Aldous Huxley

A shipwrecked journalist discovers the beauty and serentity promoted by science on the island of Pala.

Island

In his final novel, which he considered his most important, Aldous Huxley transports us to the remote Pacific island of Pala, where an ideal society has flourished for 120 years. Inevitably, this island of bliss attracts the envy and enmity of the surrounding world. A conspiracy is underway to take over Pala, and events are set in motion when an agent of the conspirators, a newspaperman named Faranby, is shipwrecked there. What Faranby doesn't expect is how his time with the people of Pala will revolutionize all his values and—to his amazement—give him hope.

Ezgi Hatipoğlu

Gavin

His last book: a half-rational vehicle for his late contrarian mystical worldview; in fact it reads as his making amends for the vivid bioconservative paranoia of Brave New World. It certainly handles the same themes, simply inverted in their consequences: we see drugs as enablers of enlightenment; a much healthier view of suffering, as a pointless trap; a surprisingly pragmatic view of genetic engineering; and a very balanced view of civilisation and economic development. 

So: he constructs a Taoist-Hindu-Buddhist utopia which mostly avoids primitivism and annoying mysticism for a sustainable East plus West non-industrial modernity. It's not my idea of paradise, but other people's utopias usually aren't. Moreover, it is a doomed utopia nestled in nasty 1950s international political economy. The animating enemy of Island is not the authoritarian consequences of technology, but what Scott Alexander calls Moloch: the forces of self-fulfilling inevitability and destructive competition.

Protagonist is a mirror of John the Savage: an open-minded liar and shill, a fallen outsider who manages to undermine the utopia he infiltrates. Huxley himself is the model for him: in fact we can see Will's journey from cynical aestheticism to materialist spirituality as autobiography in allegory. The mystic character, Rani, is amazing: an enraging theosophical flake. This reflects well on Huxley's own weirdness: the Rani is as far from traditional organised religion as Huxley is from her.

Given the times and his project, lots of Huxley's worldview have become clichés: e.g. “you forget to pay attention to what's happening. And that's the same as not being here and now ”. The prose is arch and syrupy but I like it. (BNW is saddled by the air of a smug jeremiad. Island is every bit as didactic but nowhere near as smug.) It's chock-full of bad poetry though. I love his use of reported speech to denote characters he disrespects: this saves him the bother of writing it and us the bother of reading and makes a conspiracy of us and Huxley: 

	He turned to Will and treated him to a long and flowery farewell. 


In polysyllables, Mr Bahu hedged diplomatically. On the one hand, yes; but on the other hand, no. From one point of view, white; but from a different angle, distinctly black.

Pala's structure is cool but not at all radical enough to solve what is wrong with us, I think – technology is controlled very carefully and considered one of the 'dozens' of fronts to aid people on. (Hypnotherapy and tantra are given way more credit than they deserve, for instance.) Is “one-third” of suffering intrinsic? I look forward to science seeing if that is the case. I elect Huxley into the hall of fame of people who make a very popular error and later recant to no acclaim. (Niels Bohr (and his memetically dominant false model), Frank Jackson, André Gide, Bertrand Russell, ...)


* Can we call a novel mistaken? As a whole, not in some particular claim of a character. No. 'Misguided', or ideologically harmful, maybe.

Nick Chmura

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. 
Lightly child, lightly...."

In his prescient vision of the 21st century, Huxley explores Buddhist ideology, nuclear threat and ‘big oil’ corporate greed. For over a hundred years the Pacific island of Pala has been the scene of a unique experiment in civilisation. Its inhabitants live in a society where western science has been brought together with Eastern philosophy to create a paradise on Earth. When cynical journalist, Will Farnaby, arrives to research potential oil reserves on Pala, he quickly falls in love with the way of life on the island. Soon the need to complete his mission becomes an intolerable burden and he must make a difficult choice. In counterpoint to Brave New World and Ape and Essence, Island gives us Huxley's vision of utopia. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DAVID BRADSHAW

Jade Flynn

Best read in tandem with Brave New World as it's pointless as a solo novel.

Prashant Prasad

I worship this book. 
One of Huxley's masterpiece (other than Brave New World).

'It’s dark because you are trying too hard. 
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. 
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. 
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them...'

Bud Valley

One of the most insightful and beautiful books ever written. My heart hurts to know that so much of what Huxley says about civilization, about us, is so painfully accurate.

Island

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