* Aldous Huxley's 'Point Counter Point' - 'unrealistic' conversation. Huxley's Point Counter Point is a continuation of what he was doing in the three previous novels, only perhaps more meatily. The call to be either Interesting or to be Entertaining (or miraculously to be both) - yes indeed. Compared with his novels up to Point Counter Point, this novel has slightly less of the humour and considerably more of the interesting.
And that brings forward one of the flavours of these works - the need for a small suspension of disbelief. Real people do not speak like this. The odd one might carry it off once or twice, but your life does not contain person after person over and again cleanly voicing arguments, ideas, beliefs, without wordiness or muddle or repetitions. Readers who 'get' Aldous Huxley have no problem inhabiting this part of an 'unrealistic' world: others might find it decidedly off-putting perhaps?
* The creation of and response to music, and the creation of and response to novels, surely, have more differences than similarities. And yet, in addition to his ambitious project, was Huxley also 'balancing' the novel in a similar way to the creation of a musical piece? He likens sudden musical mood changes to sudden written mood changes; and the number of times he says the same thing in a slightly different fashion, or repeats a reference, once you notice it, is quite striking. Like a returned-to theme in a piece of music. There must be over a score of occasions.
* Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point - the meningitis episode. And so - some wildly successful and very clever humour, the story narrative, and the substantial body of the Interesting (delivered as in his earlier novels in the form of conversations, ideas within characters' heads, and the several starings at a character's notebook). And because of the length of this novel, perhaps the going does eventually get a little like wading thickly? No problem of course for those who enjoy just this part of Huxley's skill. And then, just as the wedge of unread pages is thinning, doesn't something quite unexpected happen: the feel of the book shifts from ideas in conversations to an exceptional narrative episode. The meningitis episode.
Huxley is continually moving away from, and returning to, the meningitis episode. Perhaps it's worth looking at how he does it for it isn't mere plain-biscuit writing. The illness is introduced remotely; a telegram is delivered to the child's mother. The mother takes it almost as some inexplicable punishment, for she has just decided to become a cheater and to at last allow the ardent and patient admirer to have her. She hastily cancels her plans for the deed and wonders what the trouble might be: 'A touch of influenza, perhaps.'
The narrative moves away to the Interesting, and to the Entertaining (in the form of an upper-class fool who can't pronounce his vowels properly), then presently returns. She approaches the big house set in its serene grounds: 'There could be nothing much wrong here.' A look at the family nurse changes that: 'But Miss Fulkes looked pale and frightened, as though she had seen a ghost.' The child is uttering little whimpering moans and making 'sudden spasmodic' movements under the sheets. The boy is shaking his head 'as though trying to shake off the thing that was hurting him'.
The narrative moves away again. It dwells on the dotty grandmother's unhappiness with the family nurse - the woman shows the boy 'dreadfully vulgar pictures of a dog'. It dwells on the Interesting conversations, and the tidying-up of the murder scene. It returns briefly to a by-the-by message passed on to the father to contact home as the child seems to be under the weather. It moves away again to the conversations of ideas.
Then it returns to the child's sick-room: 'Next day, instead of whimpering with every return of pain, the child began to scream - cry after shrill cry, repeated with an almost clockwork regularity of recurrence for what seemed to Elinor an eternity of hours. Like the scream of a rabbit in a trap. But a thousand times worse; for it was a child that screamed, not an animal; her child, trapped and in agony.'
Unhurried, the father arrives at the house. Unaware. His wife meets him as he steps out of the car. '"But you're the one who's ill," "What is it?" "Dr Crowther says it's meningitis," she whispered at last.' A little later the evening papers arrive. The mother's hoped-for fuck has been murdered. 'When Elinor was told the news, she almost fainted.'
And then the dreadful illness follows its course. 'Quieter, eh? Sleeps?' inquires the doctor. A man about whom 'no energy was wasted on the uttering of unnecessary words'. 'Crowther spoke as Ford cars are made.' A stage of stupor, but a painless stupor. Then the child reaches a point when he is almost but not quite deaf. The next morning a paralyzed eyelid one eye looking straight up at the ceiling, the other half shut in a permanent wink. Days later the child ceases to see. Then, after nearly a week's respite the screaming returns.
Huxley moves away from the child again - the mother's shock that these things could happen to someone like her - this horrific illness and the murder of the one who loved her, the decided-upon fuck. 'Events like that simply did not occur'; the practicalities, the supply of meals, the doctor's instructions; the dotty grandfather's refusal to go near sick-rooms; the father's dismay at his wife's helpless vigil and his need to arrange for problems down in London to be taken care of; the grandfather retreating to the gardens to paint his canvases.
Huxley returns. 'Meanwhile, in the nursery, an extraordinary thing had happened. Suddenly and without warning, little Phil had opened his eyes and looked about him.' 'I'm hungry.' 'Draw me something.' 'Why do you whisper?'
Then luncheon is taken. The grandfather comes in from the gardens with his new-painted landscape; later, after food, he suffers from his usual gastric problems. And that same afternoon the end - 'There was a knock at the door. It was the housemaid with a message from Nurse Butler: would they please come up at once.'
It's a considerable piece of writing and a considerable method.
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