Point Counter Point - (Dalkey Archive Essentials) by Aldous Huxley (Paperback)

About the Book

Originally published: London: Chatto and Windus, 1928.

Book Synopsis

Aldous Huxley's lifelong concern with the dichotomy between passion and reason finds its fullest expression both thematically and formally in his masterpiece Point Counter Point. By presenting a vision of life in which diverse aspects of experience are observed simultaneously, Huxley characterizes the symptoms of "the disease of modern man' in the manner of a composer--themes and characters are repeated, altered slightly, and played off one another in a tone that is at once critical and sympathetic.

First published in 1928, Huxley's satiric view of intellectual life in the '20s is populated with characters based on such celebrities of the time as D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Sir Oswald Mosley, Nancy Cunard, and John Middleton Murray, as well as Huxley himself. A major work of the twentieth century and a monument of literary modernism, this edition includes an introduction by acclaimed novelist Nicholas Mosley (author of Hopeful Monsters and the son of Sir Oswald Mosley).

Along with Brave New World (written a few years later), Point Counter Point is Huxley's most concentrated attack on the scientific attitude and its effect on modern culture.

Review Quotes

"The aim of this book is not idle amusement for the sophisticated, but a grasping of the intellectual Zeitgeist and a biting criticism of it. . . . Point Counter Point is the most powerful and vitriolic indictment of the intellectual world we have had in years."--New York Times

"Point Counter Point is the modem Vanity Fair, and Mr. Huxley is the Thackeray de nos jours. . . . It might have been said in its own day that Vanity Fair was the richest novel in substance and the most comprehensive that had appeared in English. The same thing might be said today of Point Counter Point."

--New Republic

"Unflagging in its spirits and unflagging in its intelligence, throughout more than four hundred pages it vindicates Mr. Huxley's right to be considered the most able of contemporary satirists and the most perfect representative of the mood which he describes."--New York Herald Tribune

About the Author

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) was an English writer who spent the latter part of his life in the United States. Though best known for Brave New World, he also wrote countless works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and essays. A humanist, pacifist and satirist, he wrote novels and other works that functioned as critiques of social norms and ideals. Aldous Huxley is often considered a leader of modern thought and one of the most important literary and philosophical voices of the twentieth century.