4.5 ⭐️

Wow. Wow. Se “Il mondo nuovo” mi è piaciuto, “Ritorno al mondo nuovo” raggiunge un altro livello. Vi consiglio tantissimo di leggerli entrambi, si completano davvero bene.

IL MONDO NUOVO: “Il mondo nuovo” è un distopico, uscito nel 1931, che ci parla di una società futura decisamente diversa dalla nostra. Se dico “distopia” sicuramente vi verranno in mente governi opprimenti, controllo 24/7, un’atmosfera di paura, violenza e repressione. Invece, questo “mondo nuovo” controlla la popolazione non con il dolore o il terrore, ma bensì tramite il piacere. Tutti hanno quello che desiderano, subito. Le persone nascono in laboratorio, sono programmate e condizionate fin da piccolissime. Ognuno ha un ruolo ben preciso, ci sono diverse caste, ma ognuno è perfettamente soddisfatto del proprio posto nella società (appunto perché sono stati condizionati in questo modo). L’individualità non esiste più, così come il tempo libero, passato magari a riflettere. C’è un costante bisogno di stare con gli altri, di giocare, ballare, e...

Like many, I reread Brave New World as the NBC/Peacock series aired. After watching a few episodes, I reread the novel and found so many differences, it's worth a comparison.

I'll forego a retelling of the plot, which can be found anywhere else. What struck me was the satiric tone, the scientific passages making artificial reproduction seem plausible, the authenticity of some Native American tribal customs among the "Savages," and, in a few parts, Huxley's occasional use of inter-relating multiple scenes with a cascade of short sentences; quite cinematic, and a textual way of showing how the inter-connectivity of the dystopian society wove characters together.

The story ends tragically (spoiler) with a reclusive John being literally hounded to death by voyeuristic alphas and betas.

Sidebar: the 1980 series adaptation (three hours on YouTube), while stilted in its pacing and now-corny in production values, stays closer to the book's story.

The 2020 adaptation, however, veers far from the novel. The beautiful cityscapes are a CGI marvel, but the tribal "Savages" are relegated to a white trash Burning Man amusement park with violent revolutionaries. None of the gun violence or SUVs are in the novel, nor is the action-packed escape.

The NBC adaptation does provide interesting back stories about the origins of Indra and the 'society.' It also portrays the circuit-party orgy lifestyle of alphas and betas, and the dull slavery of the lower echelon Gammas and Epsilons.

Expanding the romantic relationship between John and Lenina is to be expected, with Bernard as a fumbling foil. Where it fails is having removed John's knowledge of literature, Shakespeare in particular, as a counter to the city illiterates who've banned all art.

The use of Indra eye contact implants is clever, as are the other technological visualizations.
But where the new adaptation fails horribly is (spoiler) dredging up a WestWorld-styled violent revolution of the underclass. Like the 'Feelies' of both book and TV series, the last several episodes turn the story into exactly what the novel critiqued; mindless entertainment to satiate the drugged masses. By changing the story to give viewers a reassuring fantasy that revolution is even possible, it serves as a betraying cinematic soma.

Romanzo distopico che a quasi 70 anni dalla prima pubblicazione risulta ancora molto potente.
Nel futuro immaginato il totalitarismo si fonda, oltre che su un controllo totale della vita degli individui, su un forte consumismo: anche i condizionamenti imposti sono finalizzati ad aumentare i costumi; le persone vivono una sorta di stordimento continuo che impedisce le emozioni intense, anche le forme artistiche (il cinema, la musica e la letteratura) sono finalizzate al contenimento delle forte emozioni.
L'introduzione del personaggio di John nella seconda parte del romanzo rievoca il mito del buon selvaggio del XVIII secolo, ma mi pare che per Huxley nemmeno la primitiva riserva possa garantire una vita felice.

Recensione sintetica: sì!

4.5

Questo è uno di quei libri che piacciono a me, quelli che ti fanno mettere in discussione la tua visione del mondo, o semplicemente la tua visione su un aspetto del mondo. Non è quindi un libro che mi aspetterei di vedere tra le mani di un sudato bagnante intento a trascorrere quelle due settimane di evasione dal mondo del lavoro stravaccato su di un lettino tanto scomodo quanto costoso. O forse sì, d’altronde i lettori durante le loro vacanze marittime sono esseri difficilmente qualificabili.
Il mondo nuovo, oh mirabile mondo nuovo, offre una visione tristemente plausibile dove la stabilità è ciò che regola la vita delle persone, una stabilità nata dall’ignoranza, letteralmente, delle persone.
Un mondo dove ogni persona è felice, e non a modo suo, ma nel medesimo modo degli altri. Persone ridotte, tramite condizionamenti che prendono il via fin da prima della nascita e proseguono per tutta la loro vita, a vivere felici, secondo il concetto di felicità dettato dall’alto e non perseguito dal singolo. E, appena scaturisce un sintomo di infelicità, o d’inquietudine, dettato dalla semplice riflessione, nessun problema, c’è il soma. Una droga che, in base al dosaggio, ti riporta a essere felice, a nascondere quei sintomi, facendoti dimenticare il tuo stato precedente e le tue riflessioni (nel nostro mondo questo viene fatto in modo molto più velato, ne siamo vittime inconsce).
E poi c’è la fetta di mondo dei selvaggi, i non civilizzati, che subiscono con un silenzio d’accettazione di fungere da animali nello zoo per i civilizzati del mondo nuovo. Vedere i loro modi eccentrici e fuori dalle righe, vedere delle famiglie, assistere a riti e usanze anche violente, fa divertire, e genera al tempo stesso orrore, i paladini della felicità e della stabilità. E tutto è così vero, così attuale, ma è anche tabù, un mare limpido di tabù.
E il discorso, a più battute, verso la fine tra uno dei protagonisti e il governatore (un uomo intelligente che ha coscienza dello stato in cui fa vivere le persone ma che ha anche idee ben argomentate a suo favore) è un chiaro esempio di come ci sono certe cose, certe questioni, del mondo che non si possono affrontare, devono rimanere lì stabili e radicate dentro più persone possibili, altrimenti quella finta armonia che appiattisce ogni volontà di cambiamento con la retorica cesserebbe di essere accettata, o quantomeno verrebbe messa in discussione.

Un piccolo appunto: la storia è piena di difetti dal punto di vista narrativo, pure l’autore stesso ne ha evidenziati alcuni, ma vi assicuro che non vale la pena soffermarsi su di essi perché non è la storia dei protagonisti a caratterizzare il libro.

“Date all’uomo pane abbondante e regolare tre volte al giorno, e in parecchi casi egli sarà contentissimo di vivere di pane solo, o almeno di solo pane e circensi”

n  

O wonder!
How many godly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't.
—William Shakespeare, The Tempest

n
This was a reread for me (why did everyone who saw me with this book say, "Haven't you read that before?") and I suppose since everyone has read it, everyone knows the basic premise of Brave New World: About 600 years from now, after a devastating Nine Years War full of terror and anthrax bombs, a world government is put into place. Through genetic manipulation, the population is engineered to fulfill the tasks of their preordained castes, and through hypnopaedia, the population is conditioned to accept the imposed values of their society. As adults, people are discouraged from solitary pursuits, and as a result of their conditioning, spend leisure time devoted to consumerism, group sport, free sex (including mandatory orgies), 4-D movies called "feelies", and the consumption of soma -- a drug that brightens mood, aids sleep, or enables a mental holiday, depending on dosage. When a "savage" from a New Mexico Indian Reservation is introduced to the totalitarian society, both he and the people that he meets are innately repulsed by the other.

Now, I reread Brave New World at this time because in Liberal Fascism, author Jonah Goldberg warned that this is the future that we're blindly marching towards. And as Goldberg also stated each time he invoked Aldous Huxley, many people read this book and wonder, "What would be so wrong with that?"

n  

The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want; and they never want what they can't get. They're well-off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strong about; they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma.

n
That doesn't actually sound so bad, but even Huxley himself makes it clear that his vision of the future here is a dystopia, not a utopia, and in Brave New World Revisited -- which he wrote in 1958 and which was included in the edition that I read -- he despaired that his vision was coming true even quicker than he foresaw and hoped to warn society against sleepwalking towards a future of conformity, loss of freedom, and the mindless pursuit of the trivial and degenerate. Huxley's warnings about imminent overpopulation (and, in particular, his predictions about the overbreeding of the wrong sorts of people) -- which is the lynchpin of his argument -- now seems quaintly outdated in the same way that Marx wasn't right about the imminent revolt of the working class, so it's tempting to dismiss all of his fears out of hand.

For contrasting views about what modern writers think of the vision of Brave New World, here's a dissenting viewpoint from n  The New York Timesn in 2013 (but it is interesting to read in the comments section that most readers think that this article is off the mark) and an article from n  The New York Postn in 2012 that thinks Huxley was a visionary. To me, putting Brave New World into context like this is far more interesting than simply reading the novel on its own, and insofar as Huxley was considered a great thinker of his time, I think that was his intent (and forgives the less than perfectly literary constructions of his book). Even if Huxley didn't impeccably envision the near future (although Jonah Goldberg and Kyle Smith of The Post might make compelling parallels), Brave New World certainly extrapolates a logical progression from what Huxley identified as the problems of his time, and if they have any resonance with modern readers, we would do well to sit up and take notice.

.."il rimorso cronico, su questo concordano tutti i moralisti, è un sentimenti assai indesiderabile. Se vi siete comportati male, pentitevi, rimediate come meglio potete e prefiggetevi di comportarvi meglio la prossima volta. Non rimuginate mai sulle vostre malefatte. Rotolare nel letame non è il modo migliore per ripulirsi"

A very disturbing read!
n  n
I was very upset by this book on many levels, but was intrigued by the structure Huxley used. Every different line was a different plot following many chracters.

Not sure how I made it through high school and college without ever having read this book, but I don't remember it ever being assigned. I'm glad I read it, even though it wasn't exactly a pleasant reading experience. It's fascinating to see through Huxley's eyes as he is writing in the 1930's I think, and imagining what the future could hold. Babies being created in labs and jars, (long before anyone ever invented IVF or anything), lots of social conditioning starting from the time a person is born (recordings of certain sayings being played over and over in children's nurseries while they sleep), etc.

Of course I couldn't help but compare it to George Orwell's 1984, which is similar but also really different. (it was interesting to find out this was written almost 15 years before Orwell). Whereas Orwell's dystopian vision imagined these powerful dictators who can see everything you do, in this case Huxley imagines that people are so created and conditioned that there doesn't even need to be a dictator because people will just be like sheep following along with how they've been programmed.

Unfortunately some of these very characteristics of the society that he imagined made it difficult to really care or feel interested in any of the characters. For example, in this imagined future there is no such thing as family - no mother, no father, no siblings, no family structure at all, no marriage. No permanent bonds of any kind are encouraged (or even allowed). This gives the characters a flat feeling, and it feels like nothing really matters, because there are no real connections between people. So it was hard to really care what happened to these people.

I had just finished Orwell's 1984 and was on a dystopian reading bender when I picked up Brave New World (Zamiatin's 'We' is next on the list). Maybe because I am comparing the two novels side-by-side, having read one then the other, Brave New World fell far short of expectations. Huxley's dystopia is a much less terrible place than Orwell's. In fact, it doesn't seem all that bad! Although it is the 'World State', there are tiny pockets of escape. There are the Reservations, where "primitives" live and practice a quite different lifestyle; there are also islands, to which awkward members of society can be sent if necessary. Mustapha Mond points out that Bernard Marx is in fact privileged to be sent to such a place. And although the effect of such a society is to dehumanise human beings, removing their need to strive, and keeping them emotionally immature all their lives, it is at least (apparently) done for a benign purpose. The difficulties of twentieth-century life have been smoothed over in order to keep the members of society happy—and by and large, they do seem to be happy, at least in a trivial sense.
BNW had no endearing character, no one I cared about or who was central to the story. Bernard was a whiny douche. John Savage was bizarre. I liked Lenina and Mustapha Mond but they were peripheral characters.
I know Aldous Huxly intended on depicting Brave New world as some kind of dystopia. However after reading that book, Brave New World seemed more like a paradise. There was no war, no diseases, no famine, and no unemployment. Not only is everybody employed in Brave New world, everyone has (the pre-programmed) the job of their dreams. To top it off, there was hardly any crime, everybody knew each other well, and there are wild parties everywhere. Who cares if that society stifled philosophic inquiry. With problems in the world such as war, unemployment, increasing food prices, increasing health care costs, Brave New World seems like a more promising place. If you want a real dystopia, real horror, read Orwell's 1984. Now that's a world I would not want to live in.

Yes, I read this a long time ago. No, I didn't remember anything.

I came to the book thinking it was a mirror image of 1984, with the political violence and control. But Huxley is much more subtle, and ironic. The control evident in THIS Brave New World has been willingly given over...relationships, emotions, drive, ambition. Individualism...none of this matters, and no one cares.

I had forgotten the tongue-in-cheek humor in the observations...until John Savage appears. Then the tone shifts and the book moves to its conclusion.

This book was published in 1932 -- 15 years before his student, Orwell, published his dystopia. Huxley's predictions of technology and the intent of technology are uncanny.

The visit to the Indian Pueblo in New Mexico makes me wonder if he traveled...that area of the country is a favorite for us, and his portrayal of the village and the area were fascinating.

John, and his unconscious references to Shakespeare, added that outsider view of the culture, and reminds us how alien it really is. "Oh, brave new world, that has such people in it." Indeed. Indeed.

John's philosophical discussion with Mond (world?) lets us know Mond also can throw out Shakespearan lines at will...he understands the ridiculousness of the world he supports...and he supports it anyway.

The essays Huxley wrote in 1958, revisiting his novel were so interesting. He seemed very defensive that his book never reached the heights that his student, Orwell reached. His letter to Orwell after the younger man sent him a copy of 1984 seems touchy...

He revisted in his essays the issues he felt were important in his novel...overpopulation, over-organization, propaganda, the arts of selling, brainwashing, chemical persuasion, hypnopaedia (sleep learning), and education for freedom. He explains that his book is a blueprint for 'a new kind of nonviolent totalitarianism.' He believed, and I see evidence, that humans will participate willingly in the stripping of their rights and responsibilities. That's the tragedy of Brave New World...people have lost their responsibilities, their individuality, their ability and willingness to do right, to make decisions.