The book is a snapshot of the lives of men and women in English society. The book follows the daily life and struggles of a small group of people, who are unhappy and reaching for meaning in life. Walter Bidlake follows the footsteps of his father John, when he pursues Lucy Tantamount ( the elder Bidlake had an affair with Lady Tantamount). Elinor is stuck in a marriage that leaves her feeling empty and alone, Spandrell feels he has been wronged by life since his mother remarried. The women, with exception of Lucy and Mary, are forced to accept their lot in life, accepting husbands who are unfaithful, distant and bored with married life. The men are in pursuit of truth in life and have no regard for how this pursuit affects those around them. This theme continues throughout the 400+ pages of the book and once the book introduces a surprise twist it quickly picks up pace before the abrupt end. With exception to the end of the book, you are mainly reading about the sometimes mundane daily activities and thoughts of the men and women involved. While not uninteresting the book moves at a fairly slow pace since it lacks a "main event" until the end.

Habit is as fatal to a sense of wrong-doing as to active enjoyment. After a few years the converted or sceptical Jew, the Westernized Hindu, can eat their pork and beef with an equanimity which to their still-believing brothers seems brutally cynical. It is the same with the habitual debauchee. Actions which at first seemed thrilling in their intrinsic wickedness become after a certain number of repetitions morally neutral. A little disgusting, perhaps; for the practice of most vices is followed by depressing physiological reactions; but no longer wicked, because so ordinary. It is difficult for a routine to seem wicked.”

Dogs don't fare so well in the novels of Huxley. It's a family legacy, perhaps. My mood is illuminated by wisecracks about vivisection. Whatever the cause, the images are striking, though Point Counterpoint is a different kettle than either Eyeless in Gaza or Brave New World. This is a softer cloth, a farce upon which ideas are allowed to percolate. It appears closer to Waugh's Scoop than any attempt to portray the way we live (now). It should be noted that over a third of the book depicts a party, one which isn't really of consequence yet the canvas keeps unrolling to accommodate the cast. Most of the characters are modeled upon actual artists and politicians, though I lack the interest to explore. Of course Oswald Mosley is easy to spot. I thought that the situation might resonate in light of the week's Impeachment. It didn't.

Admittedly not as engaging as Brave New World or Island, especially in the first 25% of the book or so. But it gets easier once one understands that this book is about the characters, their psyches, their 1920's British upper- & middle-class sensibilities (which are thoroughly and deeply explored to the point of being unsettling), instead of about the plot. The character writing is PHENOMENAL, modern writers with puddle-deep one-dimensional characters would learn a lot from reading this book, ngl. The high points for me are definitely Mark Rampion's philosophical ramblings, which are uncannily appropriate for today's conditions even though this book was published in 1928. Overall I enjoyed this book & felt like I learned a lot, but it required some willpower to read through the earlier chapters.

"He had loved, not Susan, but the mental image of Susan and the idea of love ... His ardours for this phantom, and the love of love, the passion for passion which he had managed to squeeze out of his inner consciousness, conquered Susan, who imagined that they had some connection with herself."

"'That's what I want to get in this book--the astonishingess of the most obvious things. Really, any plot or situation would do. ... you and I sitting here on an enormous ship in the Red Sea. Really, nothing could be queerer than that. When you reflect on the evolutionary processes, the human patience and genius, the social organization that have made it possible for us to be here, with stokers having heat apoplexy for our benefit, and steam turbines doing five thousand revolutions a minute, and the sea being blue, and the rays of light not flowing round obstacles, so that there's a shadow, and the sun all the time providing us with energy to live and think--when you think of all this and a million other things, you must see that nothing could well be queerer and that no picture can be queer enough to do justice to the facts.'"

"It's incomparably easier to know a lot, say, about the history of art and to have profound ideas about metaphysics and sociology than to know personally and intuitively a lot about one's fellows and to have satisfactory relations with one's friends and lovers, one's wife and children. Living's much more difficult than Sanskrit or chemistry or economics."

"'In the abstract you know that music exists and is beautiful. But don't therefore pretend, when you hear Mozart, to go into raptures which you don't feel. ... Unable to distinguish Bach from Wagner, but mooing with ecstasy as soon as the fiddles strike up. It's exactly the same with God. The world's full of ridiculous God-snobs. People who aren't really alive, who've never done any vital act, who aren't in any living relation with anything; people who haven't the slightest personal or practical knowledge of what God is. But they moo away in churches, they coo over their prayers, they pervert and destroy their whole dismal existences by acting in accordance with the will of an arbitrarily imagined abstraction which they choose to call God.'"

Ouch.

"He had loved, not Susan, but the mental image of Susan and the idea of love ... His ardours for this phantom, and the love of love, the passion for passion which he had managed to squeeze out of his inner consciousness, conquered Susan, who imagined that they had some connection with herself."

"'That's what I want to get in this book--the astonishingess of the most obvious things. Really, any plot or situation would do. ... you and I sitting here on an enormous ship in the Red Sea. Really, nothing could be queerer than that. When you reflect on the evolutionary processes, the human patience and genius, the social organization that have made it possible for us to be here, with stokers having heat apoplexy for our benefit, and steam turbines doing five thousand revolutions a minute, and the sea being blue, and the rays of light not flowing round obstacles, so that there's a shadow, and the sun all the time providing us with energy to live and think--when you think of all this and a million other things, you must see that nothing could well be queerer and that no picture can be queer enough to do justice to the facts.'"

"It's incomparably easier to know a lot, say, about the history of art and to have profound ideas about metaphysics and sociology than to know personally and intuitively a lot about one's fellows and to have satisfactory relations with one's friends and lovers, one's wife and children. Living's much more difficult than Sanskrit or chemistry or economics."

"'In the abstract you know that music exists and is beautiful. But don't therefore pretend, when you hear Mozart, to go into raptures which you don't feel. ... Unable to distinguish Bach from Wagner, but mooing with ecstasy as soon as the fiddles strike up. It's exactly the same with God. The world's full of ridiculous God-snobs. People who aren't really alive, who've never done any vital act, who aren't in any living relation with anything; people who haven't the slightest personal or practical knowledge of what God is. But they moo away in churches, they coo over their prayers, they pervert and destroy their whole dismal existences by acting in accordance with the will of an arbitrarily imagined abstraction which they choose to call God.'"

Ouch.

5 stars for the writing but I can't say it's an enjoyable read. Huxley dissects every personality until they appear gruesome and every philosophy as false comfort and there's not much left in the end. Grim but extraordinary.