(In conversation his learning comes out spontaneously, without the slightest hint of premeditation if someone raises the topic of Victorian gastronomy, for example, Huxley will recite a typical daily menu of Prince Edward, meal by meal, course by course, down to the last crumb.) The plain fact is that Aldous Huxley is one of the most prodigiously learned writers not merely of this century but of all time.Īfter Eton and Balliol, he became a member of the postwar intellectual upper crust, the society he set out to vivisect and anatomize. He absorbed both strains in an erudition so unlikely that it has sometimes been regarded as a kind of literary gamesmanship. Huxley and his great-uncle Matthew Arnold respectively. In addition to his ten novels, Huxley has written, during the course of an extremely prolific career, poetry, drama, essays, travel, biography, and history.ĭescended from two of the most eminent Victorian families, he inherited science and letters from his grandfather T. Ever since the early twenties, his name has been a byword for a particular kind of social satire in fact, he has immortalized in satire a whole period and a way of life. Interviewed by George Wickes & Raymond Fraser Issue 23, Spring 1960Īmong serious novelists, Aldous Huxley is surely the wittiest and most irreverent.
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