Brave New World (the book)

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance Media Reviews & Recommendations
#1

I read this book once, “for pleasure,” in college. By the time I got to the end, I was devastated. I stayed under the covers for a whole afternoon and wouldn’t come out. It had a very large impact on me. I read it around the time I first started showing symptoms of depression, and needless to say, it didn’t help matters. I am literally afraid to read it again, for my own health.

A lot of people might react to a book that makes them feel that way by saying they hated it, and then promptly forget about it. But it continues to have a kind of power over me. I don’t feel this is a good or a bad thing, I think there are pros and cons to being awake to certain pathological social dynamics.

I’m curious to hear about other people’s experiences of reading it.

#2

That book feels more prophetic every year. Hard to believe it was written in 1932.

#3

Was optional required reading for me in high school for my AP lit class, (optional as in, we could read that, or one flew over the cuckoos nest),

Definitely some scary shit in that book, seriously because yeah, it just seems so prophetic in those ways, like imagine, T.V. / video games / internet hadn’t even come out yet, but they did have drugs so…

I don’t quite remember the end however… I think the pros come from, oh shit I see this happening and it’s fucked up and I don’t want it.

#4

Such a great book. I’d heard that the idea behind it came from Ford’s book about mass production. I ended up reading it at a very good time, right after reading Harry Redner’s “Conserving Cultures”, which is basically one long diatribe against mass-production, neoliberal economics, and hegemonic monoculture. I thoroughly recommend Brave New World to everyone I know, which unfortunately means that nobody I know has read it. It speaks volumes about the way industrialization and mass-production degrade and destroy our humanity.

For a less intellectually awesome, but somewhat funny action version, see the Stalone movie “Demolition Man”.

#5

i liked ‘we’ by Yvgeny Zamiatin a bit better actually

#6

I make references to Brave New World periodically; usually no one gets them and I feel sad.

I can’t ever forget the feelies, or the fact that the last line in the book read out a bunch of compass directions. It took me a while to figure out what they meant.

Anyway, I liked the book. In many ways it gave Walden Two a good kick in the pants.

#7

i read 1984 at the same time i read brave new world which sort of packed a double punch. good book though.

#8
I stayed under the covers for a whole afternoon and wouldn't come out. It had a very large impact on me
I had the same reaction when I read 1984.
#9

Huxley’s Brave New World Revisited makes the whole thing even scarier.

#10

Great, I made a note of that, for the next time I’m feeling uber-masochistic. :slight_smile: