The unusually cold winter, even here in Texas, has given me more time for reading. I've already read three books and nearly finished a fourth. I read Richard Russo's Empire Falls, then Charles Frazier's Nightwoods. Russo's book was entertaining, a sort of saga of several interconnected families. That was the third of his books I read in a few months and I noted some similarity in the style and themes, but his tone was much lighter in Straight Man, and I think that was the book I enjoyed the most. Still, he's a good writer, and I'm glad my friends put me on to him. Somehow Frazier's book was just about what I expected. I'm not a fan of backwoods family dramas. Maybe it's just a little too familiar or something. But I did enjoy reading the book and found Frazier's style interesting. His language is rich and his imagery apt and original as well as faithful to his subject matter. Nevertheless, I have limited patience with stupid people.
And so I decided to return to my study of pre- and post-World-War-Two British writers: this time Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I think the last time I read this book was when I taught it to a class of freshmen at the University of Texas back in the early 1970s. In any case, it has been a very long time, and I was struck both by how quaint some of it seemed, and also how prophetic. I worked my way through several of Huxley's earlier novels, so that I would have a better sense of where this one fit into his other writing. And I'm glad I did that. I could see his early fascination with science and technology as well as with human psychology and sexuality. Like George Orwell, Huxley saw very clearly that the world was changing, and not necessarily always for the better. It's interesting that they both wrote dystopian prophecies, although with rather different perspectives.
I'm fairly confident that Huxley meant Brave New World to be both a warning and an entertainment. There is a good deal of humor and satire throughout the novel. But I wonder if, at the same time, he wasn't also somewhat drawn to aspects of his vision of the future, perhaps in the way his World Controller Mustapha Mond was drawn to it, despite his own predilections and earlier fascination with science and literature. Of course, we must all identify with the Savage, who, like ourselves, doesn't seem to belong in either world, the civilized world of Ford and Freud or the uncivilized reservation with its strange mixture of Christian and pagan beliefs and practices. Nevertheless, there remains something appealing in Huxley's descriptions of a world so well ordered and organized, where everyone is apparently happy and lacking both physical and psychological defects, except for Bernard Marx, of course. It's only when we begin to recognize some of our own modern society in Huxley's fantasies that we become troubled. It's those old questions from high school and college: Who got it right? Orwell or Huxley? Are we being manipulated by fear or by pleasure? Or is it a combination of both?
When I finished Brave New World, I decided to read Hugo Williams's travel book All the Time in the World. This may have been brought on by my recent decision to let my subscription to TLS lapse. In fact, I relented, and decided to resubscribe, but only online, so that the paper copies don't build up but nevertheless I can still check in from time to time and feed my old habit. Anyway, I got to thinking about Hugo Williams and his essays and I remembered that a while back I'd ordered a copy of the travel book he published back in the sixties. So I picked it up and started reading, and I was hooked. It's a fascinating record of his solo trip "around the world" (more or less) back in 1963. It's the sort of thing you can only do when you're young and can endure the hardships of that kind of travel. It's also the sort of thing you could do back in the mid 1960s, before the current state of world affairs. Williams knew that as a British subject he had a sort of status that allowed him to pass rather freely where others had more difficulty going, even then -- a sort of King's X that appears to let him slip through borders and find friendly accommodations and helpful companions wherever he goes. I was reminded just a bit of the more recent adventures of Michael Palin on PBS, but Hugo Williams's travels were a more genuine adventure and much more interesting. And as an added feature, he's a marvelous writer, a poet who has a fluid and very natural prose style, and who is at the same time a truly gifted storyteller.
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