The increasing domination of technology controlled by self-centered powerful elites at the expense of caring consideration in our current world and the efforts of a rampant virus to wake us all up to the need for mutual cooperation has spurred me to interrupt my reading of Aldous Huxley’s ‘Antic Hay’, to return to his ‘Brave New World’, a visionary dystopian novel published in 1932 that I last read almost fifty years ago. Here is the frontispiece and the title page of my Folio Society copy:
Perceptive readers will appreciate that this has been prompted by my current difficulties in gaining refunds of fraudulent removal of sums from my bank account. I have today received the payments in my on line banking statement, but the e-mail informing me about this stated that it would be ‘a temporary credit …. pending investigation’, so I am not holding my breath.
I began the day with skim-reading revision of Huxley’s philosophical masterpiece. I skimmed along at a reasonable rate. The pace slowed as I was drawn in by the author’s fast moving prose and intriguing story. Soon I ceased skimming and savoured every word.
This was another of Huxley’s explorations of the dichotomy between reason and passion; between uniformity and individuality; between science and art.
The binding of my Folio Society edition has a shiny silver coating reproduced as black by my scanner, and this front board carries a faceless version of one of the
powerful full page drawings by Leonard Rosoman, totally in tune, as is his wont, with the text.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s delicious cockaleeky stoup (chicken and leek stew/soup) and fresh bread with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank Patrick Chodot Fleurie 2019.