Point Counter Point
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''Point Counter Point'' is a novel by
Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxley ...
, first published in 1928. It is Huxley's longest novel, and was notably more complex and serious than his earlier fiction. In 1998, the
Modern Library The Modern Library is an American book publishing imprint and formerly the parent company of Random House. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, Modern Library became an ...
ranked ''Point Counter Point'' 44th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.


Title and construction

The novel's title is a reference to the flow of arguments in a debate, and a series of these exchanges tell the story. Instead of a single central plot, there are a number of interlinked story lines and recurring themes (as in musical "
counterpoint In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...
"). As a
roman à clef ''Roman à clef'' (, anglicised as ), French for ''novel with a key'', is a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship ...
, many of the characters are based on real people, most of whom Huxley knew personally, such as
D. H. Lawrence David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English writer, novelist, poet and essayist. His works reflect on modernity, industrialization, sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity and instinct. His best-k ...
,
Katherine Mansfield Kathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp; 14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a New Zealand writer, essayist and journalist, widely considered one of the most influential and important authors of the modernist movement. Her works are celebra ...
,
Sir Oswald Mosley Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was a British politician during the 1920s and 1930s who rose to fame when, having become disillusioned with mainstream politics, he turned to fascism. He was a member ...
,
Nancy Cunard Nancy Clara Cunard (10 March 1896 – 17 March 1965) was a British writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class, and devoted much of her life to fighting racism and fascism. She became a muse to some of the ...
, and
John Middleton Murry John Middleton Murry (6 August 1889 – 12 March 1957) was an English writer. He was a prolific author, producing more than 60 books and thousands of essays and reviews on literature, social issues, politics, and religion during his lifetime. ...
, and Huxley is depicted as the novel's novelist, Philip Quarles. Huxley described the structure of Point Counter Point within the novel itself, in a stream of consciousness musing of Quarles: "The musicalization of fiction.  Not in the symbolist way, by subordinating sense to sound. . . . But on a large scale, in the construction.  Meditate on Beethoven.  The changes of moods, the abrupt transitions . . . More interesting still, the modulations, not merely from one key to another, but from mood to mood.  A theme is stated, then developed, pushed out of shape, imperceptibly deformed, until, though still recognizably the same, it has become quite different. . . . Get this into a novel.  How?  The abrupt transitions are easy enough.  All you need is a sufficiency of characters and parallel, contrapuntal plots.   . . . You alternate the theme.  More interesting, the modulations and variations are also more difficult.  A novelist modulates by reduplicating situations and characters. He shows several people falling in love, or dying, or praying in different ways -- dissimilars solving the same problem.  Or, vice versa, similar people confronted with dissimilar problems.  In this way you can modulate through all the aspects of your theme, you can write variations in any number of different moods.  Another way: The novelist can assume the god-like creative privilege and simply elect to consider the events in the story in their various aspects -- emotional, scientific, religious, metaphysical, etc.  He will modulate from one to the other -- as, from the aesthetic to the physico-chemical aspect of things, from the religious to the physiological or financial. . . . Put a novelist in the novel.  He justifies aesthetic generalizations, which may be interesting -- at least to me. He also justifies experiment.  Specimens of his work may illustrate other possible or impossible ways of telling a story."


Main characters and storylines

Some of the main characters include: *Walter Bidlake, a young journalist. A weak and ineffectual man, Walter is living with Marjorie Carling, a married woman whose husband refuses to grant her a divorce. Marjorie is pregnant with Walter's child, but their relationship is disintegrating, largely because Walter has fallen desperately in love with the sexually aggressive and independent Lucy Tantamount (based on
Nancy Cunard Nancy Clara Cunard (10 March 1896 – 17 March 1965) was a British writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class, and devoted much of her life to fighting racism and fascism. She became a muse to some of the ...
, with whom Huxley had a similarly unsatisfactory affair). *John Bidlake, Walter's father, a painter (based on
Augustus John Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarg ...
). He is famous for his work and for his scandalous love life. However, his recent paintings show a creative decline, which he himself recognises but refuses to admit. He has an illness which is eventually diagnosed as terminal cancer. His wife Mrs. Bidlake is inspired by
Lady Ottoline Morrell Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Morrell (16 June 1873 – 21 April 1938) was an English aristocrat and society hostess. Her patronage was influential in artistic and intellectual circles, where she befriended writers including Aldous Huxley, Sieg ...
. *Philip Quarles, a writer (a self-portrait of Huxley) and his wife Elinor, John Bidlake's daughter. They return from India to England. Quarles is a withdrawn, cerebral man, ill at ease with the everyday world and its emotions; Elinor loves him, but is tempted to enter into an affair with the bold and attractive Everard Webley, a political
demagogue A demagogue (from Greek , a popular leader, a leader of a mob, from , people, populace, the commons + leading, leader) or rabble-rouser is a political leader in a democracy who gains popularity by arousing the common people against elites, e ...
and leader of his own quasi-military group, the Brotherhood of British Freemen. (Webley is often assumed to be based on
Oswald Mosley Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was a British politician during the 1920s and 1930s who rose to fame when, having become disillusioned with mainstream politics, he turned to fascism. He was a member ...
, but there are reasons for doubting this: see below.) Quarles' father, Sidney, is unlike his son: outwardly impressive, he is in reality pretentious, feeble and self-indulgent. An undistinguished MP and failed businessman, he has retired from public life, supposedly to concentrate on writing a vast and definitive study of democracy. In fact he has written nothing, but he employs a secretary; the girl becomes pregnant by him and threatens to make a scandal. Philip and Elinor have a young son, little Phil, who becomes ill and dies of
meningitis Meningitis is acute or chronic inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, collectively called the meninges. The most common symptoms are fever, headache, and neck stiffness. Other symptoms include confusion or ...
. *Mark Rampion, a writer and painter. Based on
D. H. Lawrence David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English writer, novelist, poet and essayist. His works reflect on modernity, industrialization, sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity and instinct. His best-k ...
, whom Huxley admired greatly, Rampion is a fierce critic of modern society. A full chapter in flashback shows Rampion's courtship and marriage to his wife, Mary (based on Lawrence's wife Frieda). *Maurice Spandrell, an intellectual desperately and unsuccessfully searching for proof of the divine in his life (based on
Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poetry, French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticis ...
, who of course did not live in Huxley's time). For years Spandrell has devoted himself to
vice A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character tra ...
and deliberate wickedness in order to prompt a reaction from God. He has found some pleasure in the corruption of an innocent young girl, both in the act itself and in his own feelings of remorse, but when he is not divinely punished, he looks for an even larger sin to force God's hand. He believes that if there is no real evidence of God's existence, everything in life is pointless. He meets Illidge, a young scientist of working-class origin, and taunts him for his angry left-wing rhetoric and actual political impotence in order to persuade him into helping him murder Everard Webley. Tragically, there is still no obvious heavenly negative and personal consequences for this ultimate sin, except to strengthen Webley's Brotherhood of British Freemen. Spandrell sends an anonymous note to the Brotherhood, informing them that the murderer is at his address. He tries one last time to find God's presence in the world when he asks Rampion whether Beethoven's String Quartet No 15, played on the newly invented
gramophone A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...
, (to symbolize the collision of science and technology with art) is an indication or proof of God. Rampion answers that even the sublimest of music, such as Beethoven's composition that they are listening to, is not a proof of God, this motivates Spandrell to call the police, essentially committing suicide, since when they arrive he allows himself to be shot and killed, while the third movement from Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15 plays in the background. *Denis Burlap, Walter Bidlake's editor. Based on
John Middleton Murry John Middleton Murry (6 August 1889 – 12 March 1957) was an English writer. He was a prolific author, producing more than 60 books and thousands of essays and reviews on literature, social issues, politics, and religion during his lifetime. ...
, Burlap is in his writings and public image a Christian and an anguished, self-accusing moralist; in his inner thoughts and private behaviour, however, he is calculating, avaricious and libidinous. He lives with Beatrice Gilray (based on
Dorothy Brett Hon. Dorothy Eugénie Brett (10 November 1883 – 27 August 1977) was an Anglo-American painter, remembered as much for her social life as for her art. Born into an aristocratic British family, she lived a sheltered early life. During her ...
, painter), who at thirty-five remains a virgin, having been molested as a young girl; for some time their relationship is platonic, but Burlap succeeds in seducing her. The novel ends with his having secured several thousand dollars for a book, ''St Francis and the Modern Psyche'', and enjoying an evening of sensual pleasure with Beatrice.


Comparison with Oswald Mosley

Comparisons have been made between the character Everard Webley and his Brotherhood of British Freemen and
Oswald Mosley Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was a British politician during the 1920s and 1930s who rose to fame when, having become disillusioned with mainstream politics, he turned to fascism. He was a member ...
and the
British Union of Fascists The British Union of Fascists (BUF) was a British fascist political party formed in 1932 by Oswald Mosley. Mosley changed its name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists in 1936 and, in 1937, to the British Union. In 1939, fo ...
. However, when Huxley wrote ''Point Counter Point'', Mosley was still a prominent member of the Labour Party and would remain so until 1931. The BUF was not founded until 1932. A number of other fascist groups preceded Mosley, the most prominent being the
British Fascists The British Fascists was the first political organisation in the United Kingdom to claim the label of fascist, although the group had little ideological unity apart from anti-socialism for much of its existence, and was strongly associated with ...
, and possibly one of those may have been Huxley's inspiration. In the 1996 reprint of ''Point Counter Point'', Mosley's son
Nicholas Nicholas is a male given name and a surname. The Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Anglicanism, Anglican Churches celebrate Saint Nicholas every year on December 6, which is the name day for "Nicholas". In Greece, the n ...
discusses the connection in a new introduction to the novel. David Bradshaw has argued that the most likely source for Webley is
John Hargrave John Gordon Hargrave (6 June 1894 – 21 November 1982), (woodcraft name 'White Fox'), was a prominent youth leader in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s, Head Man of the Kibbo Kift, described in his obituary as an 'author, cartoonist, inve ...
, the founder of The Kindred of the
Kibbo Kift The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift was a camping, hiking and handicraft group with ambitions to bring world peace. It was the first of three movements in England associated with the charismatic artist and writer John Hargrave (1894–1982). The Kindred ...
. Aside from the question of which British fascist leader was meant, when the book was written in 1928, Hitler and his Nazi Party were still a marginal force in German politics, and British fascists looked mainly to Fascist Italy, which did not pose any kind of military threat to Britain. That makes a difference for the act of killing the fascist leader. Ten years later, the killing of a British fascist might have been considered a patriotic act, removing a potential collaborator with the Nazis, but in 1928, such an act was simply a pure manifestation of left-wing radicalism.


Film and television adaptations

The novel was adapted into a
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
mini-series by
Simon Raven Simon Arthur Noël Raven (28 December 1927 – 12 May 2001) was an English author, playwright, essayist, television writer, and screenwriter. He is known for his louche lifestyle as much as for his literary output. Expelled from Charterhouse Sc ...
in 1968, starring Tristram Jellinek. It was later broadcast on
PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
television in 1972.


References


External links

*
Somaweb.org
– a collection of links relating to Huxley's works in general * {{Authority control 1928 British novels British novels adapted into television shows Doubleday, Doran books Novels by Aldous Huxley Roman à clef novels