Crome Yellow (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By Aldous Huxley and David Garrett Izzo

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.  Since its initial publication in 1921, Aldous Huxley's Crome Yellow has delighted readers with its ironic wit aimed at a diverse carnival of pretentious British upper-class characters. Huxley's satiric novel exposes the social hypocrisy of a rigidly class-conscious British establishment that was trying to forget World War I had ever happened. His characters hide their insecurities behind masks of pseudo-intellectuality. Even the book's title, Crome Yellow, is a clever metaphor inferring the stark differences between appearance and reality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Mar 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781411467699

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) was a prominent and successful English writer. Throughout his career he wrote over fifty books, and was nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Huxley wrote his first book, Crome Yellow, when he was seventeen years old, which was described by critics as a complex social satire. Huxley was both an avid humanist and pacifist and many of these ideals are reflected in his writing. Often controversial, Huxley’s views were most evident in the best-selling dystopian novel, Brave New World. The publication of Brave New Worldin 1931 rattled many who read it. However, the novel inspired many writers, Kurt Vonnegut in particular, to describe the book’s characters as foundational to the genre of science fiction. With much of his work attempting to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western beliefs, Aldous Huxley has been hailed as a writer ahead of his time.

Book preview

CROME YELLOW

ALDOUS HUXLEY

INTRODUCTION BY DAVID GARRETT IZZO

Introduction and Suggested Reading © 2004 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

This 2012 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

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INTRODUCTION

SINCE ITS INITIAL PUBLICATION IN 1921, ALDOUS HUXLEY’S CROME Yellow has delighted readers with its ironic wit aimed at a diverse carnival of pretentious British upper-class characters. Huxley’s satiric novel exposes the social hypocrisy of a rigidly class-conscious British establishment that was trying to forget World War I had ever happened. His characters hide their insecurities behind masks of pseudo-intellectuality. Even the book’s title, Crome Yellow, is a clever metaphor inferring the stark differences between appearance and reality. Indeed, the personas depicted by Huxley are not what they seem at first glance, but they do represent human nature’s duality of public and private faces. Human nature does not change. Consequently, Crome Yellow’s humor is just as relevant today as it was in 1921 when the novel earned Huxley a deserved reputation as a sharp-tongued social commentator. In America he was compared to H. L. Mencken, a writer Huxley admired, corresponded with, and emulated. Crome Yellow’s relevance is also of great importance to readers of Huxley’s landmark novel Brave New World (1932). It is in Crome Yellow where Huxley first predicts the terrible future that he will later fully develop in his science-fiction classic. Crome Yellow, like Brave New World, is a novel that will continue to charm, entertain, stimulate, and enlighten readers.

London-born Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963) was a poet, novelist, dramatist, essayist, and humanist philosopher. He attended Eton and Oxford and briefly taught at Eton before devoting himself solely to writing. Huxley married in 1920 and his only child, a son, was born a year later. He first published poetry, but earned a living with essays and short stories for various magazines. His essays gained attention for their acidly sarcastic social criticism. Crome Yellow’s critical success earned him advances for future novels and he spent most of the 1920s living in Italy and France. In 1928, his fourth novel, Point Counterpoint, was an international best seller. His fifth novel was Brave New World (1932), which is one of the most read books in literary history. His novels have been called novels of ideas, and they certainly cover a wide range of topics.

Huxley relocated to Los Angeles in 1937 with his family and best friend, the philosopher Gerald Heard. Huxley’s writing in America became increasingly philosophical and his fictional works became extensions of his nonfiction books. In 1944, Huxley’s anthology with commentary, The Perennial Philosophy, helped popularize mysticism in the United States. Huxley’s first wife, Maria, died in 1954. A year later he married concert violinist Laura Archera. Huxley passed away from throat cancer on November 22, 1963. He was initially buried in California, but his ashes were later interred in Britain with his parents. In 1968, his 1962 utopian novel, Island, was reprinted and became a best seller of over a million copies.

Today, it is Brave New World (1932), for which Aldous Huxley is chiefly remembered. Huxley’s genes nearly guaranteed his intellectual ability as his grandfather was the renowned scientist and champion of Darwin, T. H. Huxley, and his mother’s uncle was the celebrated poet and social critic, Matthew Arnold. Moreover, his mother’s sister was the very popular novelist, Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Three telling events shaped the young Huxley: his beloved mother, Julia, died when he was fourteen; at seventeen he suffered an eye ailment that left him blind for eighteen months and forever impaired his vision; and at twenty he endured the suicide of his adored older brother, Trevenen, who had fallen in love with a woman out of his class whom he could never hope to marry. These traumas turned Huxley inward and shy, and his writing, which deftly aimed at the hypocrisies of a rigidly impossible class-conscious British society, became his emotional outlet. Huxley and others blamed the upper classes for the travesty of World War I. Crome Yellow, written when Huxley was twenty-six, is semi-autobiographical, with the author represented by the character Denis—although Huxley was far more talented and less naïve than his fictional counterpart.

Crome Yellow gave Huxley the status of what today could be described as a cult-figure (high critical praise, but modest sales). The novel’s title, which refers to the fictitious estate called Crome where the story takes place, is itself a bit of subversive wit. The term crome yellow describes a yellow pigment that has an initial brightness that tends to fade when exposed to sunlight and turns brown or green over time. Hence, the title’s symbolism refers to the novel’s characters, who at first appear flashy, but will soon turn dark or fade away. As Peter Bowering has said of the novel, "the ‘yellow’ of Crome is more than a little jaundiced."

The characters in Crome are a bit sick under their superficial surface sheen. They are a bizarre group, especially when observed secretly by Denis, the pseudo-poet: Denis peeped at them discretely from the window. . . . His eyes were suddenly become innocent, childlike, unprejudiced. They seemed, these people, inconceivably fantastic. And yet they really existed, they functioned by themselves, they were conscious, they had minds. Moreover, he was like them. Could one believe it? But the evidence of the red notebook was conclusive.

The red notebook belongs to Jenny, an almost deaf (or is she really), nearly mute young woman who records her contempt for everyone at Crome in it. Denis opens Jenny’s red notebook on the sly and sees the nastily accurate caricatured drawings and vicious verbal descriptions of him and the others: And so this, he reflected, was how Jenny employed the leisure hours in her ivory tower apart. And he had thought her a simple-minded, uncritical creature. It was he, it seemed, who was the fool. Foolishness is exactly what Huxley wishes to expose.

Indeed, Huxley’s main theme is like the distorting and fading colors of crome yellow pigment. First impressions do not last. He depicts men who indulge in exercises of intellectual futility, and women who are either Freudian moderns or Victorian predators or both. In fact, Huxley was satirizing his own experiences at Garsington Manor, the palatial estate of Lady Ottoline Murrell. Her guests were the inspiration for the characters of Crome Yellow. After its debut, Lady Ottoline (the fictional Mrs. Wimbush) did not speak to Huxley for a long time.

Huxley views Crome as a microcosm of the much larger macrocosm that was then Great Britain. He also sees in the characters who populate Crome personalities that are recognizable in any society past or present. His characters exhibit creation’s foibles and follies that we can all recognize and laugh over. Readers will also perceive the more serious and painful repercussions of their behaviors that his satire implies between the lines.

The characters of Crome Yellow are vividly drawn from Huxley’s experiences. Denis exemplifies the man who agonizingly analyzes every action and reaction while trying to imagine what others are thinking. He is a hopeless romantic who feels and thinks too much to ever relax and be happy, saying, I can take nothing for granted, I can enjoy nothing as it comes along. Beauty, pleasure, art, women—I have to invent an excuse, a justification for everything that is delightful.

Anne is the liberated but cynical femme fatale who responds to Denis’ equivocation with matter-of-fact smugness: One enjoys the pleasant things, avoids the nasty ones. There’s nothing more to be said. Of course, there’s much more to be said, but being rich and spoiled simplifies Anne’s view of reality.

Mary is also liberated and a reader of Havelock Ellis, the then-shocking sex researcher. She is an amateur psychologist who analyzes her own subconscious: I constantly dream that I’m falling down wells; and sometimes I even dream that I’m climbing ladders. . . . The symptoms are only too clear. . . . One may become a nymphomaniac if one’s not careful. What actually seems clear is that Mary is not sure if she is coming or going.

Mr. Barbecue-Smith is the pseudo-mystic who has won over Mrs. Wimbush with his books of saccharine aphorisms with titles like Humble Heroisms and Pipelines to the Infinite. He repeats to Denis such gems of wisdom as, The flame of a candle gives light, but it also burns and The things that really matter happen in the heart. It is hard to imagine that anyone could take Barbecue-Smith seriously, but Huxley’s point is exactly that he is taken seriously.

Huxley’s superficial idealists are contrasted with the pessimists Mr. Wimbush, Mr. Bodiham, and Mr. Scogan. Wimbush makes memorials of the past because his present is such a bore. Bodiham is the fire-and-brimstone rector of Crome who believes in an angry God. His God is also spiteful, vindictive, and wants everyone to burn in hell. Finally, Mr. Scogan is the cold rationalist who is the forecaster of a Brave New World. In Scogan’s future, there will be three cloned types of humans: (1) Directing Intelligences, who will con the (2) Men of Faith into convincing the remaining (3) Herd to follow blindly. Scogan argues that men of intelligence must combine, must conspire, and seize power from the imbeciles and maniacs who now direct us. They must found the Rational State. Through Scogan, Huxley hints at the coming of fascism, as well as his future novel.

In the 1920s, Huxley’s books were sharply attacked by those who resented his criticisms of British society. He was also criticized for his then unprecedented discussion of previously unmentioned topics such as British traditions, upper-class arrogance, class divisions, religion, psychoanalysis, and especially sex. Huxley considered it his duty to respond to these critics. He wrote in 1930: I have frequently been accused . . . both of vulgarity and wickedness—on the grounds . . . that I reported my investigations into certain phenomena in plain English and in a novel. . . . [T]hose who are shocked by truth are not only stupid, but morally reprehensible as well; the stupid should be educated, the wicked punished and reformed (Vulgarity in Literature). Huxley did not hesitate to challenge the false complacency of postwar England.

Shortly after Crome Yellow’s publication in 1921, T. S. Eliot published The Waste Land in 1922. The Waste Land is now considered the landmark definition of modern postwar despair and alienation. Crome Yellow is not as well remembered today as The Waste Land is, but the success of Crome’s satirical cynicism set the tone that helped prepare readers for Eliot’s verse. Many authors in the 1920s, including Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, and Conrad Aiken, followed Huxley with their own fiction that was critical of British society. Huxley’s cult popularity among the cognoscenti created a readership for their work.

Huxley’s influence in the 1920s and after was enormous. The American literary critic Malcolm Cowley said that, in 1928, "Point Counterpoint, by Aldous Huxley, was compulsory reading." Christopher Isherwood (The Berlin Stories) was a Cambridge student in the late 1920s who was also strongly influenced by Huxley. In one of his short stories Isherwood exposed a theory on the true authorship of the New Testament: I refer to this exploded forgery with all due reference to Professor Pillard, who has, by the Historical Method, clearly proved that it is the work of Mr. Aldous Huxley. For Isherwood and his peers, Huxley was a hero for attacking the staid British establishment.

Huxley also expressed his opinions straightforwardly in essays. After World War I, he wrote that authors should tell the truth in a simple and realistic way that emphasized substance over style. In essays such as The Subject Matter of Poetry and Tragedy and the Whole Truth, Huxley made two assertions: (1) everything and anything between the mundane and the magnificent is suitable subject matter for literature if the artist writes about it as sincere truth; and (2) the artist’s striving for reality in art is not a new technique or fashion, but an approach that was as old as classical antiquity. Huxley stated that [writers today] are at liberty to do what Homer did—to write freely about the immediately moving facts of everyday life. . . . There is nothing intrinsically novel or surprising in the introduction into poetry of machinery and industrialism, of labour unrest and modern psychology: these things belong to us, they affect us daily as enjoying and suffering beings. Consequently, numerous aspects of real life were suitable for fiction and Huxley included them in Crome Yellow. Huxley called this approach to writing as Wholly Truthful art.

Wholly Truthful art reflects the tea-tabling technique of writing. To tea-table is to reveal important and even emotional information without resorting to a traditionally histrionic tragic scene—but to do so instead over afternoon tea or during some other mundane moment. Jane Austen had mastered tea-tabling a century earlier. Huxley recognized that much of real life occurs, however emotional the situation, quietly more often than loudly. In Crome Yellow, Denis reads the apocalyptic red notebook in complete silence but with profound emotional shock. No one else finds out that Denis has read it. Yet even if someone had seen him as he read the notebook, he or she would have simply witnessed him engaged in the quite ordinary act of reading a book. Nonetheless, in this act the commonplace and the tragic are combined. Huxley wrote that Wholly-Truthful art overflows the limits of tragedy and shows us, if only by hints and implications, what happened before the tragic story began, what will happen after it is over, what is happening simultaneously elsewhere (and ‘elsewhere’ includes all those parts of the minds and bodies of the protagonists not immediately engaged in the tragic struggle). In Crome Yellow the tragedy of Crome’s cursed past is conveyed in a dry, matter-of-fact manner. The cold, unemotional way Sir Henry tells the horrific story of poor Sir Hercules renders the terrible details even more horrible.

Crome Yellow is a satire of understated comic efficiency that evokes from its readers sly smiles more often than laughter. Even so, the novel’s pervasive slyness becomes more penetrating in its cumulative effect as it demonstrates for the reader the oddities of human relations. Crome Yellow is a wry, allusive, erudite, and masterfully funny novel that displays the lengths to which people will go to escape reality by hiding behind various neuroses and psychoses.

Behind the satire and the cynicism, Aldous Huxley was attempting to understand the human spirit so that he could learn how to improve himself and influence others to do the same. Huxley’s questing after spirit in his art and essays is now a major fount of study in Europe, particularly in Germany, where metaphysical approaches to literature resonate with great importance. Throughout his life, Huxley belied the cynicism of his fiction by actually being a thoughtful, kind, and generous spirit who thought that the money he earned was meant to help others, and he gave it away to good causes and good people. From Crome Yellow forward, Huxley wished to expose human nature in order to change it.

Christopher Isherwood joined Huxley in Los Angeles in 1939, and in his diary Isherwood often wrote about Huxley as if he were his surrogate older brother: "How kind, how shy he is—searching painfully through the darkness of this world’s ignorance with his blind, mild, deep-sea eye. He has a pained, bewildered smile of despair at all human activity. ‘It’s inconceivable,’ he repeatedly begins, ‘how anyone in their senses could possibly imagine—’ But they do imagine—and Aldous is very, very sorry." Crome Yellow is written with the very tone Isherwood describes, and its bitter wit is just as relevant now as it was when Huxley wrote it. Haves and have-nots still exist. Corrupt politicians still thrive. Pretentious pseudo-artists and intellectuals still sell their recycled ideas as if they were new. Wars still happen. Huxley hopes to instruct us while we laugh—even if through tears—and Crome Yellow is in its final lesson just as humane as Huxley himself.

David Garrett Izzo has published numerous books and articles about writers and poets who began to write in the period between the world wars, including Aldous Huxley. He has also published a historical novel, A Change of Heart, in which Huxley is the central character.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

SUGGESTED READING

CROME YELLOW

CHAPTER I

ALONG THIS PARTICULAR STRETCH OF LINE NO EXPRESS HAD EVER passed. All the trains—the few that there were—stopped at all the stations. Denis knew the names of those stations by heart. Bole, Tritton, Spavin Delawarr, Knipswich for Timpany, West Bowlby, and, finally, Camlet-on-the-Water. Camlet was where he always got out, leaving the train to creep indolently onward, goodness only knew whither, into the green heart of England.

They were snorting out of West Bowlby now. It was the next station, thank Heaven. Denis took his chattels off the rack and piled them neatly in the corner opposite his own. A futile proceeding. But one must have something to do. When he had finished, he sank back into his seat and closed his eyes. It was extremely hot.

Oh, this journey! It was two hours cut clean out of his life; two hours in which he might have done so much, so much—written the perfect poem, for example, or read the

Reviews for Crome Yellow (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

[jonfaith · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Words - I wonder if you can realize how much I love them. You are too much preoccupied with mere things and ideas and people to understand the full beauty of words. Your mind is not a literary mind.

Goodreads is but a sea of possibilities, rife with points of contact albeit drifting and bobbing. Too often I don't hear the calls across the foamy expanses. It is with relief and gratitude that I thank Jim Paris for suggesting this novel.
Crome Yellow is Huxley's first novel.
It has wit and snark.
It overflows with pain and self-deprecation.
It takes place in a place called Crome.
It involves a bank holiday and there are references to oysters.

[dreesie-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Wealthy people hang out at someone's country house. They talk art, politics, philosophy, and wish they weren't single. They pine after each other or try to figure out who might be a possibility. The host holds the annual day-long fair and they all assist.There is definitely humor here, but it is 100-year-old upper class English humor, and doesn't really do it for me. The best and most interesting part is when Mr Scogan spends a page expounding on what he thinks will be life in the future. His world sounds like an outline for Brave New World--which this book predates by 12 years.

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Clever, arguably too clever, since sometimes it's hard to keep track of who's doing what and why. Some great scenes, though.

[lynsey2-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a solidly written novel with moments of humor and insight but overall a tad boring.

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5★ I may up this to 4 stars -- I want to see how it lasts in my memory. This is a satire or comedy of manners so there is not much action. Various people are gathered at a country house for a visit which gives Huxley a chance to show us different types of 'bright young things' (this was published in the early 1920s). I found much to amuse me but it rarely made me laugh out loud.One character I found particularly funny was the local vicar, Mr. Bodiham: "He preached with fury, with passion, an iron man beating with a flail upon the souls of his congregation. But the souls of the faithful at Crome were made of india-rubber, solid rubber; the flail rebounded." A predecessor of Amos in Stella Gibbons' [Cold Comfort Farm]!There were indications of Huxley's masterpiece to come, [Brave New World]. For example, in this early passage by one of the guests (Mr. Scogan):"Eros, for those who wish it, is now an entirely free god; his deplorable associations with Lucina may be broken at will. In the course of the next few centuries, who knows? the world may see a more complete severance. I look forward to it optimistically. ... our descendants will experiment and succeed. An impersonal generation will take the place of Nature's hideous system. In vast state incubators, rows upon rows of gravid bottles will supply the world with the population it requires. The family system will disappear; society, sapped at its very base, will have to find new foundations; and Eros, beautifully and irresponsibly free, will flit like a gay butterfly from flower to flower through a sunlit world."Finally, a quote I love from this (also by Mr. Scogan):"After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one's mind; one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking."

[mreed61 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

4 1/2, but there's no half here. Oh, well. Eventually, this will get a full review at accidentallymars.wordpress.com.

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This example of a country week end novel is the first published work (1921) by Aldous Huxley. In some ways this may have been a novel for the episode structure of "A Dance to the Music of Time". The characters show up, do a number of character revealing acts, chat about their lives, and very little happens in front of the readers. But Huxley is a good character drawing writer and I had a good time.

[steadfastreader · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Huxley's first novel. It lacks the organization and amazing storytelling of Brave New World but you can see that he is toying with the ideas that he will later use in Brave New World. This is a decent read, but I'd only recommend it for people who really enjoy Huxley.

[mlbelize · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

It wasn't bad - it just wasn't for me.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley published in 1921 was Huxley's first novel. It is a witty, satirical book about the British literati. It is set in a country home of Henry Wimbush in the town of Crome. The time period is just after World War I. Denis Stone, who sees himself a poet, is hopelessly in love with Henry’s niece. Mr Scogan is the rational person who discourses constantly and prefers the things of man and rejects nature. Priscilla Wimbush is immersed in the occult. Gombauld is the painter who is rejecting cubist art and painting reality instead. He is also painting a portrait of Anne. The author addresses sex in this book. He references that sex was only prudently treated in the 19th century but was enjoyed and fun in the earlier centuries. There is also Mary who would be an early woman libber seeking to express her sexuality without the restraints of society. The author uses many words that required looking up, at least for me and there is the sense that he is mocking language. A quote from the book on reading; “Human contacts have boon so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment and because books were scarce and difficult to reproduce…..”The proper study of mankind is in books.”
I liked the book but it wasn’t as enjoyable as his Brave New World but this is a quick read for those working their way through the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.

[daveskinner · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this so many years ago that I cannot recall the details, but I have kept the paperback for 40 years because the parts that are "Henry Wimbush's engaging accounts of his eccentric ancestors," have haunted me for all those years. It is probably the greatest thing I have ever read.

[cshoughton · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I feel a little guilty that I so enjoyed Crome Yellow, as if I'd been sitting for hours in a high school cafeteria making fun of nearly everyone else, especially my own friends.

[aaronmaples · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Huxley's first novel. As a reader of a number of his other works, this one I felt was quite light compared to some later works. Somewhat predictable love story at times, but still unfolds surprises along the way. Huxley does not disappoint by filling an estate with a bunch of intellectuals trying to one up each other in the context of the english countryside. I will always remember sleeping getaways with mattress on the rooftop reading stars while conversing across turrets- life dangering in the meantime.

[ursula_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've never read anything by Huxley besides Brave New World, and I try to go into reading the books on the 1001 list knowing as little as possible, so I had no clue what to expect. (On a side note, one of the very annoying things about the 1001 book is that in the descriptions, they frequently spoil the book they're talking about. So now, I don't read their comments until after I've finished the book in question.) This was Huxley's first published book, and it's a satire which takes place at an English country home. The narrator is Denis, who is a poet. He's clumsily enamored of the host's daughter, Anne. Other characters include two other young women, one of whom has her own love problems and the other of whom is somewhat deaf, but as Denis discovers, that doesn't necessarily mean she misses what goes on around her; Henry, the host, who has opinions on everything and loves to share them at length; and Gombauld, an artist. The plot isn't particularly deep, but the plot isn't the point. It's really all about how these people interact with each other. If you were a contemporary of Huxley's and moved in the same circles, I'm sure reading this would make you smile and recognize people you knew. And for the modern reader, one of Henry's ideas sounds very familiar:"An impersonal generation will take the place of Nature's hideous system. In vast state incubators, rows upon rows of gravid bottles will supply the world with the population it requires. The family system will disappear; society, sapped at its very base, will have to find new foundations; and Eros, beautifully and irresponsibly free, will flit like a gay butterfly from flower to flower through a sunlit world.""It sounds lovely," said Anne."The distant future always does."I found it quite entertaining, and a short read. I also added at least 15 words to my vocabulary (I don't think Huxley ever met a word he didn't like).

[greatrakes · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Crome Yellow is the first early Huxley I have read and I am surprised it isn't more widely talked about. A very funny dissection of the moneyed classes of the 1920's, far better in characterisation and wit than Waugh's Vile Bodies, in my opinion.The 'hero', Denis, a hopeful young poet, is a guest at Crome, the ancestral home of Henry Wimbush, whose history of the previous inhabitants, he recites whenever he can, and is his only interest. Denis tangles with a recovering Cubist painter, a successful writer called Barbecue-Smith, Mary, a virgin obsessed by the dangers of repression and dreaming constantly of wells and towers, and a demented vicar hoping beyond hope for the end of times. The most grotesque character is Mr Scoggins, a rationalist who looks forward to a future which has a strong resemblance to Brave New World.I really enjoyed this book.

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Young poet Dennis Stone attends a country house party at Crome. There are lots of philosophical conversations about artistic matters, the host tells interesting stories about his ancestors and Dennis suffers the pangs of unrequited love. I don't get the title; Crome is the name of the house and village, but why Yellow? The house is built of rosy brick, not of golden Cotswold stone so it's not that.

[cdeuker · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Someone says that this book is a bit like an Agathie Christie novel without the murder. I like that--a group of intellectuals, young and old, are staying at a country house right after WWI. They discuss art, love, literature, and history. Much of it is very entertaining--the intellectual back and forth reminded me of MY DINNER WITH ANDRE. The characters, unfortunately, are basically mouthpieces for ideas. When Denis--near the end--contemplates suicide, my response was . . . "Oh, well." His love for Anne is similarly a yawner. Even though I wouldn't want to read "idea" novels all the time, I'm delighted to have read this one, and I'll read more Huxley in the future.

[tronella_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

So this is some kind of... presumably satire about a bunch of people sitting about in their country house telling each other their opinions and/or complaining about their unrequited love for each other. It was fun to read, although the main character especially is particularly irritating. The best-written parts, in my opinion, were the parts describing the history of the household and its former occupants - the story about the couple with dwarfism whose son was really tall was particularly well done.I definitely liked this the least of the three Huxley books I've read, but it was still pretty good.

[takeitorleaveit_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Huxley's first book at a ripe and young adolescence age and OH is he aware of it! Huxley has no problem with the extreme vulnerability of his lead character, to the point of letting his jealousy get in the way of the novel sometimes. It is also one of the most genuinely melancholy books I have ever read. If I had to compare it to an album it would possibly be Beck's 'Mutations'. However, he shows fleeting glimpses' of future Huxley as his older characters have a flair for history, one even writing a large and silly history of the town 'Crome' (a British countryside town) that includes a dwarfish lord who kills himself and his wife, a family of beautiful women who pretend not to eat but lock themselves in a basement at night downing chickens and hams, amongst other stuff. the history is not the most important part of the novel, the ultimate feeling of character development and the strong sense of description and criticism is what is so rich in this novel and what made me so excited to pick up every page. Although it was his first it cannot be called raw as it is better than many writers greatest works. Huxley is a writer's writer other than the few books he is known for, and any male between the age of 20-24 who feels angst and discontented with the melancholy of his stature in relationships and the surroundings he finds himself in will adore 'Crome Yellow.' It's very much something that Morrissey would read in his youth. PS check out the vintage cover of the copy I scored at this rad book shop in Venice, California!

[pghdragonman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very slow moving, maybe because the narrative is very detailed, the story is nonetheless worth reading if you are a student of Huxley's time or of Huxley. This story is most notable for an encounter between a man and a woman who, because the night was so hot, moved their mattresses to a roof and spent the night outside together. When the novel was first published, this was considered absolutely scandalous. This novel, and more specifically this passage, is considered by many literary historians as signaling the end of the Victorian Era.

[912greens · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There is a passage in which a minister tries to beat his sermon against the "rubber souls" of the congregation. I thought that this might have been an inspiration for the Beatles? But have since heard other theories on the origins of their Rubber Soul.

[grunin_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

[This started out a little slow; then I went to the audiobook, and the characters came to life. After a couple of chapters, I then went back and forth, audio when commuting, book when sitting still.]There are several passages here that show the kernel of "Brave New World" (1932) to have been fully formed in 1921, at the latest. I recommend it to those who are curious about this, and also to anyone much familiar with the culture of postwar England. Others may find the satire opaque or pointless.