Point Counter Point (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

Write a ridiculously simplified synopsis.

Characters/People edit see section history

• Walter: Add a description of this character.
• Philip Quarles
• Lucy
• Marjorie
• Spandrell
• Lady Edward
• Dr Crowther
• John Bidlake
• Beatrice
• Elinor
• Gladys
• Mary Rampion
• Sidney
• Everard Webley
• Polly
• Maurice
• Mark Rampion
• Susan
• Midge
• Mrs Betterton
• Rachel Quarles
• Miss Cobbett
• Willie Weaver
• Molly
• Illidge
• Cuthbert
• Hugo
• Mrs Logan
• Mrs Knoyle
• Hilda
• Ethel
• Little Phil

Quotes edit see section history

• “"Huxley has been called an intellectual writer, a novelist more interested in ideas than in creatures of flesh and blood. This criticism might make sense only if one defines flesh-and-blood humans as those who don't have ideas -- and this is nonsense. <…> Huxley himself however seems to have been worried by such criticism and in " Pint Counter Point" he gets one of his characters to say: "The chief defect of the novel of ideas is that you must write about people who have ideas to express - which excludes all but about .01 per cent of the human race." But this is Huxley the literary patrician speaking, not Huxley the would-be zoologist." p.vi”

  Nicholas Mosley (Introduction)

• “p. 7 "One shouldn't take art too literally <…. P>articularly where love is concerned."""Not even if it's true?" Walter had asked."It's apt to be too true. Unadulterated, like distilled water. When truth is nothing but the truth, it's unnatural, it's an abstraction that resembles nothing in the real world. In nature there are always so many other irrelevant things mixed up with the essential truth. That's why art moves you -- precisely because it's unadulterated with all the irrelevancies of real life. Real orgies are never so exciting as pornographic books. In a volume by Pierre Louys all the girls are young and their figures perfect; there's no hiccoughing or bad breath, no fatigue or boredom, no sudden recollections of unpaid bills or business letters unanswered, to interrupt the raptures. Art gives you the sensation, the thought, the feeling quite pure - chemically pure, I mean," he added with a laugh, "not morally."”

  Philip Quarles, Walter Bidlake

• “p. 123 - "The stertorous borborygmus of the dyspeptic Carlyle!" declaimed Willie Weaver, and beamed through his spectacles. The mot, he flattered himself, could hardly have been more exquisitely juste. He gave the little cough which was his invariable comment on the best of his phrases. "I would laugh, I would applaud," the little cough might be interpreted; "but modesty forbids."”

  Willie Weaver

• “p.128 - "Batrachian grapplings!" Lucy repeated and laughed. "that was a stroke of genius, Willie.""All my strokes are strokes of genus," said Willie modestly. He acted himself; he was Willie Weaver in the celebrated ro^le of Willie Weaver. He exploited artistically that love of eloquence, the passion for the rotund and reverberating phrase with which more than three centuries too late, he had been born. In Shakespeare's youth he would have been a literary celebrity. Among his contemporaries, Willie's euphuism only raised a laugh. But he enjoyed applause, even when it was derisive. Moreover, the laughter was never malicious; for Willie Weaver was so good-natured and obliging that everybody liked him."”

• “p.295 - "The instinct of acquisitiveness has more perverts, I believe, than the instinct of sex. At any rate, people seem to me odder about one's always coming across, particularly among the rich."”

  Philip Quarles

• “p. 300 "The first thing to do is make them admit that they are idiots and machines during working hours. 'Our civilization being what it is" - this is what you'll have to say to them -'You've got to spend eight hours ourt of every twenty-four as a mixture between an imbecile and a sweing machine. It's very disagreeable, I know. It's humiliating ad disgusting. But there you are. You've go to do it; otherwise the whole fabric of our world will fall to bits and we'll all starve. Do the job, then, idiotically an d mechnically, and spend your leisure hours in being a real complete man or woman, as the case my be. Don't mix the two lives together' keep the bulkheads watertight between them. The genuine human life in your leisure hours is the real thing. The other's just a dirty job that's got to be done. And never forget that it is dirty and, except in so far as it keeps you fed and society intact, utterly unimportant, utterly irrelevant ot ther eal human life."”

  Rampion

• “p. 317 - "The course of every intellectual, if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred. "”

  Philip Quarles

• “p. 364 - "'Well, better late than never. Or at least," he uttered another of his soundless laughs, "so one piously hopes, where one's friends are concerned. Pious hopes! But to tell you the truth, the proverb needs changing. Better never than early."”

  Spandrell

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• England
• London
• Paris
• Gattenden
• Sbisa
• India
• Bombay
• Tantamount House
• Park
• America
• Burlap
• Chamford
• Wetherington
• Madrid

First Sentence edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Aldous Huxley (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 823.912

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( H ) › Huxley, Aldous
• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › British
• Books › Entertainment › Humor › Satire
• Books › Entertainment › Humor › Satire, General
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

More Books Like This edit see section history