Ape and Essence (1948) is a novel by Aldous Huxley, first published in August 1948 by Harper & Brothers in the US,[1] and then in 1949 by Chatto & Windus in the UK.[2] It is set in a dystopia, as is Brave New World, Huxley's more famous work. It is largely a satire of the rise of large-scale warfare and warmongering in the 20th century, and presents a pessimistic view of the politics of mutually assured destruction. The book makes extensive use of surreal imagery, depicting humans as apes who, as a whole, will inevitably kill themselves.
The novel is divided into two sections, "Tallis"—the name of the novel's character most like Huxley himself—and "the Script"—the screenplay titled Ape and Essence which Tallis had submitted to the studio (it was rejected on 26 November 1947, a fortnight before his death, but not returned to him).[3]
"Tallis" introduces two movie industry intellectuals—screenwriter Bob Briggs and the narrator—who, on the day of Gandhi's murder (30 January 1948), rescue Ape and Essence from the trash. Intrigued, they make the drive two days later to Los Angeles County's high desert to find its author, William Tallis. En route they discuss a range of ideas cultural and topical, from Gandhi to Goya.
They arrive at a remote and isolated old ranch, a solitary homestead in a surreal setting. They interact with the home's inhabitants, learning that Tallis died suddenly just six weeks before. As these characters serve mainly to establish the narrative frame, or context, they are not seen again, except insofar as Tallis has written himself into the script's final scene, foreknowing his death (but misimagining his grave to lie at the desert farm he rents, rather than in a proper cemetery 30 miles (50km) away in Lancaster).
Story
Ape and Essence is presented in its entirety, without remark by interruption, footnote or afterword. It begins with a vignette describing the destruction of the world by nuclear and chemical warfare at the hands of intelligent baboons. The two warring sides each have an Einstein on a leash which they force to press the button, releasing clouds of disease-causing gases toward each other.
The story then advances to a time 100 years after the catastrophic events of World War III, which characters in the book refer to as "the Thing", when nuclear and chemical weapons eventually destroyed most of human civilisation. In the script's timeframe, radiation has subsided to safer levels and in 2107, an exploratory team of New Zealand rediscovery scientists (New Zealand was spared from direct nuclear attack because it was "of no strategic importance") travel to California.
Meanwhile, a strange society has emerged from the radiation and three of its men capture one of the scientists (Dr. Poole). Dr. Poole is introduced to an illiterate society which survives by "mining" graves for clothes, burning library books as fuel, and killing off newborns deformed by radiation (that is, newborns with over three pairs of nipples and more than seven toes or fingers) to preserve genetic purity. The society has also taken to worshipping Satan, whom they refer to as "Belial", and limiting reproduction to an annual two-week orgy which begins on "Belial's Day Eve" after the deformed babies are "purified by blood".
The story climaxes during the purification ceremonies of Belial's Day Eve with an intellectual confrontation between Dr. Poole and the arch-vicar, the head of the Church of Belial. During the conversation the arch-vicar reveals that there is a minority of "hots" who do not express an interest in the post-World War III style of reproduction, but they are severely punished to keep them in line. In exchange for his life, Dr. Poole agrees to do what he can as a botanist to help increase their crops yields, but about a year later he escapes with Loola in search of the community of "hots" that is rumoured to exist north of the desert.
The script—and the novel—end with Dr. Poole and Loola in the desert north of Los Angeles, breaking their trek by a tombstone which bears the author's name of Tallis, the dates 1882–1948, and three lines from the antepenultimate verse of Percy Bysshe Shelley's elegy on the death of John Keats. Lest Loola find it sad, Dr. Poole, happily possessed of a duodecimo Shelley, reads her the poem's penultimate verse:
That Light whose smile kindles the Universe That Beauty in which all things work and move That Benediction, which the eclipsing Curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love, Which through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.
Vignettes
The story in the script is punctuated by a series of vignettes centering on a society which is much like 20th century human society, but with baboons substituted for men. The opening scene shows two Einsteins, tied to leashes held by baboons on either side of a pair of baboon armies, facing each other and preparing for battle. They are then directed to operate machines which release "improved" disease-causing clouds at the opposition.
Several of the vignettes portray a female baboon singing sensually to an all-baboon audience "Give me, give me, give me detumescence..." Other vignettes involve apes performing various human activities, ape armies assembling, and other more surreal imagery.
Progress and Nationalism—those were the two great ideas He put into their heads. Progress—the theory that you can get something for nothing; the theory that you can gain in one field without paying for your gain in another; the theory that you alone understand the meaning of history; the theory that you know what’s going to happen fifty years from now; the theory that, in the teeth of all experience, you can foresee all the consequences of your present actions; the theory that Utopia lies just ahead and that, since ideal ends justify the most abominable means, it is your privilege and duty to rob, swindle, torture, enslave and murder all those who, in your opinion (which is, by definition, infallible), obstruct the onward march to the earthly paradise. Remember that phrase of Karl Marx’s: ‘Force is the midwife of Progress.’ He might have added—but of course Belial didn’t want to let the cat out of the bag at that early stage of the proceedings—that Progress is the midwife of Force. Doubly the midwife, for the fact of technological progress provides people with the instruments of ever more indiscriminate destruction, while the myth of political and moral progress serves as the excuse for using those means to the very limit. I tell you, my dear sir, an undevout historian is mad. The longer you study modern history, the more evidence you find of Belial’s Guiding Hand.
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.
The Doors of Perception is an autobiographical book written by Aldous Huxley. Published in 1954, it elaborates on his psychedelic experience under the influence of mescaline in May 1953. Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, ranging from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision", and reflects on their philosophical and psychological implications. In 1956, he published Heaven and Hell, another essay which elaborates these reflections further. The two works have since often been published together as one book; the title of both comes from William Blake's 1793 book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Thomas Henry Huxley was an English biologist and anthropologist who specialized in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by the story's protagonist. Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final novel, Island (1962), the utopian counterpart. This novel is often compared as an inversion counterpart to George Orwell's 1984 (1949).
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley was a British evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century modern synthesis. He was secretary of the Zoological Society of London (1935–1942), the first director of UNESCO, a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund, the president of the British Eugenics Society (1959–1962), and the first president of the British Humanist Association.
Belial is a term occurring in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament which later became personified as the devil in Christian texts of the New Testament. Alternate spellings include Baalial, Balial, Belhor, Beliall, Beliar, Berial, Bylyl and Beliya'al. In the Secret Book of John, an early Gnostic text, the ruler of the underworld is referred to as Belias.
Island is a 1962 utopian manifesto and novel by English writer Aldous Huxley, the author's final work before his death in 1963. Although it has a plot, the plot largely serves to further conceptual explorations rather than setting up and resolving conventional narrative tension.
Henry FitzGerald Heard, commonly called Gerald Heard, was a British-born American historian, science writer and broadcaster, public lecturer, educator, and philosopher. He wrote many articles and over 35 books.
Crome Yellow is the first novel by British author Aldous Huxley, published by Chatto & Windus in 1921, followed by a U.S. edition by George H. Doran Company in 1922. Though a social satire of its time, it is still appreciated and has been adapted to different media.
The Perennial Philosophy is a comparative study of mysticism by the British writer and novelist Aldous Huxley. Its title derives from the theological tradition of perennial philosophy.
The Huxley family is a British family; several of its members have excelled in science, medicine, arts and literature. The family also includes members who occupied senior positions in the public service of the United Kingdom.
Anna Margaret Ross, known by her pen-name Amanda McKittrick Ros, was an Irish writer. She published her first novel Irene Iddesleigh at her own expense in 1897, but it was reprinted by Nonesuch Press in 1926 and sold out immediately. She wrote poetry and a number of novels. She has been described as a "writer with an immense power of words but uncertain use of them."
After Many a Summer (1939) is a novel by Aldous Huxley that tells the story of a Hollywood millionaire who fears his impending death. It was published in the United States as After Many a Summer Dies the Swan. Written soon after Huxley left England and settled in California, the novel is Huxley's examination of American culture, particularly what he saw as its narcissism, superficiality, and obsession with youth. This satire also raises philosophical and social issues, some of which would later take the forefront in Huxley's final novel Island. The novel's title is taken from Tennyson's poem Tithonus, about a figure in Greek mythology to whom Aurora gave eternal life but not eternal youth. The book was awarded the 1939 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.
Sybille Bedford, OBE was a German-born English writer of non-fiction and semi-autobiographical fiction books. She was a recipient of the Golden PEN Award.
Eugen Steinach was an Austrian physiologist and pioneer in endocrinology. Steinach played a significant role in discovering the relationship between sex hormones and human physical identifiers.
Robert "Bob" Briggs is a fictional screenwriter living in 1940s Hollywood. His one appearance to date is in Aldous Huxley's dystopian satire Ape and Essence.
Hubert Benoit (1904–1992) was a 20th-century French psychotherapist whose work foreshadowed subsequent developments in integral psychology and integral spirituality. His special interest and contribution lay in developing a pioneering form of psychotherapy which integrated a psychoanalytic perspective with insights derived from Eastern spiritual disciplines, in particular from Ch'an and Zen Buddhism. He stressed the part played by the spiritual ignorance of Western culture in the emergence and persistence of much underlying distress. He used concepts derived from psychoanalysis to explain the defences against this fundamental unease, and emphasised the importance of an analytic, preparatory phase, while warning against what he regarded as the psychoanalytic overemphasis on specific causal precursors of symptomatology. He demonstrated parallels between aspects of Zen training and the experience of psychoanalysis. He constructed an account in contemporary psychological terms of the crucial Zen concept of satori and its emergence in the individual.
Sex and Culture is a 1934 book by English social anthropologist J. D. Unwin concerning the correlation between a society's level of "cultural achievement" and its level of sexual restraint. The book concluded with the theory that as societies develop, they become more sexually liberal, accelerating the social entropy of the society, thereby diminishing its "creative" and "expansive" energy.
The following bibliography of Aldous Huxley provides a chronological list of the published works of English writer Aldous Huxley (1894–1963). It includes his fiction and non-fiction, both published during his lifetime and posthumously.
Hugh Mills (1913–1971) was a British novelist, playwright and screenwriter. His 1939 play As You Are was made into the film Turned Out Nice Again while his comedy novel Prudence and the Pill was adapted into a 1968 film of the same title. Before making his name in theatre he briefly worked in advertising.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
