ABSTRACT
A long silence is hard to break. The greater the silence the harder it gets. And Aldous Huxley's long silence felt like a great one. This time no Grey Eminence emerges, and it may be with a feeling of disappointment that one reaches the last sentence of Mr. Huxley's new book. For me the disappointment had been growing throughout this short moral story, lifting here and there at some recognition of the author's fine vision; but at the end, the disappointment increased as the author closed with a comment on Christian society that would go down better at one of those religious meetings held in football stadiums where crowds stand to convert their own goal. But this is a failure that calls for preferential treatment. The reader, stranded among the debris of the contemporary novel's self-consciousness, is likely to have put more upon a new book by this writer than mere expectations. On it, he may well have pinned his faith; and however much of a let down there may be, the faith is still justified. For Mr. Huxley is not one to enjoy the cream of a religious conversion under the pretext of a penitential dose of sour milk. For him it is yogurt without sugar, the real thing, and good for you. Nor does he lobby away at some doctrinal issue to boost a literary reputation. His is the work of a wonderfully intelligent mind at fair odds with itself, a spectacle worth attention.
