More Quotes...
After my earlier post from Huxley I finished reading yet another book by him - in which these two quotes seem rather fitting:
"Human Contacts [including love and friendship] have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment and because books were scarce...The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As readoing becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increaseing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium...The proper study of mankind is books."
Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow (pg. 304)
While I love reading - voraciously - I definitely don't agree with this character. Yes, love is much composed of "tedium" and generates, for me, a great deal of pain - but this pain and tedium (so the classic romantics [myself included] would attest) serve to enhance what is so enjoyable about love and what writing, except writing of love directed towards or from the individuals concerned, lacks.
"In my youth...I found myself, quite foruitously, involved in a series of the most phantasmagorical amorous intrigues. A novelist could have made his fortune out of them...But I assure you, while they were happening - these romantic adventures - they seemed to me no more and no less exciting than any other incident of actual life. To climb at night up a rope-ladder to a second-floor window...seemed to me, while I was actually performing this rather dangerous feat, an action as obvious, as much to be taken for granted as...catching the 8.52 from Surbiton to go to business on a Monday morning. Adventures and romance only take on their adventurous and romantic qualities at second-hand. Live them, and they are just a slice of life like the rest."
Huxley, ibid (pg. 305-306)
I wonder if this is true? Again, I hope not - I want the events of my life to entertain me more than any novel. This brings me back to my original point: life lived events, such as falling in love - even in recollection - are more entertaining than a mere book. Even a diary - recalling the real lived events of your life, while hopefully interesting in a way that this second quote denies, is less interesting to read than the events were to experience (actually that reminds me of another quote I'll go find).
Fundamentally I disagree with both these quotes. Why do I like them so much? Because I don't think Huxley writes them in order to persuade us of their validity - in fact he writes them to warn us of what we may become, unless we do strive to enjoy our interactions with other people in a way that this character denies.
"Human Contacts [including love and friendship] have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment and because books were scarce...The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As readoing becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increaseing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium...The proper study of mankind is books."
Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow (pg. 304)
While I love reading - voraciously - I definitely don't agree with this character. Yes, love is much composed of "tedium" and generates, for me, a great deal of pain - but this pain and tedium (so the classic romantics [myself included] would attest) serve to enhance what is so enjoyable about love and what writing, except writing of love directed towards or from the individuals concerned, lacks.
"In my youth...I found myself, quite foruitously, involved in a series of the most phantasmagorical amorous intrigues. A novelist could have made his fortune out of them...But I assure you, while they were happening - these romantic adventures - they seemed to me no more and no less exciting than any other incident of actual life. To climb at night up a rope-ladder to a second-floor window...seemed to me, while I was actually performing this rather dangerous feat, an action as obvious, as much to be taken for granted as...catching the 8.52 from Surbiton to go to business on a Monday morning. Adventures and romance only take on their adventurous and romantic qualities at second-hand. Live them, and they are just a slice of life like the rest."
Huxley, ibid (pg. 305-306)
I wonder if this is true? Again, I hope not - I want the events of my life to entertain me more than any novel. This brings me back to my original point: life lived events, such as falling in love - even in recollection - are more entertaining than a mere book. Even a diary - recalling the real lived events of your life, while hopefully interesting in a way that this second quote denies, is less interesting to read than the events were to experience (actually that reminds me of another quote I'll go find).
Fundamentally I disagree with both these quotes. Why do I like them so much? Because I don't think Huxley writes them in order to persuade us of their validity - in fact he writes them to warn us of what we may become, unless we do strive to enjoy our interactions with other people in a way that this character denies.
posted by SC TC at 11:38 pm
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