Well, no. Counterpoint is a musical term implying line and movement: two or more voices, intertwining with one another, echoing, developing, but never standing still. Huxley certainly understands that music implies movement -- his descriptions of actual music are superb -- but his method as a novelist is essentially static: to set characters off against one another, each of whom represents a different point of view. The book is thus a series of debates, some funny, some serious, all clever. But the characters ricochet off one another like balls on a pool table; this is truly a matter of point clashing with point; there is no line, little movement, and almost no plot.

Oddly enough, Huxley has one of his characters, a writer, criticize his own method: "Novel of ideas. The character of each personage must be implied, as far as possible, in the ideas of which he is the mouthpiece. In so far as theories are rationalizations of sentiments, instincts, dispositions of soul, this is feasible. The chief defect of the novel of ideas is that you must write about people who have ideas to express -- which excludes all but about .01 per cent of the human race." And again: "The great defect of the novel of ideas is that it's a made-up affair. Necessarily; for people who can reel off neatly formulated notions aren't quite real; they're slightly monstrous. Living with monsters becomes rather tiresome in the long run." He has it right; this book IS a made-up affair, it IS tiresome, and its .01 percent of the human race consists of a handful of English aristocrats and intellectuals -- Huxley as a kind of egghead Evelyn Waugh.

Several times, I almost tossed the book away, yet kept on reading -- why? The first time was when Huxley introduces Mark Rampion, a painter and would-be novelist closely based on his friend D. H. Lawrence. Here is a character who does not come from the upper classes, whose thoughts are three-dimensional and fully worked out, and whose unconventional yet bracing morality serves as a touchstone for the other characters in the book. The chapter describing his courtship is one of the few passages where the novel of ideas becomes one of feeling, and it was riveting. Although nothing quite like that chapter comes again, I kept on because I was often amused, sometimes challenged (Huxley is an erudite author who almost demands footnotes), and increasingly aware that I was reading something that was as close to source material on the period as I was likely to find. For Huxley does not confine himself to the social and amorous goings-on typical of an early Waugh book such as A HANDFUL OF DUST. He also addresses politics (both fascism and communism are represented), religion and its substitutes, philosophy, the arts, and science. Even sex gets analyzed with an almost scientific detachment: there is a long disquisition by one of the more despicable characters on the techniques of seduction, perversion, and spiritual degradation; another embarks on what must be the first examination in literature of the phrase "sleeping around". As a reference work, this is fascinating; I just wish it were a better novel. Interesting though the numerous points are, I could have done with some genuine counterpoint.

Point Counter Point provokes all kinds of philosophical thoughts in my young, impressionable mind. But isn't that what I need? I love the way Aldous Huxley makes his readers think about their godless, fornicating lives and the impact it has on them and their world. Few authors cause me to feel the love for reading I have like Aldous Huxley does. Regardless of my age, I am a senior in high school, Huxley stampeded his way into my heart with Brave New World in ninth grade; then with Doors of Perception in eleventh; now he does it with Point Counter Point. I can live without a major plot as long as he continues to build his characters. No flat characters exist in any of Huxley's novels. Read them. Fall in love with him like I have.

In Huxley's books, its not just the plot that captivates. Huxley's insights on society and people are so on target and so truthful, it's amazing. His ability to translate truth into words is incredible. Point Counterpoint is no exception:

"Work's no more respectable than alcohol, and it serves exactly the same purpose: it just distracts the mind, makes a man forget himself. Work's simply a drug, that's all. It's humiliating that men shouldn't be able to live without drugs, soberly; it's humiliating that they shouldn't have the courage to see the world and themselves as they really are."

"But there is in debauchery something so intrinsically dull, something so absolutely and hopelessly dismal, that it is only the rarest beings, gifted with much less than the usual amount of intelligence and much more than the usual intensity of appetite, who can go on actively enjoying a regular course of vice or continue actively to believe in its wickedness."

"But the very possession of a body is a cynical comment on the soul and all its ways. It is a piece of cynicism, however, which the soul must accept, whether it likes it or no."

If these statements strike you as surprisingly truthful, then Huxley is for you.

The theme of Point Counterpoint concerns the mind/body dichotomy, which I think is really interesting. It makes you think about yourself a little differently than you may be used to.

Lots of people have overanalyzed and overhyped the books on this site, but let me tell you this: Point Counter Point is Huxley's finest work. Sure "The Doors of Perception" and "Brave New World" are popular titles, (popularized by quasi-intelligent hippies who THINK they understand things) but Point Counter Point really shows just how perceptive and thorough Huxley's literary style is. If you can disassociate Huxley's "cult" fans from his actual work, this is the one title I would reccomend. Stunning....

Many years ago I saw the Masterpiece dramatization of Aldous Huxley's "Point Counter Point." I have finally found time to sit down and read the original text. This is a wonderful novel. Huxley's command of English is striking. He is an artist- except that he uses words and not paint brushes to fill in the canvas. Some have compared "Point Counter Point" to Thackery's earlier work "Vanity Fair." They were not wrong. It is interesting to note that Huxley writes of the deep cynicism and hypocrisy that infected post-WWI Europe. He captures a jaded society that has lost all moral bearings. He characters are cruel and brutal with their emotions and intellectual swords. Thackery also wrote after a long conflict- the Napoleonic Wars- and similarly captures a society bent on seeking pleasure and material satisfaction. Perhaps a major difference is that Thackery's characters are funny and amuse. Many of Thackery's creations would actually be fun to meet in person. Who would not want to spend an exhausting evening with Becky Sharp or the foppish Josh? The characters in Huxley's novel are far from agreeable. In fact, I could not wish to meet any of them in real life. However, Huxley captures an age. In fact, reading "Point Counter Point" I now understand better the collapse of the West in the face of Nazi aggression. Appeasement and the rapid collapse of France's Third Republic have always been a mystery to me. Huxley provides a clue- Western Europe after WWI had lost its moral compass and inner strength. The characters of Lucy Tantamoun and Burlap were bereft of true emotional empathy with their fellow human beings. Where Thackery paints a picture driven by material gain; Huxley tells of a society that suffers extreme ennui and moral abandonment, driven only by the pleasures of petty cruelty and puerile interests. This is a must read for anyone wanting to better understand the late 1920s and the onset of the 1930s. Otherwise, read it for the sheer pleasure of experiencing Huxley !

This striking portrait of early 20th century high society is the first book I read by Aldous Huxley. While exposing the lavish lifestyle of the literary and social elite as one of hypocracy and shared animosity, it also carries a strong philisophical undercurrent. He uses the satirical charaterizations to expound on his personal docterine, and does so in a way that is both accessable and entertaining.
At times the book tended to be a tad meandering, without any real plot-driving focus of conflict, but somehow the lack of a linear plot deveopment is not that big of an issue once you get caught up in the flow of his writing style. I do caution readers to avoid the foreward, as it reveals one of the few major plot developments.
This is one of my all time favorite novels, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys biting satire, brilliant dialogue, and discourses on a variety of subjects that are still applicable nearly a century later. And how can one resist a book that fits in the phrase "the stertorous borborygmy of dispepsia"?