Huxley Con't

Huxley's Those Barren Leaves is my second installment of the Huxley Week blog posts. It is never that is very similar to the earlier blogged about Antic Hay. It concerns a group of self-absorbed rich folk that fancy themselves artists and intellectuals. Mrs. Aldwinkle operates a sort of second class salon where this groups gathers. Huxley, like in Antic Hay, proceeds to show the true colors of the denizens of the salon, bringing out their hubris, pettiness, and vanity. It's not a bad novel by any stretch, but it doesn't feel like it has much vitality either. I praised Antic Hay because I felt Huxley was starting to draw some sympathetic characters along with his insightful "novel of ideas". Those Barren Leaves feels like a step backward from that. As usual, there are plenty of ideas in this novel, but we never know much about any characters really, and there are several that its difficult to even tell them apart. As in any Huxley book, this one has its moments, but they are far too few and far between.

Also, the cover the book is one of the most gimmicky book covers ever. As you can see, the tree is barren, but the back cover contains the foliage that would have gone on the tree. A caption on the back tells you to stare at the foliage for 30 seconds, then turn the book over and see the afterimage on the barren tree. It's like the thing you used to see on Perkins kids menus, where you stare at the American flag in yellow, green, and black and then look at white space to see the flag in the actual colors. Unbearably silly for the cover of a supposedly serious book.