LIDIA VIANU

The Desperado Age

British Literature at the Start of the Third Millennium

II. DESPERADO OR NOT: FOR AND AGAINST

(Chronological order)

II/1. ALDOUS HUXLEY (1894-1963)


The features that make Huxley’s work qualify for the Desperado race, although the writer died in 1963, when it may have been a little early to diagnose the symptoms, have a lot to do with irony. Huxley is the master of irony, which lies at the root of everything he wrote, of all other features that were obvious in his work.

● His Brave New World was published in 1932, which is before the Desperado age properly, but it has been used as a point of reference by all critics discussing dystopias, and, though it could not afford being realistic, finds the perfect negative place of the mind, the spot that would fit anybody contemporary with this new millennium.

● The return to a coherent plot, with more or less suspense in it, is totally different from Joyce and Virginia Woolf, who went as far away from the plot as possible. Huxley is a consummate narrator, whose narratives are impaired only by his ironical view of his characters and their stories. Huxley would never plunge into a lyrical text, and forget all about incident. Things must and do happen for him, and the narrative should involve the reader, who must necessarily be able to understand. The lyrical burden of words is unimportant. Their incident-addiction comes first.

● In the world Huxley imagines in his dystopia, which is both a hell and a paradise of SF literature, the mind is discouraged from exploration. The text becomes confusing because the realm Huxley imagines represses understanding, while the book about these beings who do not need their minds is diabolically intelligent. Huxley’s irony is a way of thinking, but also a literary manner and a mode of sensibility.

● The target of Huxley’s irony is mainly the love interest that Virginia Woolf was so sure she could do without (which she never really did, in fact). He mocks at the idea of love (see Lenina, and the idea that ‘everyone belongs to everyone else’, the ironical comparison with Shakespeare’s Miranda, which, among other ironical discrepancies drives John the Savage to suicide, the image of John’s mother, Linda, as a ‘whore’, perceived as such by the ‘savages’ in the reservation, totally unlike the civilized visitors, who take the woman back to her death), of a family (the few lines that describe a home are more intelligent than cold; the more Huxley denies feelings, the more intensely they burn, even though in hiding), of giving birth (capital sin, since science has taken over and life is governed by reason). Falling in love, belonging to only one partner, making a home, being a mother (‘M—’), bringing up children, in short, the very basis of human society and its continuation, are shattered by the creator’s mind, which denies the establishment. Huxley feels human sensibility must be thought all over again. The first time round (the way we still live and feel) is totally mistaken.

● Solitude was a central mood for romantic poetry. It changed values along the history of the novel, from weird to commendable. It is the basic prerequisite for any Desperado hero. Huxley’s characters, too, are desperately alone, at a time when the novel still delighted in building communities and allowing the narrative architecture to rest on pillars of society, and their families were brought closely around (see Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga). Bernard Marx, just like Orwell’s Winston Smith, longs for solitude, and John, once taken out of the reservation (which is a perfect description of life as we have it today), kills himself because of the pressure of a community that runs against all his Shakespearean inclinations. Loneliness is a necessary time to think, and Desperado writers take it for granted. Huxley claims it is necessary at a time when it is suspected and neglected by novelists. Among other things, it makes him a Desperado avant la lettre.

● Political imagination, not necessarily prophecy, is one activity Desperadoes are very fond of, and Huxley tried this twice, in Brave New World and Ape and Essence. With his sense of humour and his intellectual courage, he went very far in imagining a future for mankind. His sense of humour rescued him from melodrama. Instead of complaining, impressing the reader with his negative feelings (see Orwell), creating an intimacy with future fears, Huxley projects a dissection of psychology into a world of robots, a future mindless existence, which we learn to mock at, and thus to reject. Instead of opposition to the nightmare or defeat by it, Huxley replaces tragedy by comedy. When we laugh, we automatically disapprove and leave behind one direction which could destroy life. With Orwell we suffer, with Huxley we smile and recoil.

● Destiny is an idea that crushed Orwell’s characters. It preconditions Huxley’s heroes, and, unlike Winston Smith, Bernard Marx, Lenina, Linda are not even aware they have lost anything of their humanity. Ishiguro’s characters have a destiny, too, and so do the heroes of Graham, Swift, Doris Lessing, Alasdair Gray. The creator’s will does not allow ambiguity as far as the space of his characters is concerned. His world is his own, even though he chooses to communicate it more or less at random. Huxley is not among those who complicate the story making a puzzle out of it, but he does withdraw his sentimental support. We find ourselves in the very strange position of liking characters whom the author has left on their own. Do we know if Huxley loves his Bernard Marx, John, Mustapha Mond? Not any more than we find out if there is any communion between Ackroyd, Barnes or Burgess and their characters.

● Somewhere along the way of the story, the character is abandoned and becomes a limp puppet. It is strong and appealing as long as the author uses it to prove his point. The Desperado is a writer with a point to make. Huxley, too, is quite didactic in his use of irony. He discourages us to sympathize and pushes us into rational participation. It is not the humanity of the heroes that matter, but what we make of them. We are slowly taught to create our own companions in these books that struggle for desperate dissimilarity.

● Huxley’s ‘savage’, John, ‘claims the right to be unhappy.’ Bernard Marx, before being abandoned as a hero in favour of John, did the same. The two make one, actually. Most Desperado heroes claim the same right. The Desperado hero, however ironical or mocked at, has basically a tragic vein. Whether we call this destiny, soul, or frustration, it is a matter of words. Man is made for tears and solitude, so these imaginary beings suffer alone. The reader never fails to share this cold message of a deserted universe. Which brings us back to the idea of dystopia: the future seen as a non-present, non-we. The Desperado author menaces the reader to replace him, nobody knows with what. We read and never find out, because we leave when we feel we start to disintegrate. We give up the work when we have had too much. We, the Desperado readers, desperately struggle to stay ourselves. The Desperado work needs our proud independence in order to exist, so we have here a chain of paradoxes that keep literature rolling.

● From the point of view of the narrative technique, Huxley chooses the SF nightmare, and the author of the story is omniscient. The story is a warning against loss of all human attributes and joys. The mood is one of hopelessness. The story itself is hopeless, and consequently has a disarming directness, lack of artifice, which is very relaxing in Brave New World, becoming more complicated in Ape and Essence. The Desperado complication is only beginning.

● The future waste land (the atomic threat) can be found in many writers besides Huxley. It has even become a gold mine for cheap thrillers and for bestsellers or top films. The monkeys replacing man (coming straight form Jonathan Swift’s horses) are well known characters. The novelty has gone away, and there is no artistic support to keep them alive. Where there is a mood to go with the imagination of disaster, we have a good novel. Such is Ape and Essence. The future waste preoccupied Lessing, Gray, Golding. There is more to waste than just the loss of material values. Human nature can become an inferno, too, and this is where Ishiguro comes in. In all cases, the Desperado author fights a nightmare, never a sweet dream.

● Ape and Essence is a script within a story. Intertextuality begins with T.S. Eliot and Joyce. The novelty for Desperadoes is that they do not feed on other texts as ideas any more, they feed on other techniques. This is what makes the Desperado age a kind of revision of all ages, of many techniques. Huxley tries to find his own and devises the point counter point, taking it from music. His trick has been used for decades by all soap operas and all cheap novels, it has become that popular. Techniques take a short time to spread, so Desperado writers today try to use another one in each book. Barnes says books get written as they come, but they actually come with a new technical approach each.

● Dystopias start with defamiliarization. Huxley imagined a reversal of religious belief in both his dystopias. In the second, dehumanization is more painful. This reversal is an exercise in irony. Gray tried the same thing in Lanark. If Brave New World was a calm, graceful, smiling image, Ape and Essence is a horror film: radiations, living on what can be found in graves (because civilization has been forgotten and cannot be reinvented), mating at random once a year and killing most babies because of deformities, utter lack of love, belief in Satan. Total reversal is Huxley’s trick. Ironic reversal of dissatisfying present reality is the source of Huxley’s peculiar variety of the hybrid called novel.