Antic Hay

by Aldous Huxley, Mint Editions (Contribution by)

Overview

Aldous Huxley was the most able of satirists. . . and it is the essential seriousness of his mind, his real concern with the world which gives him his strength.The Nation Here is a sardonic, relentlessly outspoken novel of the sudden change of a mild, ineffective young man into a massive Rabelaisian man, broad and powerful and exuberant with vitality . . . great eater, deep drinker, stout fighter, prodigious lover . . . Young Oxford tutor Theodore Gumbril has become thoroughly dismayed by the formality of college life and the staid British institutions of learning. An impetuous need for celebration, even rebellion, possesses him. He and his bohemian companions embark on wild and daring bacchanalian adventures that steer them resolutely away from stifling conventions of behavior. Antic Hay, first published in 1923, is one of Aldous Huxley’s earlier novels, and like them is primarily a novel of ideas involving conversations which disclose viewpoints rather than establish characters; its polemical theme unfolds against the backdrop of London’s post-war nihilistic Bohemia. This is Huxley at his biting, brilliant besta novel, loud with derisive laughter, which satirically scoffs at all conventional morality and at stuffy people everywherea novel that’s always charged with excitement. [A] . . . cry for madder music and for stronger wine . . .New York Times

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781513263557
Publisher:	Mint Editions
Publication date:	05/07/2020
Series:	Mint Editions (Humorous and Satirical Narratives)
Pages:	198
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Aldous Huxley

(1894-1963) was a prominent and successful English writer. Throughout his career he wrote over fifty books, and was nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Huxley wrote his first book, Crome Yellow, when he was seventeen years old, which was described by critics as a complex social satire. Huxley was both an avid humanist and pacifist and many of these ideals are reflected in his writing. Often controversial, Huxley's views were most evident in the best-selling dystopian novel, Brave New World. The publication of Brave New Worldin 1931 rattled many who read it. However, the novel inspired many writers, Kurt Vonnegut in particular, to describe the book's characters as foundational to the genre of science fiction. With much of his work attempting to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western beliefs, Aldous Huxley has been hailed as a writer ahead of his time.

Editorial Reviews

This new intensity of emotion gives a new savour to the wit which is, after all, what we read Mr. Huxley for.

New Statesman

T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is recalled by the casual allusions to classical lore, the devilishly clever garbling of familiar quotations and the total effect of dissolution. Mr. Huxley has the American poet’s flair for topical wit of a distinctly metropolitan flavor. . . . It is a brilliant, entertaining satire, with a faint suggestion of ‘ungestured sadness.’” —New York Times

“There are passages in Antic Hay of a pure and rhythmic beauty: pas­ sages so fine, so just, that they move one like good music.” —Saturday Review

“Astonishing. . . . A first-rate performance.” —Satyricon

“Huxley is the creator-god of a beautiful new world which is wholly and peculiarly his own and which he peoples with antic folk whose adventures, always keenly intelligent and sparkling with wit, are elo­quently and continually amusing.” —Detroit News

“Antic Hay has the literary delights of the intelligence questionnaire, characters who don’t talk in conversations but in charades, with satire japing sophistication as well as the more obvious targets, engaging naughtiness narrated for its own sake, rising and falling in broad com­ edy and in episodes deliciously strange and tender.” —New Republic

“This new intensity of emotion gives a new savour to the wit which is, after all, what we read Mr. Huxley for.” —New Statesman

From the Publisher

[Vance’s] voice is fun to listen to, and he uses that playfulness to complement Huxley’s biting, satiric prose. He reads marvelously, pacing the story well and using his firm, deep voice to capture the irony and hypocrisy within the book.”

AudioFile

Antic Hay has the literary delights of the intelligence questionnaire, characters who don’t talk in conversations but in charades, with satire japing sophistication as well as the more obvious targets, engaging naughtiness narrated for its own sake, rising and falling in broad comedy and in episodes deliciously strange and tender.”

New Republic 

Aldous Huxley was the most able of satirists...and it is the essential seriousness of his mind, his real concern with the world which gives him his strength.”

Nation

There are passages in Antic Hay of a pure and rhythmic beauty: passages so fine, so just, that they move one like good music.”

Saturday Review

A cry for madder music and for stronger wine.”

New York Times