Genius and Goddess [Paperback]

I have never really read much of Huxley's fiction and always had the sense of him as a quiet thin, and light writer. He is generally considered more a 'novelist of ideas' than one capable of creating powerful characters. My expectations were pleasantly upset by this work which is much better than I thought it would be.

This book has a frame- story in which two old friends , suitors of the same woman meet again. The woman has since died, and her husband tells of an earlier involvement. This involvement is the main story of the work. The son of a deceased Lutheran Minister and an over- possessive mother John Rivers is invited as a young scientist to be the assistant of the 'genius of the story, Henry Marteens. Marteens is married to Kathy, the goddess of the story, who is described as the most beautiful woman the narrator has ever seen. The senior scientist is a kind of crazy genius who lives in his own inner world and is sustained by the loving care of his wife. They have two children a teenage girl and a younger son. The narrator Rivers becomes a member of the household. The teenage girl falls in love with him but he refuses her advances. The beautiful Kathy 's mother becomes ill and she travels to see and care for her. During the vigil Marteens who cannot live without the help of his wife also becomes critically sick. He has done this before as a way of blackmailing his wife to come back to him. He has wild imaginings when she is away about her sexual infidelities. When he is at the point of death finally, his wife leaves her dying mother to come back to him. He does not immediately respond. In the meantime the virgin very Christian conscienced Rivers is fallen upon by Kathy, who emotionally lonely desperate, and empty needs to have her soul restored though passionate love. Rivers succumbs and it is his sexual awakening on April 23, the day of Shakespeare's birthday. The two conduct briefly a clandestine affair which is sensed by the jealous rejected daughter who all along has resented her mother. The lovers decide that for the good of all they must part. On the day of his departure on the way to the station the mother and daughter in the same car quarrel and while the mother is distracted they are in a fatal accident, which only injures the young brother who later dies a more horrible death in the war at Okinawa. Rivers goes on a short time later to meet Helen, who will his wife and was also loved by the writer he is telling the story to. Marteens will marry in a short time his wife's quite unattractive sister, and after she dies marry yet again. Another carer who will nurse him out of the world when he is in his late eighties.

The book in the opening contrasts the writer's ethic of living by the muse of memory, as opposed to the narrator's ethic of being wholly absorbed and living in the 'Now'. One senses this latter view corresponds more to that of Huxley if his late- life parapsychological and drug experiments are indicative.

The work is carefully crafted . It has a seeming message of deriding Christian conscience and promoting a pagan ethic of surrending to the immediateness of sensual experience. The goddess of the story is taken to be an embodiment of the pagan spirit of living sensual life to the full.

Despite my own personal objection to the what is for me immoral 'moral' of the story I find the work an excellent and intelligent fiction.

Being an Aldous Huxley fan, when I found this at the library I picked it up. It's a recollection of a man who lived in the house of an absent-minded genius with a gorgeous wife and dramatic daughter. The philosophies the man spits out at the beginning are interesting, and the story is worth a read. I wasn't blown away by the book, but it fared fine. It's a quick read, so check it out at the library like I did if you are a Huxley fan, if not, don't go out searching for it.

The Genius and the Goddess is my favorite work by Huxley. It's not as profound as Brave New World, but the intellectual characters that Huxley creates and their struggles remind me of my graduate school days. If you've studied Math, Physics, or Computer Science and are at all fond of any of Huxley's other works, you'll like this. There's a good synopsis on wikipedia. Check it out.

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