Huxley typical style is still found here but it is the first of his books that I've read that feels like it loses its own point half way through. All of this books seem to have the 1/3-1/2 of the way through massive intellectual discussion but they are always gratifying in their relevance to the plot and themes at hand. The long academic discussions and readings in "After Many a Summer" feels coherent but useless.

Between a 2 and a 3. While I didn’t love it, I definitely appreciate the messages and will think of this book often. I enjoyed the pieces with plot - it’s actually very juicy - and the way that Los Angeles and the house was described, got bogged down by the philosophical Mr. Propter stuff, though it did make me think in a way that felt rewarding. So many banana splits.

Reminded me of: A LOT! Hanya Yanagihara’s The People in the Trees, Ex Machina, Lana Del Rey, the Mad Men finale, Ari Emanuel on the Freakonomics podcast, the pseudo-intellectual in Midnight in Paris, me buying Colostrum from an Instagram ad, geometry proofs, Phantom Thread, that creepy startup guy trying to live forever, The Emperor’s New Groove

A philosophical and spiritual novel pitting transcendence against the very American (or Western) ideal of living forever. Although this novel starts off rather slow, it picks up exponentially, producing a very horrifying yet comical end.

Best known for his dystopian satire "Brave New World", British author Aldous Huxley also wrote a number of satirical novels best described as bordering on the genre. "After Many a Summer" is one of these, as the plot revolves around am eccentric Hollywood millionaire looking to stave off death through medicine.

Other characters involve the virile macho scientist researching longevity in reptiles and fish, the millionaire's teenage mistress, a cleric with socialist leanings, and most importantly, a British historian hired to archive a storage room filled with old documents, some of which concern a couple who had been doing similar longevity research nigh 200 years earlier. All these are cooped up in the millionaire's Disneylandish castle-like estate, built on the ruins of an old mansion.

Huxley wrote the novel shortly after he had moved to the Statesm and it is a clever, abdurdist critique of what he saw as an American fixation with wealth, youth, sex and superficiality. It's Huxley at his best, unfolding the story slowly and carefully, mostly through mundane discussions that gradually turn ever more surreal, until a final plot twist pushes it squarely into SF territory.

Huxley is one of our greatest satiricists and SF authors, weaving social and philosophical themes into his quietly hilarious tales. "After Many a Summer" is one of his masterpieces.

Oh, this book was utterly captivating. And it ends with a bang. Wow. I definitely loved it.

This book is part satire, part philosophical novel, part horror novel. It tells the story of Jo Stoyte, a California multi-millionaire, who is overweight and not in the best shape, yet is worried about his inevitable death. He has lots of money, and for him, he tries to buy everything with it, even immortality. He hires many people around him to advance endeavours intended to prolong life: there's Dr. Obispo and his assistant Pete, whose job is to research longevity from a scientific perspective. There's also Jeremy Pordage, an archivist from England, who was imported into California to do research on old texts (Stoyte feels like as a millionaire, he needs to be knowledgeable on the arts and literature, so he outsources these). There's also Virginia, who is Stoyte's young mistress, but is constantly raped by Dr. Obispo. And finally, there's Mr. Propter, a childhood acquaintance of Stoyte, who aims to improve the lives of the labourers that Stoyte employs in his estate.

Each character is essentially a representation of a moral perspective. Huxley's own view is more or less represented by Mr. Propter. Dr. Obispo is very science-driven: for him, scientific advancement is the pinnacle of happiness and success, so his choices are driven by it, even if it can be otherwise morally questionable (he agrees to cover up a murder for example in exchange for money, in order to further his scientific research). Stoyte on the other hand is the typical corrupt person, who thinks that every problem can be solved if you throw money at it.

While in the beginning, the novel was hard to get into, eventually it got me hooked. The novel is set in the early 20th century, where people had large estates and traveled by cars and crossed the Atlantic Ocean with ships instead of aeroplanes. There is plenty of philosophical dialogue, which surprisingly was very enjoyable to read. I loved how the book shifted between various moral perspectives, putting each point of view under the microscope. And of course, in the end, there's a bizarre surprising ending which just scared the wits out of me.

Overall, this was definitely an enjoyable read, and something I can recommend. Most people only know Huxley with his two famous novels, n  Brave New Worldn and n  Islandn. I loved those two books, hence I wanted to read his other works. So far, it seems I am enjoying it. I give this 4 out of 5 stars.

See my other book reviews here.

O livro é incrível. A constante sátira a sociedade consumista americana, o conflito já bastante presente na obra de Huxley envolvendo espiritualidade, materialismo, progressismo e hedonismo, e a personificação do último num personagem que busca a vida eterna a todo custo, inspirado em William Randolph Hearst, o mesmo que inspirou Cidadão Kane.

Propter um dos personagens desta obra encarna muitas ideias presentes no budismo e no hinduísmo, mas em jargão ocidental. Vemos os conceitos de karma e nirvana por exemplo bastante evidentes no seu discurso, ele busca a transcendência do desejo e da aversão, ir além do que é humano.

Obispo é um homem da ciência engajado na tarefa de descobrir como expandir a longevidade, ele encarna a posição materialista de maneira muito evidente.

Há também Pete, um jovem cientista com ideais progressistas que lutou na Guerra Civil Espanhola.

Virgínia, a Suggar Baby de Stoyte, desperta sentimentos diversos em cada um deles, Stoyte oscila entre sentimentos paternos e luxuriosos, enquanto Pete a endeusa e Obispo apenas a deseja.

O enredo começa com Pordage, um acadêmico britânico que possui uma relação bastante freudiana com a mãe sendo contratado para catalogar os documentos de uma antiga família da aristocracia. Pordage logo fica impactado com a extravagância do seu patrão, Stoyte, e boa parte do que se segue antes do plot twist (que por acaso é muito bom) são diálogos evidenciando essas diferentes posições filosóficas e teológicas entre os personagens.

"Casamo-nos; a casa passa a albergar duas solidões em vez de uma."

"Mas a questão é que ninguém lê literatura para compreender; lê para reviver sentimentos e sensações excitantes do passado."
*

Este livro de Huxley é um pouco aborrecido e vale mais pelas reflexões que surgem nas discussões de algumas personagens do que pela história em si. O centro do livro de Huxley é a descoberta de uma forma de viver mais, de viver sempre, mas bem. Há experiências com animais, dietas e bactérias. E uma personagem que escolhe o poder e a sabedoria, quase como um Fausto, em vez da alegria. Li-o para o projeto #livronumfilmeadaptadodeumlivro e o livro aparece no filme "A Single man", que adoro profundamente.

"A single man" (2009), é um filme de Tom Ford com Colin Firth (genial), Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode e Nicholas Hoult. E é, a todos os níveis, fantástico. A narrativa de um professor de literatura cujo parceiro morreu num acidente e que pensa suicidar-se me breve é bastante simples, aparentemente. Mas há personagens que gravitam em volta dele e fazem com as coisas se reajustem. E há uma casa extraordinariamente bela, uma amiga um pouco doida, vizinhos estranhos, alunos interessados, colegas tontos. E tudo filmado com um ritmo lento, belo, em que todos os pormenores são pensados e ajustados a uma estética de beleza, com um trabalho de fotografia e cenografia fenomenal. E não me alongo sobre a banda sonora de Abel Korzeniowski, que é incrível! O filme é adaptado do romance homónimo de Christopher Isherwood, que também li, e é um daqueles casos eu que eu posso dizer, embora sejam de objetos artísticos diferentes, que gosto mais do filme do que do livro.

Ora, professor de literatura, tem de ler! Vemo-lo e ler em diferentes momentos, as "Metamorfoses" de Kafka, a dada altura, enquanto o companheiro lê "Boneca de Luxo" de Truman Capote e também "After many a summer" (em Portugal: "Também o cisne morre") de Huxley, que está a trabalhar com os alunos nas aulas.

Porquê este livro em "A single man"? Talvez devido à filosofia (hindu?) de desprendimento que ambos os escritores partilhavam para melhor falar de um tema ainda tabu na época, a homossexualidade. Em "A Single man", George, o protagonista, está na mesma luta contra a vida e contra o tempo e está a perder. O livro e o filme são também sobre a perda e o luto e, por fim, sobre a solidão. Há uma cena interessante de análise do livro que deixo nos comentários.

t"há escolas e sítios que deixei e nem sequer percebi que estava a deixá-los. Detesto isso. Não me importo que seja um adeus triste ou um mau adeus, mas quando deixo um lugar, gosto de saber que o deixo. Se não, a gente ainda se sente pior." (p.12)

Eu estava mesmo a gostar deste livro nas primeiras páginas: o estilo, a irreverência e rebeldia, a quebra de regras mais ou menos aceites e a suspeita de que vinha aí uma boa história... pois é... Até a personagem principal, Holden, sair da escola, a coisa ia bem e rápida. Mas o discurso fraco, feito de "porcaria", "e tal" e "assim" já começava a irritar. Além disso, o rapaz confessa-se um leitor voraz de boa literatura e tem um discurso tão pobre? Hum... Bom, depois de sair da escola foi um nada de nada, para mim, que só melhorou com a relação com a irmã e com o antigo professor no final (embora aquela parte da suspeita de pedofilia, que ele chama de mariquice ou algo deste género fosse desnecessária...). E pronto, para mim não resultou - nem tenho pena que não tenha resultado.

"O que realmente me enche as medidas é um livro que, depois de acabarmos de o ler, nos faça desejar que o autor que o escreveu fosse um grande amigo nosso e pudéssemos telefonar-lhe sempre que nos desse para aí." (p.27)

Livro lido para o projeto "Livro num filme adaptado de um livro" (1 por mês, num ano):

Out. "Mrs Dalloway" lido/referido em "The Hours";
Nov. "Oblomov" lido/referido em "La délicatesse";
Dez. "Tom Jones" lido/referido em "Atonement";
Jan. "Armance" lido/referido em "Call me by your name";
Fev. "Aventuras de Tom Sawyer" lido/referido em "Fahrenheit 451" (1966);
Mar. "Middlemarch" lido/referido em "The Bookshop/La Libreria".
Abr. "À Espera no Centeio" lido/referido em "Shinning"; "Fahreinght 451" (1966); "As vantagens de Ser Invisível" (pelo menos)
Mai. "As Crónicas Marcianas" lido/referido em "The Bookshop/La Libreria"
Jun. "A Loja de Antiguidades" lido/referido em "The Reader"
Jul. "Também o cisne morre" lido/referido em "A single man"

Definitely a philosophical novel. Long, dense passages of utilitarianism, examination of Fascism and Socialism, and how neither liberates the human. J. Krishnamurti's influence on Aldous Huxley is detected. Interspersed with comic relief of the megarich capitalist's estate of gaudiness, hypocrisy in action. At some parts the reader dispiritedly acknowledges little has changed in 84 years.

The first chapter had me thinking After Many a Summer Dies the Swan was going to be a send-up like The Loved One. I suppose a historical essay on man's vanities, false beliefs, and idiocies can be funny occasionally if some smut and black humour are interspersed.

More than longevity, this is a novel of excess. The rich's excess without understanding or enlightenment. In fact the obscenely rich, Jo Stoyte, stagnates as a paranoid, violent, petulant human... animal.
A novel only Huxley fans will like. Dense, beautiful prose, highly philosophical. Mr. Propter is our moral compass in this journey. The ending is DISMAL, but cheesus, Huxley is a genius of unparalleled philosophy and writing.

"And if we want to live under the first [Constitution], we've got to recreate something like the conditions under which the first was made," theorizes a character here, thus offering the best line of the book. This 'Mini-Mann's-Magic-Mountain' ("Swan" was published 15 years after "Magic" by the way ) spin has a guy arriving in Los Angeles (instead of Mann's Switzerland) who travels through L.A. and up to what is described as an ugly mess of a mansion (instead of Mann's sanitarium) which sounds like the one used in a number of 1950s and 60s B-level Vincent Price-type horror films (which for me were, and still are, a blast to watch). A set of misfits discuss BIG IDEAS such as immortality but on page 223 (of 356 pages), Huxley writes: "So that, taking all things into consideration, there was really no reason why anyone should do anything much about anything." Including, perhaps, turning the page? I did anyway but there really was no reason to read the last third of this book. Gotta appreciate Huxley's warning, and we can't disregard the author's stupendous, pretentious title, so two stars because at least the author recognized his own mostly pointless ramblings. Besides, after reading this year's award-winning "Lincoln in the Bardo" (which I generously rated 1 star), I'm finding it difficult to place other works at the same low level. Yes, absolutely, "After Many a Summer Dies the Swan" is masterpiece compared to recent award winning books like "Bardo" and "All the Light We Cannot C". I should know by now that fiction books with pretentious titles that don't have "Who is John Galt" as the opening line are best avoided.

1/10
A terrible book. One of those that has a point / a philosophy to espouse, and then chooses to concoct a story around it that is not essential, an afterthought even, which has barely merit on its own. Reminiscent of 'Stranger in a Strange Land' only less interesting. This book was mostly tedious, and then the big pay-off, the conclusion was almost outside the story itself, and most random and obscure. Could have happily given this up at any point, were that my way. First enjoyable page came 79 pages in.

What does one learn? That (I speculate) Huxley visited working ladies in Maida Vale for some weekend fun. That he had a domineering mother. Also interesting was his portrayal of the dastardly, obnoxious but very masculine Dr Obispo who gets the girl who is dashed on the rocks of his charm, and how the sweet, loving boy Peter does not. Shades of 'Hangover Square' in Peter Boone's unrequited infatuation with Virginia.

Quotes
p21 "...'that you're probably the sort of person that invites persecution. A bit of a murderee, I'm afraid, as well as a scholar and a gentleman."

p 161 "One scratched like a baboon, he concluded; one lived, at fifty-four, in the security of one's mother's shadow; one's sexual life was simultaneously infantile and corrupt; by no stretch of the imagination could one's work be described as useful or important."

p171: "There was only thing that was clear, and that was that the Baby meant more to him than he had thought, more than he had ever believed it possible that anyone should mean to him. It had begun by just his want her - to touch, to hold, to handle, to eat; wanting her because she was warm and smelt good; wanting her because she was young and he was old, because she was so innocent and he was too tired for anything not innocence to excite. That was how it had begun; but almost immediately something else had happened. The youth of hers, that innicence and sweetness - they were more than just exciting. She was so cute and lovely and childish, he almost felt like crying over her, even while he wanted to hold and handle and devour.

Really a waste of time. Would be better to have Huxley's theories, and the passages laying these out as a ten page article. The story added abysmally little.

Actual Rating: 4.3

— — — — —— —— ——- - — —- - -

A PHILOSOPHICAL DIALOGUE WRAPPED IN STORYFORM

“God is love, there is no death”

This is one of Aldous Huxley’s lesser known novels but I think it is an absolutely perfect embodiment of his core belief system and the personal stance he takes when it comes to the intersection of science and technology with personal spiritual beliefs. Also, this belongs to the marvellous genre that is philosophical fiction, mind you though, there are monologues that go so deeply into the idea being discussed to the point that you forget all about the story and the context happening around it. Although the philosophy /psychology nexus overtakes for the most part.

The range of character in this novel is quite wide but the central juxtaposition of the economically modest intellectual who was hired to sort out a ‘potentially valuable volume of literature’ that could benefit a Hollywood man’s new found mission and said rich imbecile who hires him is quite brilliant. The plot I think is quite relatable and particularly timely with the rise of the ‘VAMPIRE MAN’ - no hate though, I respect his discipline - since the novel is about a wealthy man who wants to live forever. The title of the novel even comes from a poem based on the Greek mythology of the goddess who blessed a man with eternal life but NOT eternal youth, analogously to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, it is easy to misinterpret the allure of longevity.

Around the two main characters Pordage and Stoyte, we have his brilliant childhood friend, dignified but morally grounded communist Mr. Propter, loving sensual Virgina, gullible Pete and practical Dr. Obispo.

But honestly while reading the book, expect to be bombarded with startlingly intriguing dialogue that makes you THINK. Whether the discussion taking place is tilting the scale towards deep theological debate or trying to decompose the delicate levers of human psychology to understand human nature and why people behave in the way they do, there is absolute delight to be found in reading Huxley’s frenzies, I leave you with one of my favourites

“Captured or uncaptured, every city and nation has its being on the plane of the absence of God. Has its being on the plane of the absence of God, and is therefore foredoomed to perpetual self-stultification, to endlessly reiterated attempts at self-destruction. Barcelona had fallen.

But even the prosperity of human societies is a continual process of gradual or catastrophic falling. Those who build up the structures of civilisation are the same as those who undermine the structures of civilisation . Men are their own termites, and must remain their own termites for just so long as they persist in being only men.

The towers rise, the palaces, the temples, the dwellings, the workshops ; but the heart of every beam is gnawed to dust even as it is laid, the joists are riddled, the floors eaten away under the feet.

What poetry, what statues — but on the brink of the Peloponnesian War ! And now the Vatican is painted just in time for the sack of Rome. And the Eroica is composed — but for a hero who turns out to be just another bandit. And the nature of the atom is elucidated — by the same physicists who volunteer in war-time to improve the arts of murder.

On the plane of the absence of God, men can do nothing else except destroy what they have built — destroy even while they build — build with the elements of destruction. Madness consists in not recognizing the facts ; in making wishes the fathers of thoughts; in conceiving things to be other than they really are; in trying to realize desired ends by means which countless previous experiments have shown to be inappropriate.

Madness consists, for example, in thinking of oneself as a soul, a coherent and enduring human entity. But between the animal below and the spirit above there is nothing on the human level except a swarm of constellated impulses and sentiments and notions ; a swarm brought together by the accidents of heredity and language ; a swarm of incongruous and often contradictory thoughts and desires.”