I didn’t always appreciate (have enough knowledge to understand) Aldous’s vague learned references, for example:
A modern day Lord Cheshire would have defined this absurdist pre-modern zeitgeist as crudely as true Aristotelian Ethics demanded. One proverbial foot would be dangling into the pseudo-Homerian Garden of Lost Souls while another floated through Brunsweiller’s third symphonic gesture, allegory and all, with Lord Byronesque apathetic aspiration. As I looked upon the Arigulan Romantic with the caustic eye of Buber, I couldn’t help but flounder in my Voltairian sense of self-idealism and begin to hesitantly embrace a more Spinozian mysticism, philosophically decked out with the Categorical Imperative of Louis XV’s embittered Poirot.
Ok fine; that’s fake. But you could probably stick this into the next Huxley text I (for some reason) read and I would just nod my head while muttering, “Ahaha yes. Indeed… Lord Cheshire certainly would have deigned to commit such a mendacity!”
I thought the ending was pretty amusing, as was the fact that nearly the whole book was a screenplay, except for the very beginning about a couple of guys finding the screenplay and then being all, “Here’s the text of it:”.
First Encounter:
I purchased this book in a used bookshop in the basement of a Las Vegas library. I’d previously read (and not especially care for) some other Huxley, but I’m always willing to give well-regarded authors second and third chances, and I enjoyed owning old classics. I read the book before leaving Vegas.
Recommendations to Myself 