Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley (1930)

S$42.00

Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley (1930)

S$42.00

Title: Antic Hay

Author: Aldous Huxley

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, London, 1930.

Condition: Hardcover, no dust jacket. Pocket size. Good. Binding sagging slightly, slight and sporadic foxing to text. Binding firm.

SKU: huxley-antic Categories: ,

About the book (from Wikipedia):

Antic Hay is a comic novel by Aldous Huxley, published in 1923. The story takes place in London, and depicts the aimless or self-absorbed cultural elite in the sad and turbulent times following the end of World War I.

The book follows the lives of a diverse cast of characters in bohemian, artistic and intellectual circles. It clearly demonstrates Huxley’s ability to dramatise intellectual debates in fiction and has been called a “novel of ideas” rather than people.

It expresses a mood of mournful disenchantment and reinforced Huxley’s reputation as an iconoclast. The book was condemned for its cynicism and for its immorality because of its open debate on sex. The novel was banned for a while in Australia and burned in Cairo.

Superficially the story follows one Theodore Gumbril in his invention of Gumbril’s Patent Small-Clothes, trousers which contain a pneumatic cushion in the seat.

Gumbril’s quest for love occasionally makes him resort to utilizing “The Complete Man” which is a disguise he concocts around a false full beard. With it he is able to overcome his shyness and approach women in public places with a bold directness. However he is then left with the problem of how he reveals his real self to the women he befriends.