Book description
WITH A FOREWORD BY DAVID LODGE
When inspiration leads Theodore Gumbril to design a type of
pneumatic trouser to ease the discomfort of sedentary life, he decides
the time has come to give up teaching and seek his fortune in the
metropolis. He soon finds himself caught up in the hedonistic world of
his friends Mercaptan, Lypiatt and the thoroughly civilised Myra
Viveash, and his burning ambitions begin to lose their urgency...
Wickedly funny and deliciously barbed, the novel epitomises the
glittering neuroticism of the Twenties.
Aldous Huxley was born on 26th July 1894 near Godalming, Surrey. He
began writing poetry and short stories in his early twenties, but it was
his first novel,
Crome Yellow
(1921), which established his literary reputation. This was swiftly
followed by
Antic Hay
(1923),
Those Barren Leaves
(1925) and
Point Counter Point
(1928) - bright, brilliant satires in which Huxley wittily but
ruthlessly passed judgement on the shortcomings of contemporary society.
For most of the 1920s Huxley lived in Italy and an account of his
experiences there can be found in
Along The Road
(1925). The great novels of ideas, including his most famous work
Brave New World
(published in 1932 this warned against the dehumanising aspects of
scientific and material 'progress') and the pacifist novel
Eyeless in Gaza
(1936) were accompanied by a series of wise and brilliant essays,
collected in volume form under titles such as
Music at Night
(1931) and
Enda and Means
(1937). In 1937, at the height of his fame, Huxley left Europe to live
in California, working for a time as a screenwriter in Hollywood. As the
West braced itself for war, Huxley came increasingly to believe that the
key to solving the world's problems lay in changing the individual
through mystical enlightenment. The exploration of the inner life
through mysticism and hallucinogenic drugs was to dominate his work for
the rest of his life. His beliefs found expression in both fiction
(
Time Must Have a Stop
, 1944 and
Island,
1962) and non-fiction (
The Perennial Philosophy
, 1945,
Grey Eminence
, 1941 and the famous account of his first mescalin experience,
The
Doors of Perception
, 1954. Huxley died in California on 22nd November 1963.
