I don't know if there's such a thing as a casual Huxley fan, but if there is, this is not the book for that person. This second of six volumes of Huxley's essays contains many of the same trials and rewards of the first volume. It covers the years 1926 to 1929 and topics ranging from politics to philosophy to art to travel writing. My major criticism is that much of this work, written as short magazine pieces at the time, has not really stood the test of time, nor was it meant to. The section on art fares particularly badly.
However, this volume does contain some longer pieces where Huxley has more room to sketch out some thoughts more broadly on issues of philosophical and scientific importance, including a short section on eugenics, which he later comes back to in his most famous novel, Brave New World. Also, the travel section contains some interesting nuggets, particularly his views, as a liberal Englishman travelling through occupied India during the time of Ghandi's movement for independence. As you might expect, he is somewhat conflicted, re-emphasizing to me how issues that appear very clear in retrospect can often seem intractable as they are being lived, even to the brightest among us. Fun to compare Huxley's impressions to those of Orwell in "Shooting an Elephant," one of my all-time favorite essays.
Still, these works were never really meant to be read back to back and it is not fun or easy to get through this book. Rumsfeld's phrase from the title of this post is maybe a bit overblown, but I never miss an opportunity to quote Rummy. Huxley is undeniably good at wordplay and spending time with him has its pleasures, but this collection is too much effort for too little payoff.
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