ABSTRACT

Aldous Huxley's latest novel is apt to leave the first impression that it is a somewhat belated 'cry for madder music and for stronger wine.' There is in it a delirium of sense enjoyment, with the ever-present, listless certainty that boredom is sure to follow. An after taste of bitterness comes with reflection upon the book. It would almost seem to belong to the twilight of the Jacobins: ardent humanitarianism in politics, and new form for truth in art, and an intoxication of order, proportion, beauty in architecture and music are wearily waved away as 'really pathetic' or quaintly old-fashioned. The end of the world is at hand; why worry?