Point Counter Point

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First US edition
(publ. Doubleday, Doran) PointCounterPoint.JPG
First US edition
(publ. Doubleday, Doran)

Point Counter Point is a novel by Aldous Huxley, first published in 1928. [1] It is Huxley's longest novel, and was notably more complex and serious than his earlier fiction. [1]

Contents

In 1998, [2] the Modern Library ranked Point Counter Point 44th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. [3]

The novel entered the public domain in the United States in 2024. [4]

Title and construction

The novel's title is a reference to the flow of arguments in a debate, [3] and a series of these exchanges tell the story. [5] Instead of a single central plot, there are a number of interlinked story lines and recurring themes (as in musical "counterpoint"). [6] As a roman à clef , [7] many of the characters are based on real people, most of whom Huxley knew personally, such as D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Nancy Cunard, and John Middleton Murry, and Huxley is depicted as the novel's novelist, Philip Quarles. [8] Huxley described the structure of Point Counter Point within the novel itself, in a stream of consciousness musing of Quarles:

The musicalization of fiction.  Not in the symbolist way, by subordinating sense to sound. . . . But on a large scale, in the construction.  Meditate on Beethoven.  The changes of moods, the abrupt transitions . . . More interesting still, the modulations, not merely from one key to another, but from mood to mood.  A theme is stated, then developed, pushed out of shape, imperceptibly deformed, until, though still recognizably the same, it has become quite different. . . . Get this into a novel.  How?  The abrupt transitions are easy enough.  All you need is a sufficiency of characters and parallel, contrapuntal plots.   . . . You alternate the theme.  More interesting, the modulations and variations are also more difficult.  A novelist modulates by reduplicating situations and characters. He shows several people falling in love, or dying, or praying in different ways -- dissimilars solving the same problem.  Or, vice versa, similar people confronted with dissimilar problems.  In this way you can modulate through all the aspects of your theme, you can write variations in any number of different moods.  Another way: The novelist can assume the god-like creative privilege and simply elect to consider the events in the story in their various aspects -- emotional, scientific, religious, metaphysical, etc.  He will modulate from one to the other -- as, from the aesthetic to the physico-chemical aspect of things, from the religious to the physiological or financial. . . . Put a novelist in the novel.  He justifies aesthetic generalizations, which may be interesting -- at least to me. He also justifies experiment.  Specimens of his work may illustrate other possible or impossible ways of telling a story." [9]

Main characters and storylines

Some of the main characters are:

Real-world British fascists

Comparisons have been made between the character Everard Webley with his Brotherhood of British Freemen and Oswald Mosley with the British Union of Fascists. However, when Huxley wrote Point Counter Point, Mosley was still a prominent member of the Labour Party and would remain so until 1931. The BUF was not founded until 1932. A number of other fascist groups preceded Mosley, the most prominent being the British Fascists, and possibly one of those may have been Huxley's inspiration. In the 1996 reprint of Point Counter Point, Mosley's son Nicholas discusses the connection in a new introduction to the novel. [12] David Bradshaw has argued that the most likely source for Webley is John Hargrave, the founder of The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift. [13]

Adaptations

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References

  1. 1 2 "Point Counter Point | novel by Huxley". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  2. "Modern Library's Choices". archive.nytimes.com. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  3. 1 2 3 "Collecting Point Counter Point by Aldous, Huxley - First edition identification guide". www.biblio.com. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  4. "Point Counter Point - The Greatest Literature of All Time". www.editoreric.com. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  5. Watt, Donald (1977). "The Fugal Construction of "point Counter Point"". Studies in the Novel. 9 (4): 509–517. ISSN   0039-3827. JSTOR   29531894.
  6. "Novel - Roman à clef". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  7. "Point Counter Point | Dalkey Archive Press" . Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  8. Huxley, Point Counter Point, Harper's Perrenial Classic, chapter XXII, page 301 (1965)
  9. "Baudelaire and Aldous Huxley - Point counter point | Charles Baudelaire | Poetry". Scribd. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  10. Marovitz, Sanford E. "Point Counter Point: Huxley's Tragi-Comic Performance of the "Human Fugue"" (PDF). Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  11. Huxley, Aldous (1996). Point Counter Point. Garden City, New York: Dalkey Archive Press. p. v-ix.
  12. Bradshaw, David (2002). "Huxley's 'Tinpot Mussolini' and the KKK's 'White Fox': A New Source for Everard Webley and the Brotherhood of British Freemen in 'Point Counter Point'". Aldous Huxley Annual. 2: 146–59.
  13. O'Connor, John J. (20 February 1973). "TV: B.B.C. 'Point Counter Point' Provides Satire". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 11 December 2019.