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[CooJoe]

I just finished this yesterday.

After reading I had the Sudden Urge to Turn off the TV, and go mend some clothes.

[JuntaJoe]

Never read it. What's it about?

[CooJoe]

It's set in the year 632 A.F (2540 A.D)

Babies come from Jars.

The institution of the family is replaced with conditioning from infanthood.

People are drugged out, and encouraged to consume more.

It's a good read.

[Eddy]

It's also a read about a caste system and a man who tries to fight the status quo. It ranks up there with 1984 as a warning of totalitarianism and many of the elements exist today in our own society.

[Che]

I'm :shock:... Joe has never read Huxley's Brave new World.

It has been required reading in High Schools for decades.

http://www.huxley.net/bnw/

http://www.online-literature.com/aldous_huxley/brave_new_world

[JuntaJoe]

Oh, we got the usual classics that were beyond redemption, imo.

They were trying to make me digest Falkner when I wanted to read Poe.

I forgot those tales given by the teachers as fast as I took the test on them.

College was even worse as they force fed me Kafka and a host of social engineering types of dubious literary talent. And trying to decipher the Illiad was beyond painful. You'd think after several millenia of revisions that they would write it in plain English. :roll:

I know good reading and my ideas of that rarely jives with the education establishment.

How can the Foundation series by Asimov be relegated to the cheap entertainment bin as so many teachers would like it to be?

Or the great writers like Tolkien, Haldeman, and Drake who took their painful war experiences and transformed them into works of art.

I look at the reading lists my niece and nephews get and a classic movie line comes to mind.......

"......I'd like to take a flamethrower to this place!"

Imo, I'd be a great English lit teacher. My students would read great works and have fun too. Would they worry about when I was going to assign another book? Nope. They'd be begging for it.

[Eddy]

The "classics" really need to be revisited and some of the deadwood tossed on the scrap heap. I remember seeing the difference in the teaching styles between public and private school. In the public school they had some decent books, but it was really dumbed down and they were careful to censor a lot. I remember reading a Shakespearian play and I used my mom's copy and read it at home. I couldn't understand why the version in school was so different. It was because the sex scenes were removed along with any offensive language. Feh. It made the school version incomprehensible and it gave me the answer as to why my classmates hated it while I liked it.

[Morticcia]

JuntaJoe wrote: And trying to decipher the Illiad was beyond painful. You'd think after several millenia of revisions that they would write it in plain English. :roll:

a) I think the point was to have your knowledge of the world expanded by learning ye olde poetic form. :twisted: :P

b) I think I read somewhere in the past couple of years that a plain english version had been published, or maybe it just had been commissioned.

As far as quality. Huxley is finer than most. His writing is a dense as Hawthorne's. I know I read Brave New World and enjoyed it. I have yet to get thru his "Devils of Loudin" I try every five years or so. Some day.

[JuntaJoe]

Morticcia wrote: a) I think the point was to have your knowledge of the world expanded by learning ye olde poetic form.

My world expanded by being around words I don't understand?

Cripes! I live in Texas. I can get that in Sears here when they make the sale announcements in Spanish. :?

[Georgie]

I too have read "Brave New World." It was quite a story.

[Luna]

*writes down to read it*

[JuntaJoe]

Yes, do bring a pen. We love books here in the old timer group. Philosophy books are the best, providing it has a good story too.

[Magwai]

*grin*

I always planned on reading it, never did...

I saw the movie I think =)

[Elvish Magi]

The movie is a pile of tosh.

The book, on the other hand, is superb.

Huxley examines a bleak vision of the future, and disguises it in the form of a novel. Indeed, the novel is strong enough that you can read it purely for the storyline and never give a thought to the "deeper" meaning behind the work.

However, he presents us with a well thought out and argued vision that holds (almost) as relevant today as it did when it was first published. Ok, he was wrong on a few issues, but on many others you can still make a convincing argument that we "could" end up there.

This is Huxleys strongest work, though it would be wrong to discard his other books on that basis. Island, in particular, is worth reading after Brave New World, as it presents an alternative vision for society. If Brave New World reveals his nightmares, then Island reveals his dreams.

[Morticcia]

Geesh I don't even remember this post but I did reread Brave New World last fall just for no reason. Maybe some memory of this discussion lodged itself in my subconscious mind.

I stand by my assertion that reading stories in old english has some intrinsic value. Obviously you are not enamored of ye old poetic forms, you have not the constitution to delve patiently into that good night. I don't either, but I count it as a loss; my lack of effort, laziness. You, lol, not so much. :P

I can say that Brave New World wasn't as good as I recall. The characters aren't fully drawn, the story didactic. Maybe it remains a must read in schools because of the anti-soviet, anti-bureaucratic message. Clearly it isn't because it's great literature.