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Antic Hay

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Antic Hay is one of Aldous Huxley's earlier novels, and like them is primarily a novel of ideas involving conversations that 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 best: a novel, loud with derisive laughter, which satirically scoffs at all conventional morality and at stuffy people everywhere, a novel that's always charged with excitement.

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1923

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About the author

Aldous Huxley

1,042 books13k followers
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addressing these subjects in his works such as The Perennial Philosophy (1945), which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism, and The Doors of Perception (1954), which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline. In his most famous novel Brave New World (1932) and his final novel Island (1962), he presented his visions of dystopia and utopia, respectively.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 213 reviews
Profile Image for Vit Babenco.
1,654 reviews4,996 followers
June 8, 2023
A mad world exists for those who dare to have mad dreams… And they dance through their lives trying to invent, to love, to find happiness and their dance is called Antic Hay.
Most lovers picture to themselves, in their mistresses, a secret reality, beyond and different from what they see every day. They are in love with somebody else – their own invention. And sometimes there is a secret reality; and sometimes reality and appearance are the same. The discovery, in either case, is likely to cause a shock.

When one is a dreamer the world is a kaleidoscope of ideas and a firework of expectations… And it is better not to wake up.
Profile Image for B0nnie.
136 reviews49 followers
August 31, 2012
My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns,
Shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay
Edward II by Christopher Marlowe

Brenda Salkeld

This is Brenda Salkeld dancing the antic hay. Orwell had recommended Antic Hay to her in the 1930s, but alas she wouldn't dance with him.

Huxley wanted to dance with Nancy Cunard but she likened his advances to being crawled over by slugs.
slugs
Nancy Cunard & slug

So he crawled away and he wrote this zany and very smart satire.

The characters Myra Viveash and Theodore Gumbril Jr are based on Nancy Cunard and Huxley. Gumbril Jr is a teacher but hates it, just as Huxley did when he had been a teacher at Eton.
No, this was really impossible. Definitely, it couldn’t go on, it could not go on. There were thirteen weeks in the summer term, there would be thirteen in the autumn and eleven or twelve in the spring; and then another summer of thirteen, and so it would go on for ever. For ever. It wouldn’t do. He would go away and live uncomfortably on his three hundred. Or, no, he would go away and he would make money – that was more like it – money on a large scale, easily; he would be free and he would live. For the first time, he would live.

He gets an idea for making money, and quits,
The real remedy, it suddenly flashed across his mind, would be trousers with pneumatic seats. For all occasions; not merely for church-going.

And so Gumbril’s Patent Small-Clothes are invented.

But don't be too concerned about the plot. Huxley explained his true intentions in a letter,
I will only point out that it is a book written by a member of what I may call the war-generation for others of his kind; and that it is intended to reflect - fantastically, of course, but none the less faithfully - the life and opinions of an age which has seen the violent disruption of almost all the standards, conventions and values current in the previous epoch.

There's a sadness here that casts a shadow on the comedy. Poor Nancy Cunard. She could not forget her one true love who was killed in the war, and this also is the reason for Myra Viveash's ennui,
She remembered suddenly one shining day like this in the summer of 1917, when she had walked along this same street, slowly, like this, on the sunny side, with Tony Lamb. All that day, that night, it had been one long goodbye. He was going back the next morning. Less than a week later he was dead. Never again, never again: there had been a time when she could make herself cry, simply by saying those two words once or twice, under her breath. Never again, never again. She repeated them softly now. But she felt no tears behind her eyes. Grief doesn’t kill, love doesn’t kill; but time kills everything, kills desire, kills sorrow, kills in the end the mind that feels them; wrinkles and softens the body while it still lives, rots it like a medlar, kills it too at last. Never again, never again. Instead of crying, she laughed, laughed aloud.

Antic Hay is blue in more than one sense. It had been banned on grounds of obscenity. Shocking indeed! Rosie ends up reading Le Sopha,
'No education can be called complete without a knowledge of that divine book.' He darted to the bookshelf and came back with a small volume bound in white vellum. 'The hero’s soul,' he explained, handing her the volume, 'passes, by the laws of metempsychosis, into a sofa. He is doomed to remain a sofa until such time as two persons consummate upon his bosom their reciprocal and equal loves. The book is the record of the poor sofa’s hopes and disappointments.'

Rosie's assignations had something to do with it too,
The Complete Man lifted her up, walked across the room carrying the fastidious lady in his arms and deposited her on the rosy catafalque of the bed. Lying there with her eyes shut, she did her best to pretend she was dead.

Gumbril had looked at his wristwatch and found that it was six o’clock. Already? He prepared himself to take his departure. Wrapped in a pink kimono, she came out into the hall to wish him farewell.

The erotica takes place between the lines but sometimes a good cover can help.
cover

Huxley wrote this book in 2 months. Never underestimate a man who takes LSD on his deathbed...
Profile Image for Bram De Vriese.
72 reviews49 followers
June 17, 2023
Great novel of conversation. Very witty at times and a very modern feel to it.
Profile Image for Ursula.
276 reviews36 followers
April 1, 2013
I'm finding out that just reading Brave New World in high school doesn't really give you any sense of what sort of an author Aldous Huxley was.

Antic Hay is a novel about, essentially, the Lost Generation and their feelings of disaffection and uncertainty in the wake of World War I. A satire, it is at times just poking a bit of fun, at times jabbing viciously. The themes are pretty timeless: disillusionment, the experience of feeling adrift in the world, wondering if what you've wanted for yourself is really worth wanting. The characters are a group of acquaintances who cope with their ennui in a variety of ways - having affairs, becoming unhealthily obsessed with a woman in their social circle, quitting a job, committing to an artistic life, taking pretending to be someone else to new levels.

The interesting things to me about this book were twofold: 1, how easily Huxley switches between humor and despair in the narrative; and 2, how he expressed truths in ways that would be just as valid in today's world with only a few key words changed. For an example, check out the quote at the end of the review. I found the book easy to read and digest, and an interesting look at the time period as well as human nature in general.

Recommended for: people who know that the more things change the more they stay the same, people who need to be reminded that they are not, by any stretch of the imagination, the first to feel unmoored.

Quote: "[W]ould a man with unlimited leisure be free, Mr. Gumbril? I say he would not. Not unless he 'appened to be a man like you or me, Mr. Gumbril, a man of sense, a man of independent judgment. An ordinary man would not be free. Because he wouldn't know how to occupy his leisure except in some way that would be forced on him by other people. People don't know 'how to entertain themselves now; they leave it to other people to do it for them. They swallow what's given them. They 'ave to swallow it, whether they like it or not. Cinemas, newspapers, magazines, gramophones, football matches, wireless, telephones -- take them or leave them, if you want to amuse yourself. The ordinary man can't leave them. He takes; and what's that but slavery?"
Profile Image for Matthew Ted.
925 reviews955 followers
November 15, 2020
171st book of 2020.

Huxley’s 20s satires are equally frustrating as they are quite brilliant. They are largely plotless; if you look hard enough, there is a semblance of a plot driving through, but by and large, the book meanders, to use Alison’s term from the novel-structure book I read recently Meander, Spiral, Explode. At the core of the novel, Huxley is shedding light on the lost generation that emerged after the First World War, as Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises did. It could be argued that like Hemingway’s 1926 novel, Antic Hay is also a roman à clef. I have read that Huxley is Gumbril in the novel, or at least based on himself, as the woman in the novel is based on a woman who snubbed him.

description
Huxley—Photo from the Los Angeles Times

Antic Hay is often described as a “novel of ideas”. In a 1958 interview, Huxley says this of 19th century literature:

“I was reading just the other day as I was travelling through Sicily, reading Trollope’s family parsonage and thinking how wonderful it was for novelists in those happy days to have a completely rigid framework, everybody knew exactly where they stood and it was possible to make your comments from an accepted ground.” The interviewer asks him if that has gone today. Huxley says, “It seems to have quite gone today.”

Huxley was writing at the height of modernism and Antic Hay was published just a year after Ulysses, perhaps the very pinnacle of modernism. As Huxley said in 1958, the novel was changing, the novel had changed. Antic Hay follows a cast of characters, all searching for meaning and happiness in their lives, and many failing, I suppose. Words like disillusionment and disenchantment are perfect for the novel’s tone and themes. As with his first novel, Crome Yellow, Huxley inserts a great number of intellectual and philosophical debates into his novel, which I think, today, would be frowned upon. These discussions do not advance the plot, they advance character to some degree, but on the whole they are a way of exploring the ideas Huxley was thinking about at the time (many of which were precursors to Brave New World): capitalism, money, art, drugs, sex, war, and so on. Its open discussion on such topics, predominantly because of its treatment of sex, Antic Hay was banned in Australia for a time and even burnt in Cairo—a surprising fate for a “comic” novel.

Despite its plotless body, the novel is an entertaining read. Gumbril, who could be seen as the “main” character, especially if it is indeed Huxley himself, is attempting to invent and make money from trousers that contain a pneumatic cushion in them, so the wearer could sit anywhere and be comfortable. He is also searching for love, and meaning, in the scattered world following the end of the War.

It is certainly a “novel of ideas”—I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who isn’t interested in reading long dialogues about art, philosophy and culture, or particularly interested in Huxley’s wit or ability to write. Antic Hay, if anything, proves again how talented he was at the latter. He once said that Balzac “almost ruined himself as a novelist by stuffing everything into his novels, everything he knew and everything he thought about” [this is the interviewer paraphrasing Huxley]. Huxley himself ran the same risk. He says himself all he wanted to write was a good novel, and never thought he had. He thought once or twice perhaps he’d pulled off the balance of combing “ideas” with “fiction”, but it was a balance that caused great difficulty. Antic Hay might not have pulled it off entirely, but it does not suffer from it; it is a good, enjoyable novel, and full of wisdom, even if it is too didactic at times. To end is an example of Huxley’s lovely, long “ideas”:
“There are quiet places also in the mind,” he said, meditatively. “But we build bandstand and factories on them. Deliberately—to put a stop to the quietness. We don’t like the quietness. All the thoughts, all the preoccupation in my head—round and round continually.” He made a circular motion with his hands. “And the jazz bands, the music hall songs, the boys shouting the news. What’s it all for? To put an end to the quiet, to break it up and disperse it, to pretend at any cost it isn’t there. Ah, but it is, it is there, in spite of everything, at the back of everything. Lying awake at night, sometimes—not restlessly, but serenely, waiting for sleep—the quiet re-establishes itself, piece by piece; all the broken bits, all the fragments of it we’ve been so busily dispersing all day long. It re-establishes itself, an inward quiet, like this outward quiet of grass and trees. It fills one, it grows –a crystal quiet, a growing expanding crystal. It grows, it becomes more perfect; it is beautiful and terrifying, yes, terrifying, as well as beautiful. For one’s alone in the crystal and there’s no support from outside, there’s nothing external and important, nothing external and trivial to pull oneself up by or to stand up, superiorly, contemptuously, so that one can look down. There’s nothing to laugh at or feel enthusiastic about. But the quiet grows and grows. Beautifully and unbearably. And at last you are conscious of something approaching; it is almost a faint sound of footsteps. Something inexpressibly lovely and wonderful advances through the crystal, nearer, nearer. And oh, inexpressibly terrifying. For if it were to touch you, if it were to seize and engulf you, you’d die; all the regular habitual, daily part of you would die. There would be and end of bandstands and whizzing factories, and one would have to begin living arduously in the quiet, arduously n some strange unheard-of manner. Nearer, nearer come the steps; but one can’t face the advancing thing. One daren’t. It’s too terrifying; it’s too painful to die. Quickly, before it is too late, start the factory wheels, bang the drum, blow up the saxophone. Think of the women you’d like to sleep with, the schemes for making money, the gossip about your friends, the last outrage of the politicians. Anything for a diversion. Break the silence, smash the crystal to pieces. There, it lies in bits; it is easily broken, hard to build up and easy to break. And the steps? Ah, those have taken themselves off, double quick. Double quick, they were gone at the flawing of the crystal. And by this time the lovely and terrifying thing is three infinities away, at least. And you lie tranquilly on your bed, thinking of what you’d do if you had ten thousand pounds and of all the fornications you’ll never commit.”
Profile Image for Paul.
2,408 reviews20 followers
October 27, 2024
Unlike a lot of comic novels that are getting on in years, Aldous Huxley's Antic Hay is actually funny. Well, it probably depends on your sense of humour; it definitely helps if you're deeply cynical.

There's not a huge amount of plot in this one; it's more of a book about ideas and society than one where a great deal happens. Also, if you're somebody who has to find the characters they're reading about likeable, this one's probably not for you. If you like the idea of inflatable trousers, though, this could very well be the book you've been looking for!
Profile Image for David.
865 reviews1,574 followers
July 25, 2008
One senses that Huxley was aiming for a little mordant social satire when he wrote this book, to capture the Zeitgeist while landing a few deft jabs at British society in the aftermath of World War I. But "Antic Hay" is a clunky, sorry mess, whose primary virtue is its brevity. Heavyhanded and confused, it never gels to anything even remotely memorable.

Not too hard to figure out why. There is no discernible plot - instead, various stock characters are dragged in and out of the action, essentially caroming off one another in a fairly random fashion. You've got your artist, your poet, your critic, your (pseudo)-scientist, your futurist, your lowlife, your romantic, a vamp, and a flapper or two, and the (anti)hero Gumbril, who is spectacularly devoid of personality. None of these characters is fleshed out in any credible way - they just engage in brittly clever dialog (which is to say, lethally boring dialog), mouthpieces for whatever point of view they are supposed to be representing. While the reader is left baffled as to what the hell Huxley might be trying to convey.

I think the answer is that Huxley doesn't really have anything much coherent to say, in this dull and annoying book. Since there's no plot to speak of, eventually it just sort of peters out.

So another writer who disappoints for reasons related to one of my pet peeves - a complete abrogation of the author's responsibility to tell the reader a story. You'll get fresher insights on this particular milieu by reading a couple of Agatha Christie's mysteries, and I dare say you'll have more fun doing so as well.
Profile Image for Nigeyb.
1,384 reviews354 followers
June 29, 2016
My Vintage Classics edition of Antic Hay describes it as “wickedly funny” and perhaps, to those reading it around 1923, when it was first published, this social satire seemed the height of hilarity. Then again, perhaps not...

The plot, such as it is, is merely a device for Aldous Huxley to convey different viewpoints. The lack of any real story is, for a work of fiction, a serious limitation, and one I struggled with. Additionally, a classical education, and some familiarity with French and Latin, is advantageous when reading this book. As a reader lacking these skills I had to regularly pause to make online searches to clarify various references that would otherwise have gone over my head.

So, with no story, what are we left with? A clever, well written social satire very much of its time. The characters only exist to represent various archetypes (an artist, a poet, a promiscuous flapper, an innocent etc.) whose primary role is to exchange clever dialogue.

Throughout the novel Gumbril, the central character, struggles to reconcile the two sides of his personality: 'the Mild and Melancholy one', who exalts in nature, apprehends divinity in Mozart’s G minor Quintet, and believes in romantic love; versus 'the Complete Man', who subscribes to the death of God, scoffs at romantic ideals, and pursues dangerous liaisons. In post-WW1 London, Huxley only identifies one winner in that particular conflict.

It is a quick, easy read, and whilst I really enjoyed a few scenes, overall it was too incoherent, only sporadically entertaining, and sometimes downright annoying. I never got any clear sense of what Aldous Huxley wanted to say with this book. Perhaps he just wanted to hold up a mirror to the widespread disenchantment, post-WW1, that was all pervasive in the early 1920s? The book does capture effectively that widespread disillusionment, with London portrayed as a city devoid of any real values or meaning.

After I’d finished the book, I read an article called “Aldous Huxley’s Antic Hay: London in the Aftermath of World War I” by Jake Poller, which summarises the key plot points and explains what is going on. This is a helpful shortcut to understanding the book, and much faster than reading the book.

As Charles Bukowski reminds us, “An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.” In Antic Hay, Huxley was more intellectual than artist.

That said, having read a short summary of Aldous Huxley’s career in the introduction of this book, I am still keen to read more of his work, with “Point Counter Point” seemingly the most appropriate next book.

3/5
Profile Image for K.J. Charles.
Author 63 books11k followers
Read
November 10, 2019
Huxley's first book, a satire of dreadful people in the early 1920s. Flashes of brilliance in description don't make up for the plotlessness, or several lengthy and excruciating stretches of thinly disguised authorial hobbyhorse-racing, and it's full of misogyny including a nasty victim-blaming rape scene, racism, and antisemitism. Deeply avoidable.
1,169 reviews145 followers
December 1, 2017
Poms Behaving Badly

The post-World War I blahs manifest themselves in a group of young Londoners in 1922. Most are gainfully unemployed, drinking, dancing, and dining with the help of allowances, alimony, or inheritances. Some manage on borrowed lucre. "The Scientist" of the group does kidney research--measuring his sweat output as he bicycles all the way to France (figuratively anyway). Almost all strive to be fashionable, poetic, witty, or artistic. Some also strive to be somebody else----maybe the Complete Man as opposed to being mild-mannered and melancholy. But can you achieve this dream with a fake beard and a padded overcoat ? Check it out ! Being somebody else's lover is de rigueur. Professors and Latin scholars interact with fakes, pretenders, and con-men; it's a small section of London society at that time. The main hero plans to get rich by pushing pneumatic pants on the unsuspecting British consumer! In a different mode than other novels of his that I've read, Huxley paints a witty, humorous portrait of the times, laced with plenty of sharp insights on human nature. As one of the characters observes, "The real charm about debauchery is its total pointlessness, futility, and above all its incredible tediousness." In a book very much given to a debauched class, the author has to be clever indeed to avoid that tediousness. Huxley succeeds brilliantly. You might need more familiarity with the British slang of that era than I have, and a passing knowledge of French, Latin, and Italian will come in handy. What you most need is a love for that dry British humor and their penchant for "sending up" everybody. But Huxley being Huxley, there are those real questions and observations, often hidden under the stones of irony. "There was nothing new to be thought or asked. And there was still no answer." Yes, true as always, but we keep on asking anyhow. If you like clever repartée and witticisms that catch you by surprise, you'll love this book, not much talked about in our day.
Profile Image for Barbara.
401 reviews29 followers
August 31, 2016
There were a lot of interesting passages in this book and plenty of funny wordplay. It really gave the sense of the post WW1 period, when nothing seemed to have much meaning. Gumbril has a real chance at love but allows it to pass, choosing to spend time with Mrs. Viveash instead. His big scheme for inflatable trousers doesn't quite succeed either. Myra Viveash is trapped in the past, Lypiatt is the victim of his own enthusiastic mediocrity, Rosie mistakes temporary amusement for meaningful relationships. It is a society in which everyone is living lives "of quiet desperation" and they are scarcely aware of it.
Profile Image for John.
1,473 reviews114 followers
November 15, 2018
Huxley’s second novel is a satire set in the early 1920s. The cloud of WW1 is there with people trying to find meaning in meaningless things. Gumbril the key male character abandons the mindlessness of teaching to develop his pneumatic trouser bottoms. He also embarks with some affairs where he gains courage through his fake beard. The story is sad as well as humorous with the failed artist Lypiatt and Shearwater with his wife Rosie. Mrs Viveash who all the men are in love but who does not love them.

The happiest person is perhaps Gumbril senior with his evening ritual of watching the starlings roost in nearby trees and his passion for his architectural models. An enjoyable read.
Profile Image for MJ Nicholls.
2,180 reviews4,695 followers
October 26, 2020
Unlike Crome Yellow, Huxley’s second novel lacks pith, purpose, and wit. There are amusing and curious scenes (the ongoing life of Gumbril’s pneumatic trousers), then there are endless esoteric conversations sprinkled with Latin and archaic topical references that render some passages inscrutable. Reading an edition with the most hideous cover imaginable wasn’t a boon.
Profile Image for Nicola.
538 reviews69 followers
June 29, 2017
I feel a little ambivalent about this novel; some parts were really quite amusing but others were merely tedious and I found that the boring bits seemed to outweigh the interesting passages on average. It also suffers from that common pitfall of 'society' novels - when portraying restless, bored and ultimately unfilled characters you might wind up with a restless, boring and ultimately unfulfilling story.

Antic Hay was very restless, it flitted around characters and social scenes but did retain some tethering in the main protagonist Theodore Gumbril, an erstwhile academic who comes up with what he thinks is a sound business idea (inflatable trousers!) and changes professions. This is going to be the start of a new life for Mr Theodore Gumbril he decides. No more weak willed doormat, this new and improved Theodore Gumbril is going to be a successful and dominant man - obviously a killer with the ladies too and for that he'll need a big bushy beard!

The 'Man About Town' sections were the funniest in the book, the woman who acts as a Bored Socialite foil to his Artistic Persona; so they merrily deceive each other. Great stuff. It nearly but not quite made up for all of the other more tedious sections and characters.
Profile Image for Peter.
327 reviews30 followers
December 14, 2017
If Antic Hay escapes uncastigated and unpilloried the effect upon English fiction will be disastrous...We shall have herds of literary rats exploring every sewer...The cloacre of vice will be dredged for fresh infamies...The novel will creep and crawl with the vermin of diseased imaginations. (Review in The Sunday Express, 25 Nov. 1923)

The Sunday Express may not have been fulsome in its praise, but Antic Hay is a fine novel, with a wonderful mixture of classical erudition and lost generation lowlife. Can they really be foxtrotting to a jazz band that drawls out a Hamlet soliloquy? Pretty much. And how does Huxley finish the scene? “Way down in old Bengal, under the green Paradisiac palms, among the ecstatic mystagogues and the saints who scream beneath the divine caresses, the music came to an end.” Blimey.

The theme of the novel is nothing. Nothing at all. “Nil, omnipresent nil, world-soul, spiritual informer of all matter.”...the void at the centre of the empty lives of a generation of rich young things after the Great War. They surrender to it and party like it’s 1922 or they reinvent themselves as aesthetes, bohemians, even scientific coenobites. Huxley satirizes them of course, but they are not just sitting ducks. Casimir Lypiatt, a loud-mouthed, self-confident, bad artist, is not only the object of satire but also the agent, delivering some cutting lines about the vapidity of the age that even The Sunday Express could scarce forebear to cheer. Myra Viveash is the epitome of the bored sybarite, but Huxley deftly turns her into a tragic figure. Theodore Gumbril – Huxley’s alter ego – is more realistically and critically portrayed than one might expect.

The Sunday Express damns Huxley for his blasphemy and impropriety, but acknowledges that there is a “brainless school ready to cackle and chuckle over his fescennine acrobatics”. That sounds like the school for me. Lead the way, Gumbril...
Profile Image for George.
2,876 reviews
April 17, 2021
3.5 stars. An interesting, sometimes humorous, relatively plotless novel about mostly bohemian characters who behave extravagantly. Theodore Gumbril quits his teaching job to seek his fortune in the city. Theodore has designed a type of pneumatic trouser. His associates include Casimir Lypiatt, an artist who is struggling to sell his paintings. Art critics write negative comments about Lypiatt’s paintings. Mrs Myra Viveash is a friend of Theodore’s. She always seems to be visiting artists, eating at restaurants or going to the theatre. For Theodore and his acquaintances, life has become boring and futile. Rosie Shearwater and her science focussed husband are an odd couple that struggle in their ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ roles! Rosie’s male relationships highlight her unstable character. There are some amusing scenes.

A book that wittily and interestingly comments on ideas including the topics of literature, science, religion, politics and relationships. A very worthwhile read.
Profile Image for Nancy.
406 reviews88 followers
December 16, 2018
Huxley's reach exceeded his grasp. A comedy of manners, a comedy of ideas - this is a salmagundi of everything going on among the chattering classes and the bright young things in London of the 20s, with no coherent vision or even story. Amusing enough and occasionally interesting as an idea was worth more than the time it took to read it, but the title says it all.
26 reviews
February 22, 2011
Huxley was the first author I picked up when I ventured out of the YA section at 11 or so. I'm not sure if this is why I enjoy his writing so much.

This book may initially fool you into thinking it's a journey from start to finish, but about 3/4 way through, it becomes apparent that it's more about building a situation and developing character (especially the latter). As with other Huxley the conversations are carefully crafted and more intelligent than those of us 21st century folk, with lots of foreign phrases and witty references. As a preteen, I thought this was what adulthood would be like - frankly, I was disappointed (though not sure if I'd be able to keep up with the conversation anyhow).

Closing thoughts: the character I'd most like to hang with is Coleman, and I would like to see an "I glory in the name of earwig" tshirt.
Profile Image for Stephen Simpson.
664 reviews15 followers
September 5, 2020
I suppose I should give this more credit for being a high-quality specimen of nihilism, cynicism, and struggling with feeling disconnected and disillusioned. But it's so good at it, it's often an incredibly dreary read and hard to really enjoy.

I'll also give credit for Huxley's ability to express his ideas through character interactions and dialogue (something Rand could obviously, painfully, never do ... I mean, the lecture in Atlas Shrugged, right?!?!?). It definitely makes it easier to consider and accept those ideas instead of feeling like you're being firehosed with them.

I should try to re-read this another time, and maybe my opinion will improve. As is, it's in that weird contradictory of space of doing what it set out to do quite well ... but just being an un-fun read.
Profile Image for Mike Pinter.
319 reviews8 followers
July 14, 2023
Well, I didn't find it witty and funny. It kept me reading, expecting a turn of some kind, and then the book ended. All those blurb quotes on the cover misled me. It was well written, and probably caused more of a stir in its day, but if I hadn't read other books by him, I might not have read them if this had been the first.
Profile Image for Darryl Sloan.
Author 5 books10 followers
November 25, 2024
This is Aldous Huxley's second novel. I decided I would delve into his early works on the basis of how much I enjoyed "Brave New World." Unfortunately, this one isn't nearly up to the standard of that seminal work.

"Antic Hay" is a quirky, humourous, novel involving a cast of characters who are all upper class English men and women. There's not much of a narrative structure. It begins with the central character, Gumbril, a teacher, fed up with the profession, deciding to quit his job and invent something called pneumatic trousers (trousers that have an inflatable section at the top, allowing the wearer to sit comfortably for long periods on hard surfaces like church pews). But the novel's not really about that.

Characters come and go from the story. Their lives, and the dramas and conversations that occur, seem only to serve as vehicles for the author to express his thoughts on various political and philosophical issues. Now, it's fine if an author wishes to weave a subtext into a story, but it should be done subtly, and not at the expense of entertainment, which should be the primary purpose of a novel. Here, there's nothing "sub" about any of the text; it's all very heavy-handed and randomly sewn, from chapter to chapter. Plot is completely sacrificed; there isn't one, other than a series of anecdotes in the lives of some fairly dislikeable overly privileged English people in the 1920s. The reader does at least get a sense that Huxley is poking fun at them and inviting the reader to share in that. But there's no real ending. This simply isn't how a novel should be written.

You do get a sense that the author possesses a very deep intelligence. But it's as if he couldn't settle on a theme, so he opted for a sort of stream-of-consciousness style narrative. It sort of feels like Huxley was trying create the 1920s equivalient of what Bret Easton Ellis would later do for the 1980s in "Less than Zero."
Profile Image for Eric.
297 reviews19 followers
July 9, 2019
Disappointing. Early promise in the manner of an Evelyn Waugh farce evaporates as Huxley's cardboard characters go thru their manic motions (alternate title: Manic Clay) with a determined desperation that approaches hysteria. The pointless bitterness is so palpable it forms an impenetrable barrier thru which no empathy can pass for this collection of pathetic creatures, all miserable in their various self-made prisons. Some years ago I noted a trend in contemporary fiction & coined the phrase "Sad is the new Funny;" Aldous tried to make it so in 1923. Some of the antics here do approach the comic, only to devolve quickly into the merely wretched. Of all Huxley's creations, it is solely the unlikely Myra Viveash, incurably bored object of multiple adorations, who ultimately elicits a sliver of sympathy in me toward the book's end, as she wants only to be driven to & fro across nighttime London with no object other than to observe all the electric lights, like a child pacified by flashing sparklers.
7 reviews
August 29, 2024
Picked up this book without knowing about it and have previously only read Brave New World by Huxley. Read an older edition, so in some cases it was rather laborious. Characters did not seem to particularly develop but were entertaining. Conversations, interactions, and thoughts amongst the characters were the highlight of the book. Great satire of elitists/cultural snobs and their miserable meandering and fascinating insight into the zeitgeist of post WW1 London. There were certainly parts that dragged and the book did feel a bit long for there to be no cohesive plot/character development. Read as an unrefined manuscript with traces of Huxley's brilliance.

"What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?"

"But man's greatest strength lies in his capacity for irrelevance"

"It was one of those evenings when love is once more invented for the first time. That too seems a little ridiculous, sometimes, in the morning"

I can't make up my mind on how I feel overall. I can see this book growing on me more the longer I think about it.
Profile Image for Bruce.
274 reviews39 followers
February 23, 2011
Huxley is in that category of writers I don't really find very satisfactory for the most part, but who possess some quality I enjoy. His novels are very readable, often intellectually scintillating, contain superb satire, and eventually come to a point where the wry, sardonic tone is abandoned for serious empathy with the plight of at least one character.

This is an early effort with all of the above qualities, but in fairly small quantities -- kind of a Brave New World-lite. It is, by the way, mentioned in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited as one of the "hot" popular novels in the 1920s with young intellectual types.
Profile Image for Elizabeth.
Author 86 books73 followers
April 2, 2009
I read this book because Lois Gordon's excellent biography of Nancy Cunard cites it. Huxley apparently had a brief liason with Cunard and then made her a character in this book. I wish I could recognize the other players, all of whom were given absurd and suggestive names in Antic Hay. (Cunard is Mrs. Viveash.) It's largely satirical, and in equal measure bilious and hilarious. The writing is sharp and vivid, but the overall tone suggests the depth of disillusion that resulted from the disaster of the first world war. In that way, this is an acute portrait of the period.
Profile Image for Monica.
287 reviews9 followers
July 31, 2018
Really enjoyed this comic satire of a set of 1920s middle/upper class bohemian drifters - not unsympathetic characters - in the aftermath of the First World War. I didn't know what to expect when I picked it up, was rather dreading melodrama and exaggeration ala Evelyn Waugh but did not find it. In fact, the characters have enough warmth and the scenes are imbued with enough life, comedy and verisimilitude to keep one turning the pages until the end. I read it on one lazy Sunday and was thoroughly impressed. More Huxley please!
19 reviews
January 22, 2021
This book is not for those who read books for a story. This is a book for the word nerds. For the writers. For the appreciators of delicate humour. For me Antic Hay is a handbook for good writing. Antic Hay fills my vocabulary and my heart. I'm so in love with Huxley's word-weaving, wordsmithing through some dark labyrinths of his mind. It's simply delightful to read. And surprisingly deep cherries on top at times. Adore!
Profile Image for Partha Banerjee.
11 reviews8 followers
June 30, 2012
The first great novel of Huxley dealing with the disenchantment of affluent Britain with all kinds of belief systems leading to utter wastefulness and decadence. Huxley carefully dissects the idle pursuits that consume the rich and the famous, their boredom with everything, the lack of any meaning in their lives and the concomitant chaos that ensues.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 213 reviews

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