About this book
After reading Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited I ended up buying a couple other books by Aldous Huxley. This review is for the novel Ape and Essence. I bought the paperback version from Thriftbooks, where I paid $12.65 for the book (new). The book has a decent binding and has a large sized font making it easy to read. The quality of the pages are good and the book is 8″ high x 5″ wide, making it an easy size to hold comfortably. The book is divided into only two chapters (Tallis and The Script) and is 205 pages long. The book reads like a movie script where there is a scene that is described and a narrator. One of the things I found a little annoying was that the book title APE AND ESSENCE is printed at the top of each page, but pretty close to the text, and the page number has a similar proximity to the text being closer to the bottom of the page.
Summary
I provide the caveat for all my reviews that I will not get so detailed that I spoil your experience reading the book. So instead I will attempt to give you an overview of the plot, my thoughts about the book, and the benefit I received from reading it.
The vast majority of this book is presented as the script for a movie. The book starts when a couple writers who work at a movie studio find a bound movie script called “Ape and Essence” by William Tallis on the ground, where it was discarded. The discovery of the book and after reading some of the contents, the two men become curious and they go seek out the author. The author Tallis has passed away and that’s is where part two of the book begins. This second part of the book is the movie script for Ape and Essence. Now the society of the movie studio writers appears to be something analogous to the dystopian Brave New World, but that is not the focus of the book. The first chapter is 32 pages long and the 2nd chapter, which is really the remainder of the book starts on page 33 and ends on page 205.
The plot is about a New Zealand sailing vessel that ends up sailing and docking near Los Angeles, California. This journey by the New Zealanders comes at a post nuclear war scenario, where New Zealand was spared primarily because they were deemed insignificant. Dr. Poole one of the crew is captured and then is introduced to the people of this post apocalypse society. This post nuclear war society is made up of mostly scavengers and mutants from the radiation. The people of this post nuclear war world do not worship God, but instead worship Belial (Satan). I’m going to stop here before I give too much of it away.
Recommendation
I honestly considered putting this book down after reading the first chapter, but I’m glad I didn’t as I ended up finishing it just a few days after first picking it up, as I was engrossed in it. I think what spooked me at first was reading a book that was written like a movie script. Please don’t let that dissuade you from what turns out to be a very interesting book. This post nuclear war society is as you might imagine it would be somewhat savage, but like most societies it used mythology or religion as a way to align the populace around a way of life. There were some common themes around sexual activity, and the lack of love or commitment to individuals of the opposite sex just like in the society of Brave New World.
If you read Brave New World, the characters you will encounter in this book are much more grandiose and outrageous. Unlike Brave New World this post nuclear war world is also much more violent, and those living in this society are controlled by force. Huxley does a great job of putting you the reader right in the middle of this dystopian society and you often feel like you are seeing this world through the eyes of the captured New Zealander Dr. Poole. I feel that Huxley does a great job of depicting a somewhat savage society that one might expect would evolve from the post nuclear event. For me this was a real joy to read and further proof of Aldous Huxley’s story telling and forecasting what the future might look like in these circumstances.
About the Author
Wikipedia does a nice job providing information about the author. Here is snippet:
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
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