I found myself reading this and Mythago Wood at the same time, and though the plots aren't remotely similar, the experience of reading them is, so I'm going to give them the same review, essentially. I decided to read both these books because they'd been recommended in one of those books where someone recommends other books (which are so often more fun to read than the books they suggest reading). They both feel like the product of the early 1940s (though neither of them is, though the Huxley novel is close enough that that makes sense). They're both slow, ponderous, pontificating, sexist, and dull. I didn't like either. I stopped reading the Huxley after 1/3 of the way through, and Mythago Wood had me limping along till about 60% when I skimmed the rest and felt vindicated.

But, at least I tried, and I know. I will no longer fear that this book will be my all-time favourite if only I'd read it, because I made the attempt and it isn't, done. On to the next.

But what a shame to have this one-two punch. Funnily enough, the next book I tried was Fritz Leiber's Our Lady of Darkness which also has an old-ish feeling to it, lots of pontificating (and quoting others pontificating, worse), and yet so far it's a delight (I'm 70% in). So it's not what you do, it's how you do it.

(Note: I'm a writer myself, so suffer pangs of guilt every time I offer less than five stars. These aren't ratings of quality, just my subjective account of how much I liked them: 5* = one of my all-time favourites, 4* = enjoyed it, 3* = readable but not thrilling, 2* = disappointing, and 1* = hated it.)

Maybe a 7/10?

Huxley wrote this book after defecting to the US from the UK in 1938 and this book was his first effort at writing of this experience. But that is only one aspect of the book. It is difficult to classify the novel. Is it a “serious” novel, whatever that is? A hilarious comedy? A shocking horror book? Science fiction? A political, philosophical or theological treatise? A show of English erudition? It is really all of the above.

Huxley was an English pacifist, the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley who publicly defended the ideas of reclusive Charles Darwin and won the nickname of “Darwin’s Bulldog.” Growing up, Huxley was surrounded by science, especially biology, and this is evident in the novel.

The book begins as a theater of the absurd look at the California of 1938 from the incredulous English viewpoint, keying on the ludicrous billboard advertisements – from CLASSY EATS to BEVERLY PANTHEON, THE PERSONALITY CEMETERY to JESUS IS COMING SOON. As is clear throughout the book, the fear of senescence and death are central. Hyper-rich and education-poor Jo Stoyte has hired Oxford English scholar Jeremy Pordage to sort, classify and file the Hauberk Papers, literally crates of notes from the earldom of the Hauberk family dating back to the 17th century. Stoyte is very business-savvy, rich and has accumulated hundreds of works of art (even a Vermeer in the elevator) and the Hauberk Papers are just another addition to his voluminous but haphazard collection. Living at Stoyte’s castle are also young, innocent scientist Peter Boone researching longevity (Stoyte is scared to death of death), Virginia Maunciple (Stoyte’s dolly), Dr. Sigmund Obispo who is Stoyte’s live-in doctor. Living close-by is Stoyte’s childhood friend and Huxley’s philosophical mouthpiece, William Propter who extemporaneously expounds on his political, theological, etc. philosophies at several points.

The theme of the book is the fear of aging and death that obsesses Stoyte. Although he own the fabulous and infamous “Beverly Gardens Cemetery” he cannot face death or is probably inability to enjoy his sugar-baby intimately. So, he hires young, energetic, unsullied Peter Boone to FIND A WAY!! to live a lot longer and with a wire in his wick. How to live longer??? Stoyte knows that the carp he stole and live in his pond are over 200 years old. If a damned fish can live that long, why not Jo Stoyte??? One eventual clue is a well-known biological process – neotony.

The basic premise of the biological effect is “neotonization.” It is clear that humans are a bizarre ape, now classified as one of the African Great Apes. One process proposed for creating humans is the retention of childlike characteristics into adulthood. Thus, as adults, humans partially resemble the immature ape, while chimps and gorillas continue maturing into the expected adult ape. Would we live longer if we could find some magic secret of biology? If so, what would happen to us if we lived for 200 or 300 years?

Huxley was a genuine intellectual, not only knowing lots of “stuff” but also thoughtfully considering implications of this “stuff.” Huxley, through Bill Propter’s mouth, preaches of the evils of poverty, various government systems, and life in general. The diversion from the story to related but several long tangential philosophical discussions reminded me of a scene I made after church one Sunday at age 6. The minister asked how I liked the service. I told him that I liked the music but the advertisement was too long. Wrong move, of course.

This is a serious but long-neglected book by Huxley that links his “Brave New World” and “Ape and Essence“ books with his “Brave New World, Revisited.” It is not a long book, is filled with ironic humor to season the seriousness. And the end is a winner!

All told, I believe it took me nearly 3 months to get through this book. While I am in agreement with Huxley's general way of thinking, I guess I should've known better than to pick up this book. I have trouble getting through books written before, definitely, WWII. I find the style of writing tedious and boring, overly descriptive of everything unimportant to the main plot.

This book, once I cut through all the excessively ponderous prose, boiled down to an observation piece about decadence, inane human drama, and the futile search for the fountain of youth. Along the way there was a lot of random tangents, none of which I seemed to have found particularly of note before about halfway through the book. Then Huxley starts launching into speeches, through the character of Propter, about socialism and how it would be much more helpful to the majority of people if only everyone got on board and weren't so damned greedy. One quote which made me think that the greedy/rich never change stood out to me: "Power and wealth increase in direct proportion to a man's distance from the material objects from which wealth and power are ultimately derived." So true, as much today as it was in the 30s when this was written.

Second to his speeches on greedy/money were the speeches on religion. The argument being made is long and convoluted, but I found it interesting that one of the characters seemed to be pushing the idea of Buddhism wrapped with some Christianity. It tied it back to the idea of socialism and everyone doing things not for the individual/greed, the main idea of Buddhism of letting go of materialism and selfishness in thought. "God is completely present only in the complete absence of what we call our humanity...But let eternity experience itself, God may be sufficiently often present in the absence of human desires and feelings and preoccupations: the result will be a transformation of that life which must be lived, in the intervals, upon the human level."

Surprisingly, near the end one of the topics brought up was sexuality and not just heterosexual, traditional gender-role discussion. The mention itself was actually about how abnormal human sexuality can be considered when compared to every other animal in the world. "They could only be judged in reference to ultimate aims of each individual and the results observed in each case. Thus, if an individual wanted to be well thought of in any given society, he or she could safely regard as 'normal' the type of sexual behavior currently tolerated by that local religion and approved of by the 'best people.' But there were some individuals who cared little for the judgement of an angry God or even of the best people. Their principal desire was for intense and reiterated stimulation of their sense and feelings. For these, it was obvious, 'normality' in sexual behaviour would be quite different from what it was for the more social-minded."

Between the parts on socialism, religion, and sexuality, I can only imagine who did or would've grabbed the pitchforks against Huxley. Here's more quotes I found of note:

-Man cannot live by bread alone; but if he chooses to nourish his mind on the wrong kind of spiritual food, he won't even get bread. He won't even get bread, because he'll be so busy killing or preparing to kill his neighbours in the name of God, or Country, or Social Justice that he won't be able to cultivate his fields.

-Allegedly quoting a 19th century Earl: My opinion of the Peerage and the landed Gentry is exceedingly low; but their own opinion of themselves must be even lower than mine. _They_ believe that the Ballot will rob them of their Power and Privileges, whereas _I_ am sure that, by the exercise of even such little Prudence and Cunning as parsimonious Nature has endowed them with, they can with ease maintain themselves in their present pre-eminence. This being so, let the Rabble amuse itself by voting. An Election is no more than a gratuitous Punch and Judy Show, offered by the Rulers in order to distract the attention of the Ruled. [Also very true, still so today.]

The end, though, got in a way really weird, but at the same time was pretty expected considering the lead-up in the background of the Stoyte story and his fear of getting old and dying. I don't even know what to say about it other than I was just glad it was over. It was like a horror story was written and then all of this philosophy got sandwiched into it and the author decided to go back to the horror story at the end and sort of gave it a Shelley ending. Bizarre. I don't know to whom I would recommend this book. :

The last enemy to be conquered is death. Or greed? Or capitalism? It remains to be seen...

Dopo molte estati muore il cigno è un romanzo dalla doppia natura: se da una parte Huxley imbastisce una trama molto semplice che riserverà alla fine le sorprese migliori, dall'altra parte il romanzo ha un sottotesto molto ricco. Tutto il romanzo rappresenta innanzitutto una forte critica al sistema statunitense di cui Huxley viene a conoscenza dopo il suo trasferimento in America. Tutto il romanzo è basato sulla ricerca della vita eterna e dell'ossessione dei personaggi riguardo la morte, che alla fine diventa specchio di un'intera società. Inoltre il racconto è pieno di disquisizioni filosofiche tra i personaggi per quanto riguarda la morale, la religione, la giustizia, la vita, la morte, ecc. Anche se Huxley eccede troppo in queste digressioni, queste ultime non risultano eccessivamente pesanti. Il romanzo alla fine è un gioiello nascosto della produzione di un autore che è riconoscibile per tutta la durata romanzo anche se i temi trattati sono lontani dalle sue opere più famose.

I didn't finish this book. The material was too heavy to enjoy, though I do like the way Huxley writes his books. This book wasn't nearly as witty as his other satire.

Brilliant book..... couldn't put it down.

Someone called this book a ‘rollecoaster of conflicting philosophies and moods’ which I think is the perfect way to describe this novel.

Enjoyed it at the start and some other points of the novel but lost interest the more i read it, had to force myself to stick this one out ngl. I really enjoyed Huxley’s previous writing but this one was sadly not it☹️

Written when Huxley left England and settled in Southern California, After A Many a Summer satirizes Los Angeles culture (money-driven excess, gimcrack reproductions of classical European art and architecture, only bigger) in a way that is quite like Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One (which actually came out 8 years later).
There are a number of stereotypes (grossly exploitative capitalist, his crassly shallow younger show-girl mistress, a gee-whiz young man of science) and a pair of Englishmen, one of whom represents the old world and its intellectual values, the other who espouses a sort of Fourierism, coupled with an extreme self-abnegating Christian mysticism bordering on Buddhism.
The narrative veers wildly between fast-moving satire and extremely long philosophical and aesthetic conversations which first seem like they must be intended to be some sort of satire as well but ultimately go on for long that you realize the writer is (somewhat awkwardly) presenting them seriously.
Several of Huxley's themes from other books recur - the mystic seeking, distrust of capitalism and technology (peas in a pod) and eugenics, the latter via an unexpected science fiction turn late in the book.

Very good. Much better than Point Counter Point. This is a book that is ultimately funny but only in retrospect. Much love for it and perfectly willing to take the title, hence forth, of Dr. Obispo.

During the summer, I prefer to read something a little less challenging, but I gave Huxley's novel a shot. I found the plot to be fairly light, but the ideas presented by the proselytizing characters were interesting. Huxley obviously wanted to discuss big ideas, and the story was simply a vehicle for those ideas. At times, it became a long marathon of reading and thinking and mostly wishing the story would just get on with itself. By the final page, I was happy to have run the marathon, read the book rather, but I only felt partially satisfied.