This blog is Part II of my review of the Critical essays of Keith M. May on the works of Aldous Huxley (1972 Harper & Row) [see previous post]. I also have checked out Huxley’s Crome Yellow, Eyeless in Gaza, and Point Counter Point from my university library to become more familiar with his novels. For this blog post, I will reference Point Counter Point.

Aldous Huxley’s Point Counter Point (1928) explores a variety of interconnected themes, reflecting on human relationships, intellectual trends, and societal issues in the modern world. I often thought of William F. Buckley Jr. vs Gore Vidal’s famous 1968 debates of societal, political, philosophical, and artistic issues as I read Point [watch the fascinating PBS documentary at this link].

Almost all of the characters of Point are either victims of some form of division between passion and reason or act as depraved agents of the division of others; these behaviors constitute the ‘points’, as Huxley puts it, but the points fall into clearly definable categories and thus make up the themes or variations upon themes (81).   

MUSIC

 The novel is structured like a musical composition, with overlapping “points” of view and “counterpoints,” highlighting the contrasts and tensions between characters and ideas. May explores the musical forms in his critical essay Aldous Huxley (1972):

“The changes of moods, the abrupt transitions which we see in Beethoven also in a manner occur in Point Counter Point…Beethoven states then distorts a theme which nonetheless remains perceptibly the same whole range of thought and feeling throughout the novel” (79). Beethoven’s compositions embody intensity and moral struggle as seen in Spandrell’s character.

 I loved thinking on this theme of Music that May points out as I read Point; for example:

  • I learned that the novel’s title refers to counterpoint, a musical technique where independent melodies are interwoven, maintaining their individuality while contributing to a cohesive whole. May points out that the novel weaves together multiple characters’ lives and perspectives, creating a complex interplay of contrasting ideas and emotions. These “melodies” often conflict but enrich the overarching narrative, reflecting the diversity and complexity of human experience (79).
  • In addition, each character in Point possibly represents a distinct “melody” or thematic idea. For example: Philip Quarles: Intellectualism; Walter Bidlake: romanticism; Maurice Spandrell: Nihilism and existentialism; and Rampion: Artistic passion. The “counterpoint” emerges as these characters’ lives intersect, their philosophies clash, and their actions influence one another.
  • We can see in Point how Huxley critiques the modern tendency to reduce art, including music, to a mechanical or utilitarian function (81).
  • On the other hand, the “point” of music in this story can be seen in the harmonies between the characters and their ideas.

Intellectuals and Social Elites

Secondly, Huxley offers a theme with sharp critique of the intellectual and social elites of the 1920’s, post WWI. This reminds me of one of Oscar Wilde’s main themes in The Importance of Being Ernest [see post].As in Importance,  Huxley’s characters in Point reveal their pretentiousness in debates, their hollow philosophies, and their detachment from the real world and all the practical concerns that come with it.

For example, Phillip is a writer and intellectual who approaches life with detachment by inability to engage emotionally. He states, “The Intellectual life is child’s play; which is why intellectuals tend to become children—and then imbeciles, and finally homicidal lunatics and wild beasts” (380).

Or in Walter who is so self-centered that he cannot embrace the bohemian lifestyle he so greatly aspires to. Also Rampion, loosely based on D.H. Lawrence, who takes on the voice of the critique in Point and tries to keep his peers in check by mocking their pretension (81). Rampion is a role model as he has a healthy marriage and therefore his opinions seem correct.

Searching for Truth

Rampion confesses that he took learning, philosophy, and science very seriously. He considered these a “Search for truth” He pursued “learning” through a rush to books and universities but considered this pursuit as a way of drowning the realization of the difficulties of living properly in a “grotesque contemporary world”. Just as some drown their troubles in alcohol, still more drown them in “books and artistic dilettantism”, or what he calls “sorrow drowners” (Point, 380).

Rampion considered the “search for truth” as the highest of human tasks and the Searches of truth as the noblest of men. He came to realize after a year of searching that, just as the pursuit of learning, it was just an amusement-another distraction from life and a rather refined and elaborate substitute for genuine living. He equated Truth-Seeking to amusements such as “skittles and mountain-climbing”(380). Rampion resigns himself that he was congenitally incapable of living wholly and harmoniously.

The Philisophic

The final theme, the ‘philosophic theme’, reaches its climax in Chapter 34. May states that we see Huxley’s expression of his state of mind in the late nineteen-twenties [this was Huxley’s fourth Novel at this point]. Philip writes in his notebook, “The life of an animal is only a fragment of the total life of the universe…The whole story of the universe is implicit in any part of it”(Point, 341).

Huxley indicates one of his chief beliefs here: he gives distinct form to his distaste for the ordinary egotism, which most of us take for granted. Here May uses the musical analogy of fugal allegro to illustrate in which we jump from the ‘cello to the violin, from one political philosophy to another, from one view of love to another, from one self-bound individual to another; and it takes this form for no idle reason (95).

Spandrell states:

More than a hundred years before Beethoven, stone deaf, had heard the imaginary music of stringed instruments expressing his inmost thoughts and feelings. He made signs with ink on ruled paper…A century later four Hungarians had reproduced from the printed reproductions of Beethoven’s scribbles that music that Beethoven had never heard before except in his imagination…It was an impassioned music, transparent, pure, and crystalline, like a tropical sea, an Alpine lake.

The beauty was unearthly, the convalescent serenity was the peace of God (Point, 508).

Science and Progress

Finally, in Point Counter Point, Huxley delves deeply into the themes of science, progress, and eugenics. These expositions will lead to his next futurist novel Brave New World (1932), his most famous work. Huxley’s treatment of these themes in Point reveals his skepticism toward the dehumanizing tendencies of science and progress when divorced from ethical considerations and humanistic values (May, 98). This was my least favorite part of the book. I love Science Fiction—Jules Verne is my favorite author as I enjoy sciences of the Earth and Universe.

May begins his critical essay of Brave New World with the statement “One of the fundamental technical problems in writing Brave New World must have been how to present a clear portrait of the imaginary science while also developing actions and characters.[ I found this also true in Verne’s futuristic Paris in the Twentieth-Century. ] May explains that there is a strong distinction between an imaginary commonwealth in order to comment on an existing commonwealth. The author of a utopia proper and an author of a ‘dystopia’ both have a similar objective to meet the needs of the fictional society of his time (May, 98).

I enjoyed reading my second Huxley novel, Point Counter Point. If I’m not careful, Huxley will turn this 64-year-old avid reader into a lover of Fiction! Eyeless in Gaza for my next Huxley novel and then, Brave New World, in order to fulfill my original goal of truly knowing this Author!

Works Cited

Aldous Huxley. Crome Yellow. New York: George H. Doran, 1922.

Aldous Huxley. Point Counter Point. New York: Random House, 1928.

Keith M. May. Aldous Huxley. Great Britain: Harper & Row, 1972.