Antic Hay

Aldous Huxley Antic Hay (1923)
In The Plumed Serpent of 1926, Huxley's pal, D.H. Lawrence wrote:

She thought again of going back to Europe. But what was the good? She knew it! It was all politics or jazzing or slushy mysticism or sordid spiritualism. And the magic had gone. The younger generation, so smart and interesting, but so without any mystery, any background. The younger the generation, the flatter and more jazzy, more and more devoid of wonder.

If it's about anything, Antic Hay specifically concerns itself with the jazzing of this younger generation, although Huxley spends less time sighing and rolling his eyes than Lawrence. Although billed as the exploits of the supposedly Rabelaisian Theodore Gumbril, Antic Hay flits amongst various members of his circle as they strive for purpose in the wake of the first world war, the death of God, and the advent of modernism. In many senses it's almost a rewrite of Huxley's first novel, although Crome Yellow is arguably funnier and more scathing for its somewhat tighter focus. Antic Hay may possibly represent attempts at a new form of narrative, something presenting themes as part of an overall texture rather than anything you could call a story - Oscar Wilde doing a Burroughs but without the actual cut-up technique, I suppose you might say. For the sake of argument, we may as well assume Huxley had been thinking about Dadaism, this being the cumulative effect of all the interpersonal relationships arbitrarily mixed in with the likes of Gumbril's inflatable trousers and the peculiar twenty-second chapter.

As with Crome Yellow, certain elements foreshadow Brave New World - notably the eugenically directed vivisection, which is thankfully lacking in detail - but it only really scrapes by as a novel in its own right, at least compared to Huxley's hits. Gumbril and pals are building a new world, having done away with the old one, but find themselves floundering without the foundation of tradition upon which to build; which is mostly entertaining, but as I say, covers familiar ground to lesser effect.