Antic Hay

by Aldous Huxley

Overview

Antic Hay is a comic novel by Aldous Huxley, published in 1923. The story takes place in London, and depicts the aimless or self-absorbed cultural elite in the sad and turbulent times following the end of World War I.

The book follows the lives of a diverse cast of characters in bohemian, artistic and intellectual circles. It clearly demonstrates Huxley's ability to dramatise intellectual debates in fiction and has been called a "novel of ideas" rather than people.

It expresses a mood of mournful disenchantment and reinforced Huxley's reputation as an iconoclast. The book was condemned for its cynicism and for its immorality because of its open debate on sex. The novel was banned for a while in Australia and burned in Cairo.

Superficially the story follows one Theodore Gumbril in his invention of Gumbril's Patent Small-Clothes, trousers which contain a pneumatic cushion in the seat.

Gumbril's quest for love occasionally makes him resort to utilizing "The Complete Man" which is a disguise he concocts around a false full beard. With it he is able to overcome his shyness and approach women in public places with a bold directness. However he is then left with the problem of how he reveals his real self to the women he befriends.

It was written just after Huxley and his wife moved to Italy, where they lived from 1923 to 1927.

The title is from the play Edward II by Christopher Marlowe, c1593, Act One, Scene One, lines 59-60: "My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns, shall with their goat feet dance the antic hay", which is quoted on the frontispiece. "Antic hay", here, refers to a playful dance.

The manuscripts for the novel are part of the collection of the University of Houston Library.

The novel was mentioned briefly in Evelyn Waugh's classic novel Brideshead Revisited (1945):

'Picture me, my dear, alone and studious. I had just bought a rather forbidding book called Antic Hay, which I knew I must read before going to Garsington on Sunday, because everyone was bound to talk about it, and it's so banal saying you have not read the book of the moment, if you haven't.'(wikipedia.org)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781636376202
Publisher:	Bibliotech Press
Publication date:	11/11/2022
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	760,980
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.48(d)

About the Author

Aldous Huxley is one of the most significant British writers of the twentieth century. He wrote a dozen novels, including Point Counter Point, Those Barren Leaves, and Brave New World, and twice as many volumes of poetry and nonfiction.

Editorial Reviews

This new intensity of emotion gives a new savour to the wit which is, after all, what we read Mr. Huxley for.

New Statesman

Long out of print, this minor modernist classic satirizes Huxley's illustrious circle in the years after World War I. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Although Blackstone is to be commended for rediscovering many older literary classics, these two early Huxley novels might better have been left to rest in peace. Crome Yellow (1921) depicts an aristocratic cast of eccentrics in a British country house who do nothing but talk...and talk.... Antic Way (1923) shifts to a similar group of Bohemians in London who spend hours in elegant restaurants discussing art and philosophy. With so much conversation and so little action, reading these books aloud is unquestionably the best way to dramatize Huxley's brilliant dialog. Robert Whitfield does it full justice and proves that he is now one of the best narrators in the business. Recommended only for Huxley fans.--Jo Carr, Sarasota, FL Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is recalled by the casual allusions to classical lore, the devilishly clever garbling of familiar quotations and the total effect of dissolution. Mr. Huxley has the American poet’s flair for topical wit of a distinctly metropolitan flavor. . . . It is a brilliant, entertaining satire, with a faint suggestion of ‘ungestured sadness.’” —New York Times

“There are passages in Antic Hay of a pure and rhythmic beauty: pas­ sages so fine, so just, that they move one like good music.” —Saturday Review

“Astonishing. . . . A first-rate performance.” —Satyricon

“Huxley is the creator-god of a beautiful new world which is wholly and peculiarly his own and which he peoples with antic folk whose adventures, always keenly intelligent and sparkling with wit, are elo­quently and continually amusing.” —Detroit News

“Antic Hay has the literary delights of the intelligence questionnaire, characters who don’t talk in conversations but in charades, with satire japing sophistication as well as the more obvious targets, engaging naughtiness narrated for its own sake, rising and falling in broad com­ edy and in episodes deliciously strange and tender.” —New Republic

“This new intensity of emotion gives a new savour to the wit which is, after all, what we read Mr. Huxley for.” —New Statesman

From the Publisher

[Vance’s] voice is fun to listen to, and he uses that playfulness to complement Huxley’s biting, satiric prose. He reads marvelously, pacing the story well and using his firm, deep voice to capture the irony and hypocrisy within the book.”

AudioFile

Antic Hay has the literary delights of the intelligence questionnaire, characters who don’t talk in conversations but in charades, with satire japing sophistication as well as the more obvious targets, engaging naughtiness narrated for its own sake, rising and falling in broad comedy and in episodes deliciously strange and tender.”

New Republic 

Aldous Huxley was the most able of satirists...and it is the essential seriousness of his mind, his real concern with the world which gives him his strength.”

Nation

There are passages in Antic Hay of a pure and rhythmic beauty: passages so fine, so just, that they move one like good music.”

Saturday Review

A cry for madder music and for stronger wine.”

New York Times