Utterly addictive. This book had some indescribable quality about it that made it completely fascinating, although it was ostensibly about not very much at all.
Filled with the intellectual, raging, pathetic, humorous musings of all its characters, it held up so many strings all at once and never dropped any of them.

It took me a while to get all the names of the characters right (I kept confusing Burlap and Bidlake, for example, and forgetting who Walter was), but their experiences and inner monologues were so entertaining and different from each other that the names hardly mattered.

I found myself thinking about A Handful of Dust while reading the Phillip and Elinor scenes, especially towards the end. Tragedy and comedy seemed to be inextricable in all these characters' lives, and the political madness of Webley was mirrored in Rampion's worldly lifestyle, Phillip's distant lifestyle, Illidge's working-class rage and even in Elinor's matter-of-fact outlook. I found this extremely satisfying.

I loved this book!

Does man, in pursuing the intellectual, deny and suppress its natural (and often described as baser) instincts? Are these instincts just as vital, or perhaps even moreso, to the healthy human experience as knowledge, faith, and science? Is the intellectual life and the search for Truth a convenient and easy distraction from or excuse to avoid actually having to live one's life, and interact, feel, and connect with other human beings? Are these qualities exclusive to those who are well enough off financially to have the time and means to educate themselves and indulge in this lifetime of mental masturbation, while the less privileged, who are resigned to a daily life of drudgery, don't have the luxury to sit around debating deeply philosophical notions? These are just a few of the questions Huxley examines in Point Counter Point, an entire novel devoted ironically to engaging in the very actions described above.

It was a very unsettling read for me, as I found myself alternating between marvelling at the deftness with which Huxley uses his characters and dialogue to explore themes of ultimate meaning, detachment, ennui, sex, love, science, religion, etc. and feeling disgust with these privileged, hypocritical, elitist aristocrats with no real perspective beyond their own artificially created bubbles having no problems ruminating and speculating on the lives of the lower classes of which most of said characters know nothing. And yet, despite this, still adoring the minds of these characters.

Philip Quarles was my favorite character in the novel, and maybe one of my favorite characters in any novel. I relate intimately to his social detachment, his inability to hitch his wagon to any idea or notion permanently or adamantly, and his crippling awareness and self-consciousness of these qualities while at the same time being pitifully unable to change them.

This was one of those rare and special reads that comes along at the right time in one's life and hits one in exactly the right way at exactly the right time; one of those reads which in my weaker and more sentimental moments might beckon me to entertain the idea that I was somehow "meant" to read this at this moment in my life, before reason takes back the reins and dismisses that as the self-indulgent nonsense it is.

This is a celebrated novel and rightly so. Although it is based on well-known literary figures of its time, such as D. H. Lawrence and John Middleton Murray, the modern reader does not need to know their supposed identities to appreciate the skill, humour and narrative depth which this novel displays.
There is much speechifying by the various characters and at times, this slows down the pace. But it is compensated by some brilliant writing and some fairly dramatic plot twists which reach some shattering climaxes at the end of the book.
I could not warm to any of the characters and wondered, as I was reading this, whether that would cause me a problem with the novel as I whole. It did not and I would recommend the reader to persevere and appreciate what a fine piece of work this is.
PCP stands at the junction between a fairly light, satirical style and the more philosophical and thought-provoking work that Huxley produced for the remainder of his career. It is therefore an important book in his career and for twentieth-century literature.

Prima carte de o grosime considerabilă pentru care nu am niciun motiv justificabil ca să o fi terminat atât de greu. Te îndeamnă să citești frenetic. Paragrafele nu instalează acea oboseală a romanelor de idei care tânjesc după un stil prețios. Plină de pasaje care te fac să crești enorm ca spirit critic, sau după care un zâmbet îți luminează figura ca reacție la vreo ironie spontană, ori care lasă așternută curiozitatea cu privire la un personaj nou introdus. Critici și exegeze muzicale (în nota pragmatică specifică spiritului englez), cadre cinematografice așezate ca niște interludii, amintiri și solilocvii adâncindu-se în spirală și, desigur, dialoguri intrigante la care dorești să fi participat.

Punându-se în valoare reciproc, personajele, cu întreaga lor diversitate morală, socială, spirituală, denotă intuiția psihologică limpede pe care o deține Huxley. Adevăratul Illidge nu avea cum ieși la iveală fără cinismul lui Spandrell, cinism ale cărui rădăcini reies perfect din trecutul și traumele unui caracter sensibil, dar cu o intuiție ontologică sclipitoare. Experiența divinității pentru Marjorie nu s-a născut fără intervenții. Philip nu s-ar fi îndoit de puterea sistemelor și abstracțiunilor fără Elinor sau cineva ca Rampion despre care, în ciuda vehemenței cu care transformă orice părere într-un reproș, nu poți să nu admiți, cititor sau personaj fiind, că atinge fix și dureros problema depersonalizării prin mecanizare, că a înțeles... ceva. Și, chiar dac�� exemplu e un cuvânt cu infinite implicații, naturalețea, bunătatea firească și reciproca toleranță a soților Rampion nu poate fi decât invidiată. Iar apropo de amorul Londrei interbelice, cu toată promiscuitatea ei, inexistența unei concluzii pentru duetul Walter - Lucy nu era deloc necesară. Faptul că destinul lui Walter rămâne nerezolvat este un simbol bine meritat. De altfel, lucrurile se întâmplă pe măsura oamenilor.

Ca o ultimă ironie, de data aceasta îndreptată strict către realitate, detectivismul superficial al omorului din final caută entuziasmul naiv al cititorului fără spirit care, dacă a reușit să nu abandoneze romanul, poate exclama: „În sfârșit se întâmplă ceva!”

Ar fi 4,5.

Dolazi na red "in my time of need"; Huxleyju se uvijek rado vraćam.
Nije mi lako sažeti dojmove, budući da je Kontrapunkt knjiga koja je, doslovno i najjednostavnije rečeno, pretrpana svime i svačime. Odlučila sam ignorirati činjenicu da se radi o romanu, kao i samu radnju (ako ona kao takva uopće i postoji, jer dobiva se dojam da su sekvence događaja nanizane jedino sa svrhom da se izolirani esejistički zapisi nekako povežu). Premda su me pojedini dijelovi osvojili te sam se na iste vraćala za vrijeme čitanja, to isto ne mogu reći za knjigu u cjelini.
On opet piše o ljudima, secira ih. Likovi (kojih zaista ima mnogo i nije ih najlakše upamtiti, osobito u početku) iskorišteni su kao sredstva-predstavnici ideja, kao primjeri rastezljivosti granica svega što je ljudsko.
Analize i dijalozi su iscrpni i temeljiti, riječi kao da su odvagnute matematičkom preciznošću-pogađaju u srž, cinizam nenametljiv i doziran, tek toliko da začini tekst...jer neke istine trebaju malo cinizma da postanu komične. Valjda su tada lakše probavljive.
Huxleyja se nekad naziva vizionarom, čovjekom koji je bio ispred svog vremena, koji je predvidio "moderno društvo" kakvo danas imamo. A meni se čini da je samo imao istančanu sposobnost opažanja i procjene. 1928./2018.-isti ljudi, slične priče, nove okolnosti.
U svakom slučaju, većim dijelom zabavno i stimulativno štivo... :)

From Wikipedia:

In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradition, strongly developing during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period, especially in the Baroque. The term originates from the Latin punctus contra punctum meaning "point against point", i.e. "note against note".

Book titles are important.

In common parlance, counterpoint means one thing in contrast to another, often juxtaposed to create a pleasing contrast. In music, it is one of the main techniques in an orchestra to create a harmonious polyphonic experience. It is not by coincidence that this novel starts with a fairly detailed description of a music concert:

Meanwhile the music played on—Bach's Suite in B minor, for flute and strings. Young Tolley conducted with his usual inimitable grace, bending in swan-like undulations from the loins, and tracing luscious ara-besques on the air with his waving arms, as though he were dancing to the music. A dozen anonymous fiddlers and 'cellists scraped at his bidding. And the great Pongilconi glueily kissed his flute. He blew across the mouth hole and a cylindrical air column vibrated ; Bach's meditations filled the Roman quadrangle. In the opening largo John Sebastian had, with the help of Pongileoni's snout and the air column, made a state¬ment : There are grand things in the world, noble things ; there are men born kingly ; there are real conquerors, intrinsic lords of the earth. But of an earth that is, oh I complex and multitudinous, he had gone on to reflect in the fugal allegro. You seem to have found the truth ; clear, definite, unmistakable, it is announced by the violins; you have it, you triumphantly hold it. But it slips out of your grasp to present itself in a new aspect among the 'cellos and yet again in terms of Pongileoni's vibrating air column. The parts live their separate lives; they touch, their paths cross, they combine for a moment to create a seemingly final and perfected harmony, only to break apart again. Each is always alone and separate and individual. ' I am I,' asserts the violin ; the world revolves round me.' Round me,' calls the 'cello. Round me,' the flute insists. And all are equally right and equally wrong ; and none of them will listen to the others.

In the human fugue there are eighteen hundred million parts. The resultant noise means something perhaps to the statistician, nothing to the artist. It is only by considering one or two parts at a time that the artist can understand anything. Here, for example, is one particular part ; and John Sebastian puts the case. The Rondeau begins, exquisitely and simply melodious, almost a folk-song. It is a young girl singing to herself of love, in solitude, tenderly mournful. A young girl singing among the hills, with the clouds drifting over-head. But solitary as one of the floating clouds, a poet had been listening to her song. The thoughts that it provoked in him are the Sarabande that follows the Rondeau. His is a slow and lovely meditation on the beauty (in spite of squalor and stupidity), the profound goodness (in spite of all the evil), the oneness (in spite of such bewildering diversity) of the world. It is a beauty, a goodness, a unity that no intellectual research can discover, that analysis dispels, but of whose reality the spirit is from time to time suddenly and overwhelmingly convinced. A girl singing to herself under the clouds suffices to create the certitude. Even a fine morning is enough. Is it illusion or the revelation of profoundest truth ? Who knows ? Pongileoni blew, the fiddlers drew their rosined horse-hair across the stretched intestines of lambs ; through the long Sarabande the poet slowly meditated his lovely and consoling certitude.

The reason I quoted this long passage in its entirety is because it encapsulates what the novel is about, in a nutshell - an orchestra of similar, disparate and often conflicting ideas, expressed through the lives and thoughts of a handful artists and intellectuals. In its 400+ thickly populated pages, there is no "story" in the traditional sense: we have a bunch of mostly unlikable and rather unrealistic characters going about their lives, talking philosophy till about 80% of the book, when everything suddenly moves into frenzied action with the goofy speed of a silent movie and ends as abruptly as one. But then, the author does not want to entertain us with a tale - he sincerely wants to screw up our minds with ideas.

A novel of ideas is never naturalistic - because real people don't conduct long, lucid and expository conversations while eating, drinking and fornicating. Our conversations are always confused and disjointed. This is what Philip Qarles, one of the characters in the novel who happens to be a writer, has to say about the "novel of ideas":

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 become rather tiresome in the long run.

The remarkable thing that Huxley has managed is that he has made living with monsters not only non-tiresome, but enjoyable.

***

This novel was published in 1928, towards the end of the decade called the "Roaring Twenties" when the world blossomed into a prosperous bubble after the First World War (a bubble which was to disastrously burst in 1929 with the Great Depression, which would drag on until 1939 and the Second World War). It was a time of great intellectual and cultural energy (albeit confined to the big cities and its intellectual elite) and the rampant clash of conflicting ideas; ideas which are embodied through various characters by Huxley. Thus we have the staid and unemotional Philip Qarles representing the cold scientific temper; the hypocritical Burlap who represents a sentimental Christian piety; the wastrel Spandrell, who represents a sort of degraded Nihilism; Illidge, the proletarian who represents Marxism; and Mark Rampion who represents a sort of broad humanism pitted against all these "non-human" philosophies. In addition we have a host of other characters who through their personalities present a cross-section of the glittering cultural life of London, and also its dark underbelly.

The blurb says:"Through the pages of Point CounterPoint - lightly disguised and readily distinguishable - move D H Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield and her husband John Middleton Murry, and Aldous Huxley himself." I guess I am too ignorant about literature or history to recognise them; but I actually found the characters fascinating, though not endearing. Huxley has a cynical eye, and he verges on the Wodehousian when making character sketches.

This is not a fast read. It is to be savoured slowly, so that symphony of the ideas gently seep into one.

Kaleme aldım: https://www.mavikalem.net/ses-sese-ka...

Huxley never disappointed me so far. The man was a very fine writer indeed. This is one of his longer works, I think it might even be the longest novel he has wrote. It is certainly a very complex work, something I'd recommend if you: a) can appreciate a fine difference between literature and a popular novel, b) are a fan of Huxley c) want to read something that might actually make to think.

Point Counter Point is a novel featuring a colourful cast of characters. You're bound to love some, and hate the others, but they will all seem very much real to you. I read somewhere that Huxley based his characters on real people he knew, and if that is true, that explains why they feel so real. Long story short- a great cast of characters. Now, I've said there are many characters in this one- and there are as many stories as they are characters. The stories are often interwoven. There is no central plot here, but there is a lot of philosophical writing. This book is intelligently written and every debate is worth reading about. Some debates seem to continue through different stories. I immensely enjoyed following them for I do love a good debate. However, if you're looking for a more standard novel, you might end up disappointed. There is no traditional plot and no grand finish. The books merits lie mainly with intelligent writing and an excellent psychological analysis characters- and that is fine by me.

I borrowed this novel twice from the library. For some reason I thought that I haven't finished this novel. Reading it again, I realized that I had finished it. I think there wasn't another Huxley's book that I confused it with. Possibly Island, yes it might be that one. I think I started to read Island at some point, stopped and then it took me a while to pick it up and finish it. So, I ended up reading Point Counter Point twice, which is no tragedy as it is a wonderful novel. If I remember well, I had read Point Counter Point in one go. I didn't mind rereading it either, that's for sure. Nothing much to add this time around, I do still think it is an excellent novel.

Clearly modeled on classic Russian novels, particularly Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot" and especially "The Devils," I don't want to say this is a failure, but it's no Dostoyevsky. Running through a large cast of characters who both represent various philosophic points of view and also are thinly veiled portraits of Huxley's contemporaries, Point Counter Point ultimately fails to put a satisfying period at the end of all its diffuse discussion. What's the conclusion here: Huxley's kind of in love with a natural man D.H. Lawrence stand in; acting out and murdering in an attempt to draw the attention of an absent god doesn't work but it's no big tragedy if your victim is a fascist demagogue; and it sucks when your kid dies of meningitis. The drama that's here, unlike in D's novels, feels forced to give the story some sort of structure rather than the inevitable result of the characters' existences. Worse still, Huxley is artlessly bald and blunt at telling the reader what he's doing: the stand-in for himself at one point talks about his idea and goals for the novel YOU'RE READING AT THAT MOMENT, and the philosophical murderer's friends outright compare him to the Dostoyevsky character he's cribbed from. Don't even get me started on Huxley's lack of ability when writing female characters.
And yet there are a lot of small pleasures in the text, little observations and passages that are quite good and striking. And I can hardly fault a guy at least attempting a big meaty contemporary novel that isn't set in academia. The Russians perfected the big novel in the late nineteenth century, at least Huxley was still taking a swing at the form 30 years later. Forget the forest here, but there are a bunch of trees worth a look.

İçinde çok sayıda karakter bulundurmasına rağmen kafa karıştırmayan ve söyledikleriyle insanı düşünmeye zorlayan bir kitap. Okuduğum en iyi düşün kitaplarından birisi olabilir sanırım.

a witty yet observantly critical exploration of so many different ideas. too many different ideas? maybe. the extremely large cast of characters was fun and felt like a clever and complex chess game... but did get a little silly. seemed like a genuine insight into 1920s intellectualism especially with the caricatures of the figures of the day. and some genuinely interesting philosophical insights (especially from Rampion (cough cough DH Lawrence)) - but none that exist without a counterpoint. some criticism for the superficiality to all female characters (other than their interests in their children/ philandering husbands of course) but all the male characters were also pretty damn superficial, so it's more poor character writing than misogyny (but definitely a bit of misogyny).

Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley was the 4th novel of his that I've read. Time and time again I am astonished by the breadth of his writing, neither book resembling the other in more than superfluous ways. This time around, Point Counter Point reminds me more than anything of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray with its depiction of Victorian England and its profound Romanticism. If Wilde set out to exhibit morality through the contrast of the profoundly individual politics and aesthetic of Lord Henry (and of course, eventually, by Gray himself), Huxley does the same thing rather through an infinitely contrasting story. By this I mean that the story itself, with all its plots and characters, contain a never-ending opposition of views which serve to enlighten the properties being contrasted. The most glaring contrast is that of intellectualism as opposed to sensuality. As stated by The Guardian:

"Point Counter Point is a monstrous exposure of a society which confuses pleasure with happiness, sensation with sensibility, mood with opinion, opinion with conviction and self with God."

In addition to this, the actual minute details carry an unusual clarity. The first time this struck me was in an exposition of the noise found at a party.

"A jungle of innumerable trees and dangling creepers - it was in this form that parties always presented themselves to Walter Bidlake's imagination. A jungle of noise; and he was lost in the jungle, he was trying to clear a path for himself through its tangled luxuriance. The people were the roots of the trees and their voices were the stems and waving branches and festooned lianas - yes, and the parrots and the chattering monkeys as well. The trees reached up to the ceiling and from the ceiling they were bent back again, like mangroves, towards the floor . But in this particular room, Walter reflected, ... the growths of sound shooting up, uninterrupted, through the height of three floors, would have gathered enough momentum to break clean through the flimsy glass roof that separated them from the outer night. He pictured them going up and up, like the magic beanstalk of the Giant Killer, into the sky. Up and up, loaded with orchids and bright cockatoos, up through the perennial mist of London, into the clear moonlight beyond the smoke. He fancied them waving up there in the moonlight, the last thin aerial twigs of noise. But meanwhile down here, in the jungle ... Oh, loud, stupid, vulgar, fatuous."

The main running theme is as said the contrast between intellectualism and sensuality, and Huxley spares no punches on either. As for the sensual;

"Three lively terms and two still more lively vacs [of college] - discovering alcohol and poker and the difference between women in the flesh and women in the pubescent imagination. Such an apocalypse, the first real woman! And at the same time, such a revolting disappointment! So flat, in a way, after the super-heated fancy and the pornographic book.

Which is tribute to Art, said Philip. As I've so often pointed out. We're brought up to make love after high poetic models. We're brought up topsy-turvy. Art before life; Romeo and Juliet and filthy stories before marriage or its equivalents. Hence all young modern literature is disillusioned. Inevitably. In the good old days poets began by losing their virginity; and then, with a complete knowledge of the real thing and just where and how it was unpoetical, deliberately set to work to idealize and beautify it. We start with the poetical and proceed to the unpoetical. If boys and girls lost their virginities as early as they did in Shakespeare's day, there'd be a revival of the Elizabethan love lyric."

And, sparing no punches on the intellectual part of life either;

"The course of every intellectual, if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred. Many intellectuals, of course, don't get far enough to reach the obvious again. They remain stuck in a pathetic belief in rationalism and the absolute supremacy of mental values and the entirely conscious will. You've got to go further than the nineteenth-century fellows, for example; as far at least as Protagoras and Pyrrho, before you get back to the obvious in which the non-intellectuals have always remained. And one must hasten to make it clear that these non-intellectuals aren't the modern canaille who read the picture papers and listen-in and jazz and are preoccupied with making money and having the awful modern 'good time'. No, no; one isn't paying a compliment to the hard-headed business man or the low-brow. For, in spite of their stupidity and tastelessness and vulgarity and infantility, they aren't the non-intellectuals I'm talking about. They take the main intellectualist axiom for granted - that there's an intrinsic superiority in mental, conscious, voluntary life over physical, intuitive, instinctive, emotional life. The whole of modern civilization is based on the idea that the specialized function which gives a man his place in society is more important than the whole man, or rather is the whole man, all the rest being irrelevant or even positively harmful and detestable. The obvious that the intellectual gets back to, if he goes far enough, isn't of course the same as the obvious of the non-intellectuals. For their obvious is life itself and his recovered obvious is only the idea of that life. Not many can put flesh and blood on the idea and turn it into reality. The intellectuals who don't have to return to the obvious, but have always believed in it and lived it, while at the same time leading the life of the spirit, are rarer still."

Huxley aims to strike a balance between these two, finding perfected achievement in the fine balancing of intellectual, mental, life and the sensuality and "flesh and blood" of animal-driven life. In the process, he rejects both as they're usually approached in life, while still embracing them as essentially necessarily for a genuinely human experience.

"But of course, there's nobody like the lover of abstraction for denouncing abstractions. He knows by experience how life-destroying they are. The ordinary man can afford to take them in his stride. He can afford to have wings too, so long as he also remembers that he's got feet. It's when people strain themselves to fly all the time that they go wrong. They're ambitious of being angels, but all they succeed in being is either cuckoos and geese on the one hand or else disgusting vultures and carrion crows on the other.

Your absolute God and absolute devil belong to the class of irrelevant non-human facts. The only things that concern us are the little relative gods and devils of history and geography, the little relative goods and evils of individual casuistry. Everything else is non-human and beside the point; and if you allow yourself to be influenced by non-human, absolute considerations, then you inevitably make either a fool of yourself, or a villain, or perhaps both.

Nobody's asking you to be anything but a man. A man, mind you. Not an angel or a devil. A man's a creature on a tight-rope, walking delicately, equilibrated, with mind and consciousness and spirit at one end of his balancing pole and body and instinct and all that's unconscious and earthly and mysterious at the other. Balanced. Which is damnably difficult. And the only absolute he can ever really know is the absolute of perfect balance. The absoluteness of perfect relativity. Which is a paradox and nonsense intellectually. But so is all real, genuine, living truth - just nonsense according to logic. And logic is just nonsense in the light of living truth. You can choose which you like, logic or life. It's a matter of taste. Some people prefer being dead."