Tag: reading

Forgiving Dr. Jekyll

About this book

This book review is for Forgiving Dr. Jekyll: From Hyde to Healing by Paul Drugan. This book is available at Amazon in both softcover and Kindle versions. I have the softcover version of the book, which is around 200 pages in length. The book has a nice binding, cover and has a medium-sized font, making it easy to read. The overall quality of the book is excellent. The book is 9″ high x 6″ wide, making it a book that you can hold comfortably. In addition to the 20 chapters in the book, there are a Gratitudes, The Truth: A Message To Victims, and About The Author sections. The book was published in 2025.

Summary

Forgiving Dr. Jekyll: From Hyde to Healing is a memoir that chronicles the author’s life of abuse by his father, his subsequent revelation of his sexual orientation, spiraling into substance abuse, his recovery, how he forgave himself and his father, and going from broken to embracing a new life. The chapters are generally pretty short, averaging around 10 pages per chapter. From a reader’s perspective, this is really a benefit, as you can finish a chapter, put it down, and start reading the next chapter when you pick it up again.

The primary focus of the book centers on the relationship with his abusive father. For the vast majority of Paul’s childhood, his father focused his parental role on criticizing and outright insulting Paul’s behavior to the point that it was a mentally abusive relationship. Couple that with a steady barrage of physical abuse, and you end up with a child who has been terrorized and on edge, always anticipating his father’s next outburst. It was sometimes difficult read about some of these abusive episodes and their graphic descriptions of the violence the father inflicted on his son. His father seemed to focus most of his anger on Paul rather than on his siblings. Paul was clearly different in many ways, and that seemed to be a personal challenge to his father, who wanted him to fit the mold of this New England idyllic community they inhabited.

Clearly, the abuse Paul experienced as a child and teenager scarred him mentally and at times dictated so much of his thoughts that it reminds you of what happened psychologically to inmates of the gulags or concentration camps. This abuse later led to nearly destroying his life with partying and substance abuse to forget the nagging memories of the past.

In the end, this book is about redemption. Paul came to the realization that he could not change the past, but he could move on from it and embrace something better in the present, while building a better future free of all this emotional baggage.

Recommendation

I found myself relating to a lot of Paul’s story, having been raised Catholic, having a love for literature, being of a similar age, and experiencing some substance abuse issues myself. I could also relate to his discovery of Eastern religion and philosophy, which he embraced, and became part of his recovery and renaissance.

From what I understand, this is the first book Paul Drugan has had published, but I was pleasantly surprised by Paul’s ability to write excellent dialogue. His description of events and his perspective are intertwined in the story without detracting from the events themselves. I found the book easy to read, yet enhanced by Paul’s vocabulary, which used colorful and descriptive words that best described the situations from his perspective. What I’m trying to convey is that this book is very well written.

My recommendation is that if you lived through an abusive relationship with your family, you will be able to relate to this memoir. I would guess that even in the seemingly perfect families, there is some abuse that exists, certainly not 100% of the time, but maybe in 50% – 75% of families. Like me, you will also be able to relate to what I’ll call the road to redemption, or maybe it should be called self-realization. Even if you hadn’t come from an abusive childhood, but you may have struggled with substance abuse, or just couldn’t find your way out of the morass you find yourself in, then I would recommend this book.

There is an emotional element to reading this book, with the first three quarters of it being about abuse and the subsequent effect on Paul, and the remainder of the book being about how Paul turned his life around. As a reader, you go from being horrified by the abuse Paul suffered to rooting for him as the healing process began, and gratified that through deep introspection, compassion, and forgiveness, he breaks the chains that held him down for so many years. I highly recommend this book; you will be better off for reading it.

About the Author

Paul has been honing his writing throughout his adult life, with a career deeply rooted in political advocacy and civil rights campaigning during the transformative 1990s. With a master’s degree from Harvard, Paul has used his voice to champion equality at the local, state, and national levels. His experiences have shaped his writing, bringing insight and passion to his debut memoir. He proudly calls Chicago home, a city whose tough spirit and complexity mirror his own journey. In his memoir, Paul invites readers to join him on a reflective and inspiring narrative of resilience and change.

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Ape and Essence

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley

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Brave New World Revisited

About this book

After reading Brave New World, I discovered Brave New World Revisited and after checking out a few reviews decided I needed to read it to understand Aldous Huxley’s thoughts about the world some 26 years after writing his original book. This is a relatively short book at 123 pages. I bought the paperback version from Thriftbooks, which has become my source for books during the past 5 months. The book is nicely bound and has a medium sized font making it easy to read. The quality of the pages are good and the book is 8″ high x 5 1/4″ wide, making it the ideal size to hold comfortably. I don’t recall what I paid for it, but it was less than $17 USD. The book has 12 chapters and most of them have only a few pages, which facilitates a book you can read a chapter and resume later. At the end of the book there is some pretty cool additions like About the Author, Some reviews and some of the authors own words about this book, a letter to George Orwell, and the complete Aldous Huxley bibliography.

Summary

There are so many interesting things about this book, but in my usual way I will try not to give you so much that its spoils your experience when reading the book. Remember, Brave New World was published in 1932 and Brave New World Revisited in 1958, so some 26 years had passed between the two books. Brave New World Revisited is a very philosophical look at the factors that exist or may exist that could make the dystopian society of Brave New World come true. One of the themes that Huxley mentions several times, is that he views the authoritarian regime of the future to be more like Brave New World than that of the brutal dictatorship of Orwell’s 1984.

I will outline a few of the factors that Huxley expounded on that could lead us to the authoritarian society:

Over-Population

At the time Huxley wrote Brave New World Revisited the population of the world was booming. He mentions that in 1931 when he was writing Brave New World the world’s population was a little less that 2 billion people and 27 years later it was 2.8 billion. People were beginning to live longer with new discoveries in agriculture and medicine were helping to spur on a larger population. His fear was that the population would get so large that the we could no longer support it with the resources we would have available. It was a valid assumption in 1958 and this theory was held by most people up until recent times, where we now are seeing declining birth rates. Huxley felt that over population to be one of the factors that would lead away from democracy to aristocracy. Remember at the time birth control pills were not yet available. Strangely enough he mentions that there would be 5.5 billion people by time his grand daughter was 50, so let’s say that was 2008. It turns out the world’s population in 2008 was about 6.7 billion.

Up until maybe the last 10 years or so, the fear of over population was a major concern, and still is in some parts of the world, but today we might not look at over population as a major driver of authoritarian regimes.

Quality of the Populace

One of the claims that Huxley makes is over the past few decades there has been an overall decline in IQ and health of the population. Some of this has been caused by advances in medicine, where in the past people may have died, but now were able to propagate their genes on to the next generation. His concern here also goes back to a declining death rates adding to overall population. If in fact IQ has been declining over the decades for various reasons, does this bode well for a flourishing democracy? This may sound confusing, but think about it as kind of an anti eugenics scenario brought about by a weaker gene pool surviving due to advances in medicine.

Over Organization

Under this title of over organization Huxley discusses his growing concern that technology would result in power being consolidated in fewer and fewer hands. His concern is that small business would be squeezed out by large multi-national corporations and wealth would belong to a few oligarchs that had near monopolies. Can you say Amazon, Tesla, Meta, Google? He wrote this around 1957 and it rings true today in 2025. These large, near monopolies have also created super organized companies. Huxley’s fear was this would create people that were more like robots and lacked creative thinking, and any appreciation for freedom, making them easy marks for authoritarianism.

Additional Drivers

In addition to the factors of over population, quality of the people, and over organization Huxley provides the details on how the would be autocrats use propaganda, salesmanship, brainwashing, and even chemical persuasion to stamp out democracy.

When you look at all the factors cited in Brave New World Revisited it is almost a playbook for the would be autocrat or dictator. One of the scary points that Huxley makes, is that we have a certain percentage of the population that is very responsive to outside suggestion. These people will make it almost impossible to support a democracy or even foster the environment for one to form. Now we look ahead from 1958 when Huxley provided his analysis and forecast for the future to today, in 2025. It appears that this relatively small slice of the population that is extremely suggestible has grown to be anywhere from 25-30% of the US population.

I usually avoid politics in most of my writing, but the Trump Administration and (MAGA) Make America Great Again movement is moving quickly down the authoritarian road. I can tell you that they haven’t read Brave New World as their methods are somewhat crude, often in your face, and are not very clever. This doesn’t fool the populace as much as it enrages it.

Recommendation

If you enjoyed reading Brave New World you will find it quite natural to read Brave New World Revisited. In the 26 or 27 years that passed between each of these books the world changed considerably, which gave Huxley some insight into what the future might hold. Aldous Huxley had an eerie sense of how the world would change in the future and as you read this book you will see just how spot on he was when you compare his forecasts to the world today. When you read Aldous Huxley’s books you are struck with just how intelligent he was. Truly an amazing individual, part story teller and part philosopher. I highly recommend Brave New World Revisited. Of course with the caveat that you read Brave New World first.

This won’t be the last book I review written by Aldous Huxley, so stay tuned.

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,[9] and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley

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Please check out my companion blog thestoicbuddhist.com

I appreciate all comments and likes. Please follow my blog and you will be emailed notification of all new posts.

Namaste