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Parallel Straight Lines: Connection through Contradiction

Parallel straight lines, Denis reflected, meet only at infinity. He might talk forever of care-chamber sleep and she of meteorology till the end of time. Did one ever establish contact with anyone? We are all parallel straight lines (Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow, p. 18).

I mentioned in my post on Crome Yellow that I would comment on a couple of quotes from the book. This is the first of those quotes.

I do not want to get into the mathematical idea of parallel lines meeting at infinity. I had to take an intermediate algebra class in college. Let’s just say it’s not my forte. But the idea itself is intriguing.

Tim Keller regularly uses The Stepford Wives as an illustration of our need for contradiction. When you have a wife that cannot contradict you, then you have no possibility for an actual relationship. The same, he says, goes for God. We hear things like, ‘I could never believe in a God who would do X.’ We want God to conform to our own moral norms. We want to mold him in our own image. But, says Keller, if God cannot contradict you, then you have no real basis for a relationship. There are some holes in this logic, I think, but the point is well taken nonetheless.

The parallel lines idea makes this point in a more logical way. If you are on a parallel line with someone, if you are exactly the same, then you do not meet in this life. In order to have connection we need contradiction. In order to meet someone there needs to be some sort of perpendicularity. Hence the need for a God who contradicts us, who calls us out on our differences. I can see the case being made for people as well (not just for God).

52 Novels (18): Brave New World

My goal is to read a novel a week in 2015. I’ve made it to 18.

-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Why not two straight weeks of Huxley?

This is my second time reading the book. I decided to read it again because I want to read it and 1984 (which I’ve never read, though Animal Farm is one my favorites) in close proximity. My particular interest in this book, as well as 1984, stems from Neil Postman’s treatment of the two books in the foreword to Amusing Ourselves to Death:

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another – slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

Anyone who’s been around my blog for a while knows that I love Neil Postman. I just ordered two more of his books to read. More on that soon; and I really need to blog through Amusing Ourselves to Death at some point. I’ve already written a lot about Technopoly (which is without a doubt one of my favorite semi-modern books). Which all reminds me that I’ve never blogged on Animal Farm. I need to at some point. Anyhow…

For this post, I simply want to record a few things about Brave New World that popped out at me this time around.

First, the ‘Ford’ worship struck this time in a way that it didn’t in the first reading. ‘Ford’ as in Henry Ford. In the future society of A Brave New World, all other forms of religion have been replaced by the veneration of Henry Ford. His brilliance for machinery and assembly lines are apparently the ideal in that future world. And so the word ‘God’ has been replaced by ‘Ford.’

So, then, the god of that future world is a secular god set up to symbolize the ideals of technology. Let’s hope we’re not venerating Steve Jobs to that level in the near future; though he already appears to have received his sainthood in modern America.

Second, the worship of Ford involves intense mysticism. That didn’t strike me as profound the first time around. But now, having seen the elements of mysticism implicit in our technological society, it takes on a bit more realism and possibility. It’s also worth noting that mysticism can go hand in hand with drug use; which leads me to my next point.

Third, as someone who worked in the pharmacy business for several years, the fact that there is an actual drug named Soma still makes me giggle a bit. I’ve mentioned the fact that this was the name of the popular drug in Brave New World to virtually everyone I’ve ever worked with; no one else had ever read the book, and, therefore, didn’t notice. In the novel, Soma is the tranquilizer all people immediately turn to in order to numb emotions (“I take a gram and only am;” “a gram is better than a damn,” etc.). Yep, we’re about there on that one. However, in the real world Soma is a muscle relaxer (and yes it is used recreationally to numb the senses, they call it a ‘Soma coma’); it’s Xanax and Ativan and Tranxene and the like that we turn to to be numbed. Interestingly, another novel I recently read, Generation A by Douglas Coupland, features a sedating drug that has the world hooked. Both that novel and Brave New World are on the short-list of fiction that I recommend.

Fourthly, the strict imposition of worldly orthodoxy stood out. We’re seeing that a good bit these days. Blasphemy in our culture is no longer religious. Blasphemy now belongs to the secular realm.

Finally, there is lots of sex, but no reproduction. Well, I take that back. There is reproduction, but there is no procreation. People have multiple sexual partners; loose sex is encouraged. No worries; all the babies are born in a lab. Doesn’t really seem that far-fetched these days. Lots of sex, hatch the babies in a lab.

Huxley’s prophetic imagination is stunning; plus he was a great writer. It’s a wonderful book, and one that I will keep turning back to.

52 Novels (17): Crome Yellow

My goal is to read a novel a week in 2015. I’ve made it to 17.

-Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow

The title initially puzzled me. The name of the town/estate in which the story takes place is Crome; that’s easy. But after going back and reading the introduction, I learned:

The term ‘crome yellow’ describes a yellow pigment that has an initial brightness that tends to fade when exposed to sunlight and turns brown or green over time. Hence, the title’s symbolism refers to the novel’s characters who at first appear flashy, but will soon turn dark or fade away. As Peter Bowering has said of the novel, the “yellow” of Crome is more than a little jaundiced (p. ix).

Judging by the (modern) reviews of this book I’ve seen online, a lot of modern folks don’t seem to care as much for it as you would expect with what is considered a ‘classic’ (written in the 1920s). As for myself, I really enjoyed the book. I think some of the writing is quite beautiful; I also think that some of the characters developed in the story are intriguing caricatures of the types of folks Huxley was likely dealing with in his day, especially in the artsy-fartsy circles he ran in. And I think there is a good bit of wisdom to be gleaned from the narrative.

First off, Mr. Barbecue-Smith, the most famous of the ‘artists’ in the story, is almost a dead ringer for G.K. Chesterton. He’s a heavyset guy with no neck that waxes poetically about everything, has an opinion on everything, writes prodigiously, and majors on mystical experience. I don’t think Chesterton was really anything close to a mystic, but he was certainly accused of it at times by his opponents. From my online searches I couldn’t find anyone who has made a connection between Barbecue and Chesterton, but I can’t help but be suspicious (maybe the idea of Chesterton and Barbecue just go hand in hand). I do know Chesterton wasn’t fond of Huxley’s pessimistic vision of the world, and wasn’t afraid to say so (let’s just admit that Huxley was a quack, but a great writer nonetheless; and I actually sympathize with his pessimism in some ways). Here’s one example of the ruminations of Barbecue; apparently he was portly enough that he didn’t have much of a neck:

In his earlier middle age he had been distressed by this absence of neck, but was comforted by reading in Balzac’s Louis Lambert that all the world’s great men have been marked by the same peculiarity, and for a simple and obvious reason: Greatness is nothing more nor less than the harmonious functioning of the faculties of the head and heart; the shorter the neck, the more closely these two organs approach one another… (p. 28).

Next, I mentioned beautiful writing. One of the early portions of the book is one of the most eloquent pieces of prose I’ve ever read. The main character, Denis, a young poet, tries to describe some hilly scenery:

Curves, curves: he repeated the word slowly, trying as he did so to find some term in which to give expression to his appreciation. Curves – no, that was inadequate. He made a gesture with his hand, as though to scoop the achieved expression out of the air, and almost fell off his bicycle. What was the word to describe the curves of those little valleys? They were as fine as the lines of a human body, they were informed with the subtlety of art…

…But he really must find the word. Curves curves… Those little valleys had the lines of a cup moulded round a woman’s breast; they seemed the dinted imprints of some huge divine body that had rested on these hills…He was enamoured with the beauty of words (pp. 4-5).

There are also some deep thoughts tucked away in the narrative, such as,

Parallel straight lines, Denis reflected, meet only at infinity. He might talk forever of care-chamber sleep and she of meteorology till the end of time. Did one ever establish contact with anyone? We are all parallel straight lines (p. 18).

and

Mr. Barbecue-Smith stood with his back to the hearth, warming himself at the memory of last winter’s fires (p. 30).

Both of those lines will probably get individual posts from me in the near future.

I also love the description of one fictional writer:

‘I say,’ said Gombauld, ‘Knockespotch was a little obscure sometimes, wasn’t he?’

‘He was,’ Mr Scogan replied, ‘and with intention. It made him seem even profounder than he actually was’ (p. 83).

I relate to that because it seems that many of our postmodern authors seem to think that obscurity is the mark of genuine art. I am rather old school in the sense that I still think you should write in order to be understood.

Moving on, one of the more interesting twists in the narrative involves a book of sketches drawn by a deaf woman who is living among this colony of artists. Denis has always pictured her as absent-minded and withdrawn. After looking at her private book of sketches (unbeknownst to her), he realizes that she, as evidenced by her drawings, has pegged him to a tee. She manages to reveal his character perfectly with one sketch. This leads him to the before unrealized conclusion that other people in the world were able to see through him in the same way that he believes he is able to see through him:

[Her drawings] represented all the vast conscious world of men outside himself; they symbolised something that in his studious solitariness he was apt not to believe in. He could stand at Piccadillly Circus, could watch the crowds shuffle past, and still imagine himself the one fully conscious, intelligent, individual being among all the thousands. It seemed, somehow, impossible that other people should be in their way as elaborate and complete as he in his. Impossible; and yet, periodically he would make some painful discovery about the external world and the horrible reality of its consciousness and its intelligence (p. 141).

I relate to that point.

Denis also expresses another sentiment that I often share. Quotes repeatedly pop into his mind:

Oh, these rags and tags of other people’s making! Would he ever be able to call his brain his own? Was there, indeed, anything in it that was truly his own, or was it simply an education? (p. 142).

I wonder if all my reading has killed any hope at originality. But, then again, is originality really possible, or even desirable? C.S. Lewis would say no.

We also get a preview of Brave New World in the character of Mr. Wimbush. I plan on rereading Brave New World in the next few weeks and sharing some thoughts. Needless to say, I enjoyed Crome Yellow and found it to be well worth the time. I’ll share some more on it in the near future, Lord willing.