No, I'm not referring to my entrance into the world of entrepreneurship as I try to find the 12,000 students who will take the AP exam for comparative government.
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The first book I read after returning from England was Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I was sure I had read this before. By the time I'd finished, I was sure I'd never read the second half of the book.
It took quite awhile for me to read it. I'd read a chapter and put the book aside for a few days. Yes, I was busy, but the book was not compelling.
It does raise a multitude of questions about being human, about happiness, and about the exchange Dostoevsky described in "The Grand Inquisitor."
At one point characters in the story are discussing the world before it had become brave and new: "No wonder these poor pre-moderns were mad and sick and miserable. Their world didn't allow them to take things easily, didn't allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with...the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey...they were forced to feel strongly."
At another point in the conversation, one of the people says, "...Othello's good...
And the other replies, "Of course it is...But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people call high art... " And then there's this totalitarian vision: "'We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them ever to have it.'" That one makes me think about the isolation of the Internet, the iPod, the DVD movie, and the single occupant vehicles so common on the highway. Here's another book that deserves dialogue. Maybe I'm ready for a book club. |
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By Ken Wedding. 08.19.02 Updated 08.16.04.
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