Eyeless in Gaza - Huxley

Aldous Huxley was a rare breed of genius. I am clear about that. What I suppose is fascinating to me is the amount of time this book has taken for me to finish and how absolutely inadequate I feel trying to describe it here. I picked 'Eyeless in Gaza' having admired Huxleys 'Chrome Yellow' and 'Brave New World'. I'm sure fellow book lovers will understand how sometimes a book comes into your hand feeling so instinctively right. I remember standing in Blossoms, the book store (my most favorite place in Blore!) reading its blurb about the struggling sociologist, Anthony Beavis, and the redoubtable Mr.Miller - feeling somehow that this book and I were meant to be at this moment in space.

And so it has been.

I cannot quote enough moments in time, when laden with certain conversations and experiences I would come home and find mirroring questions and reason in the book. It was surreal. Many believe that opening the random pages of a text, picking the odd page with a blank mind, and choosing a paragraph or a line randomly, sometimes makes the universe speak to us. I think the universe is always talking, and sometimes when we stop long enough, we hear it. And so I think, in all those moments when I was ready to listen, the book was talking.

The several critiques of the book say that it is possibly one of the most difficult Huxley books to read. Most due to the format, where the years of the life of the protagonist have been mixed up in the chapters. Some question if the the use of the literary device has been overdone. Well I must confess that it threw me off in the beginning too. Only after a couple of chapters does one even begin to grasp the characters and the method adopted. And then there is the case of how erudite the book is. Huxley slips easily from art to literature to science and manages to achieve depth in each discussion, he was that kind of a fellow. Extremely well read and intelligent, if the book isn't ample evidence, Im not sure what would be. It doesn't have the pretentious air of someone trying to be smart, it just is. Many say that it is the culmination of Huxley's final thoughts on life and living. I read in the forward of "brave new world' that in a conversation several years past the book, Huxley mentioned that if he wrote the book then, it would have been informed by a different more spiritual strain. A strain, fairly the theme of this book.

Eyeless in Gaza, named in reference to Samson's story of how he brought the Philistines down although his eyes were burnt and locks sheared, has at its core the struggle of finding meaning and then standing up for what ones believes in (which in retrospect explains the mixed-up chapters). Maybe thats why it speaks to me so richly. For it addresses my constant turmoil. Yet apart from being thought provoking, it is also another of Huxley's delightful studies of human - individual and societal behaviour. Beavis writes from a distance, examining himself meticulously and mercilessly and from those entries we see how often the best of us is tempted to fool oneself, hide behind mirages, make excuses. Yet it is also humane in examining and accepting man with his follies, just another actor in the theater of life.

I am already on a new book now :) The Tigers Wife by Téa Obreht. Set in the Balkans during war times, it seems fascinating. I also have Sputnik Sweetheart by Murakami lined up. So much much to read in coming days!