Aldous Huxley

by Nicholas Murray

Book Overview

When Aldous Huxley died on November 22, 1963, on the same day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated, he was widely considered to be one of the most intelligent and wide-ranging English writers of the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0349113483
• ISBN13: 9780349113487
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

An intellectual biography of an intellectual

The biographer has done excellent exhaustive research which has pieced together much of what has been missed previously. I would caution a casual reader with limited exposure to Huxley that it may be wise to not only familiarize yourself with a majority of Aldous' works but also his contemporaries; you will also want a very good command of the English language with a bit of French, Latin and a handful of others thrown is for flavor. Further to this I, personally, thought that there was maybe a little too much of the author in the book where there could have been a little more of his subject. All in all a good read; though a bit presumptuous and lacking in perfect fluidity very illuminating and well worth the effort.

exceptionally grand

a remarkably thorough and eloquent work that captures all the essentials and much, much more. Every chapter proves to be a highly entertaining trip through the mind and life of the subject. This marvelous work is easily one of the best biographies I have ever read and far more satisfying in most ways than many others. I wholeheartedly recommend this book.

More Than Just a One-Book Author

Most people today know Aldous Huxley, assuming they know him at all, as the author of "Brave New World," which was no doubt inflicted on them in a High School English class.But Huxley was more than just a one-book author. Having been spared the carnage of the Great War due to his defective eyesight (which probably saved his life -- remember that 60,000 young Englishmen were killed in the Battle of the Somme in one day), he epitomized the weary, cynical post-war mood of the post-War 1920s in novels such as "Crome Yellow" and "Antic Hay" (the latter of which, all 100,000 words, was written in two months). These books were admired by fellow authors (among them F. Scott Fitzgerald, who would portray Huxley, who by that time had moved to Hollywood, as the author "Boxley" in his last, unfinished novel "The Last Tycoon").But Huxley turned towards mysticism and theology as he aged, helped, no doubt, by his move to California in the late 1930s. Instead of having friends like D.H. Lawrence (whose letters he edited), he instead began hanging out with Hollywood celebrities like Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx -- the latter of whom he once regaled with the idea of the Marx Brothers making a film about Marxism with Groucho playing Karl (Harpo didn't realize that Huxley was teasing, telling him that such an idea would never fly in Hollywood). His biggest credit as a screenwriter was the M-G-M adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" with Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy.His later books, such as "Ends and Means" (much admired by the American monk Thomas Merton) and "The Doors of Peception" (which would inspire the name of the famous rock band fronted by Jim Morrison) would chart his spiritual quest, which would eventually involve Huxley's experimentation with such drugs as Mescalin and LSD.It's a fascinating life, and the author tells it well, feeling free to be considerably more frank about the Huxleys and their marriage then was Huxleys previous biographer, Sybille Bedford (perhaps because Bedford had aparently bedded both of the Huxleys). The author is hampered to some extent due to the fact that a considerable amount of Huxley's papers were destroyed in a fire in the early 1960s, but he manages to tell the story of Huxley's long and interesting life in such a way that makes you want to hit the library and find some of his books.You know, for a literary biography, you can't ask for much more than that.

Highly recommended!

Nicholas Murray's new work is the first full-length biography of Aldous Huxley--author of Point Counter Point (1928), a satiric examination of early 20th-century society, and Brave New World (1932), a sharp indictment of modern technology--since the authorized biography by Sybille Bedford, published in two volumes (1973, 1974). Seeking to justify a new biography of Huxley, Murray points out that the last thirty years have seen the publication of many collected editions of letters and diaries of those who knew him--D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and many others. Murray also notes that, in addition to these published works, there is now a wealth of unpublished material, which necessitates a bringing up to date of the Huxley story. "The intimate life of Aldous Huxley and his remarkable wife, Maria, can now be more fully documented," writes urray. "Maria's bisexuality, the extraordinary menage a trois in the 1920s of Aldous, Maria, and Mary Hutchinson ["this extraordinary triangulation"]--absent for obvious reasons from previous biographical accounts--are described here for the first time." With the key dramatis personae in Huxley's life now deceased, the fully story of one of the most distinguished writers of the 20th century can now be told. A member of a distinguished scientific and literary family, the British novelist, essayist, poet, and critic Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963) was the grandson of the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), a scientist who gained fame as "Darwin's bulldog" (the staunchest supporter of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, and notoriety as a tenacious debater against antievolutionists, including scientists as well as clergy). Aldous Huxley was also the great-nephew of Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), a literary artist who, incidentally, was the author of this reviewer's favorite poem, "Dover Beach." Huxley was prevented from studying medicine because of an eye ailment that partially blinded him at the age of 16, causing a lifelong struggle with defective eyesight. Nevertheless, he became a voracious, omnivorous reader, holding his eyes close to the books he read and using a thick magnifying glass. His wife Maria also often read to him. While still a student at Balliol (Oxford University), Huxley published two volumes of poetry. T. S. Eliot, one of Huxley's friends, observed that Huxley was "better equipped with the vocabulary of a poet than with the inspiration of a oet." "Eliot was almost certainly right," says Murray, "in his view that [Huxley's] talent was for prose." Murray writes of Huxley's early days at Balliol: "Another inconvenience was having rooms opposite the Chapel, as he confided to his young friend, Jelly D'Aranyi, the concert violinist: 'one is made unhappy on Sundays by the noise of people singing hymns.' Clearly, neither Chapel nor the 'awful noise' of the hymn-singers which 'rather gets on my nerves' would appeal to the grandson of the man who invented the word

An Important Biography

There is no question that Aldous Huxley is one of the most important and influential minds of the twentieth century - a prophet, novelist, poet, dramatist and essayist that expressed some of the most interesting and disturbing commentary about the condition of human beings and their relationship to society. Huxley's concerns are our concerns - overpopulation, ecology, eugenics, fair and oppressive government, drug use and the nature of religion and art. He wrote extensively on all these subjects with eerie insight and awareness. Poet and author, Nicholas Murray, provides a window into Huxley's life and character, which shows us an intellectual continually striving for knowledge: intuitive, scientific and otherwise.As a personality, Murry points out that Huxley was an abstractionist trying to come to terms with his instinctual nature. But Huxley was probably harder on himself than any critic could be. He described himself as a 'cerebrotonic', and defines the type:"The cerebrotonic is the over-alert, over-sensitive introvert, who is more concerned with the inner universe of his own thoughts and feelings and imagination than the external world...Their normal manner is inhibited and restrained and when it comes to the expression of feelings they are outwardly so inhibited that viscerotonics suspect them of being heartless." (P.3)Huxley was anything but 'heartless'. If one reads his novels, early poetry and essays, can see that he was a humanist, presenting us with the follies of the human condition with the intention of making the world a better place.Murry paints us a portrait of a man who wrote because, '...the wolf was at the door.' He was a seeker of knowledge who wanted to join the artistic sensibility with that of the scientific. In fact, one of his last essays, 'Literature and Science' was an attempt at such a synthesis: 'Man cannot live by contemplative receptivity and artistic creation alone...he needs science and technology.' (P.451)What emerges from this text is an individual with a ravenous thirst for knowledge, an artist/scientist who wanted to pave new paths towards a more understanding world. This is an excellent biography, brilliantly written, of a complex and fascinating being.