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In an article in the 4 May 1935 issue of the "Illustrated London News", G. K. Chesterton explained that Huxley was revolting against the "Age of Utopias". Much of the discourse on man's future before 1914 was based on the thesis that humanity would solve all economic and social issues. In the decade following the war t... |
Similarly, in 1944 economist Ludwig von Mises described "Brave New World" as a satire of utopian predictions of socialism: "Aldous Huxley was even courageous enough to make socialism's dreamed paradise the target of his sardonic irony." |
From birth, members of every class are indoctrinated by recorded voices repeating slogans while they sleep (called "hypnopædia" in the book) to believe their own class is superior, but that the other classes perform needed functions. Any residual unhappiness is resolved by an antidepressant and hallucinogenic drug call... |
Comparisons with George Orwell's " Nineteen Eighty-Four ". |
In a letter to George Orwell about "Nineteen Eighty-Four", Huxley wrote "Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways ... |
Social critic Neil Postman contrasted the worlds of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and "Brave New World" in the foreword of his 1985 book "Amusing Ourselves to Death". He writes: |
Journalist Christopher Hitchens, who himself published several articles on Huxley and a book on Orwell, noted the difference between the two texts in the introduction to his 1999 article "Why Americans Are Not Taught History": |
Martin Kreutzberg, in his essay on the development of "Sexual Fantasies and Fantasies About Sex" during the 19th and 20th Centuries, noted that |
Brave New World Revisited (Harper & Brothers, US, 1958; Chatto & Windus, UK, 1959), written by Huxley almost thirty years after "Brave New World", is a non-fiction work in which Huxley considered whether the world had moved toward or away from his vision of the future from the 1930s. He believed when he wrote the origi... |
Huxley analysed the causes of this, such as overpopulation, as well as all the means by which populations can be controlled. He was particularly interested in the effects of drugs and subliminal suggestion. "Brave New World Revisited" is different in tone because of Huxley's evolving thought, as well as his conversion ... |
The last chapter of the book aims to propose action which could be taken to prevent a democracy from turning into the totalitarian world described in "Brave New World". In Huxley's last novel, "Island", he again expounds similar ideas to describe a utopian nation, which is generally viewed as a counterpart to "Brave Ne... |
The American Library Association ranks "Brave New World" as No. 34 on their list of most challenged books. The following list includes some incidents in which it has been censored, banned, or challenged: |
The English writer Rose Macaulay published "What Not: A Prophetic Comedy" in 1918. "What Not" depicts a dystopian future where people are ranked by intelligence, the government mandates mind training for all citizens, and procreation is regulated by the state. Macaulay and Huxley shared the same literary circles and he... |
George Orwell believed that "Brave New World" must have been partly derived from the 1921 novel "We" by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin. However, in a 1962 letter to Christopher Collins, Huxley says that he wrote "Brave New World" long before he had heard of "We". According to "We" translator Natasha Randall, Orwell be... |
Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing "Player Piano" (1952), he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of "Brave New World", whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We"". |
In 1982, Polish author Antoni Smuszkiewicz, in his analysis of Polish science-fiction "Zaczarowana gra" ("The Magic Game"), presented accusations of plagiarism against Huxley. Smuszkiewicz showed similarities between "Brave New World" and two science fiction novels written earlier by Polish author Mieczysław Smolarski,... |
Kate Lohnes, writing for "Encyclopædia Britannica", notes similarities between "Brave New World" and other novels of the era could be seen as expressing "common fears surrounding the rapid advancement of technology and of the shared feelings of many tech-skeptics during the early 20th century". Other dystopian novels f... |
In 1999, the Modern Library ranked "Brave New World" fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003, Robert McCrum writing for "The Observer" included "Brave New World" chronologically at number 53 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time", and the novel was listed at number 8... |
On 5 November 2019, the "BBC News" listed "Brave New World" on its list of the 100 most influential novels. |
In May 2015, "The Hollywood Reporter" reported that Steven Spielberg's Amblin Television would bring "Brave New World" to Syfy network as a scripted series, written (adapted) by Les Bohem. The adaptation was eventually written by David Wiener with Grant Morrison and Brian Taylor, with the series ordered to air on USA N... |
Quichotte ( , ) is a 2019 novel by Salman Rushdie. It is his fourteenth novel, published on 29 August 2019 by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom and Penguin Books India in India. It was published in the United States on 3 September 2019 by Random House. Inspired by Miguel de Cervantes' classic novel "Don Quixote", "Qu... |
The novel received favourable reviews and was shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize. |
"Quichotte" was published on 29 August 2019 by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom and Penguin Books India in India. It was published in the United States on 3 September 2019 by Random House. |
The novel debuted at number fifteen on "The New York Times" Hardcover Fiction best-sellers list on September 29, 2019. |
"Kirkus Reviews" called the novel "humane and humorous," adding that "Rushdie is in top form, serving up a fine piece of literary satire." |
"Publishers Weekly" called the novel "a brilliant rendition of the cheesy, sleazy, scary pandemonium of life in modern times." |
Claire Lowdon of "The Sunday Times" gave the novel a rave review, saying, ""Quichotte" is one of the cleverest, most enjoyable metafictional capers this side of postmodernism" and that "we are still watching a master at work." |
In her review for "The New York Times Book Review", author Jeanette Winterson said, "The lovely, unsentimental, heart-affirming ending of Quichotte, that "sane man," is the aslant answer to the question of what is real and what is unreal. A remembrance of what holds our human lives in some equilibrium — a way of feelin... |
Writing for "Booklist", Donna Seaman said, "Rushdie's dazzling and provocative improvisation on an essential classic has powerful resonance in this time of weaponized lies and denials." |
Nicholas Mancusi, writing for "Time", praised the novel, saying, "As he weaves the journeys of the two men nearer and nearer, sweeping up a full accounting of all the tragicomic horrors of modern American life in the process, these energies begin to collapse beautifully inward, like a dying star." |
Writing for "The Times", Robert Douglas-Fairhurst praised the novel, calling it a "welcome return to form. More than just another postmodern box of tricks, this is a novel that feeds the heart while it fills the mind." |
Jude Cook of "i" called the novel a "wildly entertaining return to form" and said of Rushdie: "Now in his eighth decade, it is clear he still possesses the linguistic energy, resourcefulness and sheer amplitude of a writer half his age." |
Ron Charles, a book critic at "The Washington Post", gave the novel a mixed review and wrote, "Rushdie's style once unfurled with hypnotic elegance, but here it's become a fire hose of brainy gags and literary allusions — tremendously clever but frequently tedious." |
Writing for the "New Statesman", lead fiction writer Leo Robson panned the novel, calling it "draining" and saying, "We're simply stuck with an author prone to lapses in tact and taste, and a lack of respect for the reader's time or powers of concentration." |
Insatiability () is a speculative fiction novel by the Polish writer, dramatist, philosopher, painter and photographer, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy). "Nienasycenie" was written in 1927 and was first published in 1930. It is Witkiewicz's third novel, considered by many to be his best. The novel consists of two ... |
The novel takes place in the future, circa 2000. Following a battle, modeled after the Bolshevik revolution, Poland is overrun by the army of the last and final Mongol conquest. The nation becomes enslaved to the Chinese leader Murti Bing. His emissaries give everyone a special pill called "DAVAMESK B 2" which takes aw... |
Witkiewicz's "Insatiability" combines chaotic action with deep philosophical and political discussion, and predicts many of the events and political outcomes of the subsequent years, specifically, the invasion of Poland, the postwar foreign domination as well as the totalitarian mind control exerted, first by the Germa... |
Czesław Miłosz frames the first chapter of his book "The Captive Mind" around a discussion of "Insatiability", specifically the "Murti-Bing pill," which allows artists to contentedly conform to the demands of the equivalent of Socialist Realism. |
The novel was translated into English in 1977 by University of Toronto professor of Polish and Russian literature Louis Iribarne and published by Northwestern University Press. |
Go Ask Alice is a 1971 diary about a teenage girl who develops a drug addiction at age 15 and runs away from home on a journey of self-destructive escapism. Attributed to "Anonymous", the book is in diary form, and was originally presented as being the edited "real diary" of the unnamed teenage protagonist. Questions a... |
Intended for a young adult audience, "Go Ask Alice" became a widely popular bestseller. It was initially praised for conveying a powerful message about the dangers of drug abuse, but more recently has been criticized as poorly written anti-drug propaganda and also as a literary hoax. Nevertheless, its popularity has en... |
The book was adapted into the 1973 television film "Go Ask Alice", starring Jamie Smith-Jackson and William Shatner. In 1976, a stage play of the same name, written by Frank Shiras and based on the book, was also published. |
The title was taken from a line in the 1967 Grace Slick-penned Jefferson Airplane song "White Rabbit" ("go ask Alice/ when she's ten feet tall"); the lyrics in turn reference scenes in Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland", in which the title character Alice eats and drinks various substances, i... |
In 1968, a 15-year-old girl begins keeping a diary, in which she records her thoughts and concerns about issues such as crushes, weight loss, sexuality, social acceptance, and relating to her parents. The dates and locations mentioned in the book place its events as occurring between 1968 and 1970 in California, Colora... |
Released from the hospital, the diarist returns home, finally free of drugs. She now gets along better with her family, makes new friends, and is romantically involved with Joel, a responsible student from her father's college. She is worried about starting school again, but feels stronger with the support of her new f... |
The epilogue states that the subject of the book died three weeks after the final entry. The diarist was found dead in her home by her parents when they returned from a movie. She died from a drug overdose, either accidental or premeditated. |
The anonymous diarist's name is never revealed in the book. In an episode where the diarist describes having sex with a drug dealer, she quotes an onlooker's remark indicating that her name may be Carla. Although a girl named Alice appears very briefly in the book, she is not the diarist, but a fellow runaway whom the ... |
Despite the lack of any evidence in the book that the diarist's name is Alice, the covers of various editions have suggested that her name is Alice by including blurb text such as "This is Alice's true story" and "You can't ask Alice anything anymore. But you can do something—read her diary." Reviewers and commentators... |
In the 1973 television film based on the book, the protagonist played by Jamie Smith-Jackson is named "Alice". The protagonist is also named "Alice Aberdeen" in the 1976 stage play adaptation. |
The manuscript that later became "Go Ask Alice" was initially prepared for publication by Beatrice Sparks, a Mormon therapist and youth counselor then in her early 50s, who had previously done various forms of writing. Sparks had reportedly noted that the general public at that time lacked knowledge about youth drug ab... |
With the help of Art Linkletter, a popular talk show host for whom Sparks had worked as a ghostwriter, the manuscript was passed on to Linkletter's literary agent, who sold it to Prentice Hall. Linkletter, who had become a prominent anti-drug crusader after the 1969 suicide of his daughter Diane, also helped publicize ... |
Upon its 1971 publication, "Go Ask Alice" quickly became a publishing sensation and an international bestseller, being translated into 16 languages. Its success has been attributed to the timing of its publication at the height of the psychedelic era, when the negative effects of drug use were becoming a public concern... |
Libraries had difficulty obtaining and keeping enough copies of the book on the shelves to meet demand. The 1973 television film based on the book heightened reader interest, and librarians reported having to order additional copies of the book each time the film was broadcast. |
By 1975, more than three million copies of the book had reportedly been sold, and by 1979 the paperback edition had been reprinted 43 times. The book remained continuously in print over the ensuing decades, with reported sales of over four million copies by 1998, and over five million copies by 2009. The actual number ... |
Years after its publication, "Go Ask Alice" continued to receive some good reviews, often in the context of defending the book against censors (see Censorship). In a 1995 "Village Voice" column for Banned Books Week, Nat Hentoff described it as "an extraordinarily powerful account of what it's actually like to get hook... |
Although school boards and committees reached varying conclusions about whether "Go Ask Alice" had literary value, educators generally viewed it as a strong cautionary warning against drug use. It was recommended to parents and assigned or distributed in some schools as an anti-drug teaching tool. However, some adults ... |
Although "Go Ask Alice" has been credited to an anonymous author since its publication, and was originally promoted as the real, albeit edited, diary of a real teenage girl, over time the book has come to be regarded by researchers as a fake memoir written by Beatrice Sparks, possibly with the help of one or more co-au... |
"Go Ask Alice" was originally published by Prentice Hall in 1971 as the work of an unnamed author "Anonymous". The original edition contained a note signed by "The Editors" that included the statements, ""Go Ask Alice" is based on the actual diary of a fifteen-year-old drug user...Names, dates, places and certain event... |
Not long after "Go Ask Alice"s publication, Beatrice Sparks began making public appearances presenting herself as the book's editor. (Ellen Roberts, who in the early 1970s was an editor at Prentice Hall, was also credited at that time with having edited the book; a later source refers to Roberts as having "consulted" o... |
Urban folklore expert Barbara Mikkelson of snopes.com has written that even before the authorship revelations, ample evidence indicated that "Go Ask Alice" was not an actual diary. According to Mikkelson, the writing style and content—including a lengthy description of an LSD trip but relatively little about "the loss ... |
In hindsight, commentators have suggested various motivations for the publishers to present "Go Ask Alice" as the work of an anonymous deceased teenager, such as avoiding literary criticism, lending validity to an otherwise improbable story, and stimulating young readers' interest by having the book's anti-drug advice ... |
In a 1998 "New York Times" book review, Mark Oppenheimer suggested that "Go Ask Alice" had at least one author besides Sparks. He identified Linda Glovach, an author of young-adult novels, as "one of the 'preparers'—let's call them forgers—of "Go Ask Alice"", although he did not give his source for this claim. "Publish... |
Treatment of book as fiction and non-fiction. |
Following Sparks' statements that she had added fictional elements to "Go Ask Alice", the book was classified by its publishers as fiction (and remains so classified as of 2016) and a disclaimer was added to the copyright page: "This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real l... |
Despite the classification and the disclaimer, "Go Ask Alice" has frequently been taught as non-fiction in schools and sold as non-fiction in bookstores. The publishers also continued to suggest that the book was true by including the "Editors' Note" stating that the book was based on an actual diary, and listing the a... |
"Go Ask Alice" has been a frequent target of censorship challenges due to its inclusion of profanity and references to runaways, drugs, sex and rape. Alleen Pace Nilsen wrote that in 1973, "Go Ask Alice" was ""the" book that teens wanted to read and that adults wanted to censor" and that the censors "felt the book did ... |
Some challenges resulted in the removal of the book from libraries, or in parental permission being required for a student to check the book out of a library. According to "The New York Times", in the 1970s it became common practice for school libraries to keep "Go Ask Alice" off library shelves and make it available t... |
Decades after its original publication, "Go Ask Alice" became one of the most challenged books of the 1990s and 2000s. On the American Library Association (ALA) list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of the 1990s, "Go Ask Alice" was ranked at number 25; on the ALA list compiled for the 2000s, it rose to posit... |
The likely authoring of the book by one or more adults rather than by an unnamed teenage girl has not been an issue in censorship disputes. Nilsen and others have criticized this on the basis that the dishonesty of presenting a probable fake memoir to young readers as real should raise greater concerns than the content... |
The ABC television network broadcast a made-for-television movie, "Go Ask Alice", based on the book. It starred Jamie Smith-Jackson, William Shatner, Ruth Roman, Wendell Burton, Julie Adams, and Andy Griffith. Also among the cast were Robert Carradine, Mackenzie Phillips, and Charles Martin Smith. The film was promoted... |
The film was first aired as the "ABC Movie of the Week" on January 24, 1973. It was subsequently rebroadcast on October 24, 1973 and the network also made screening copies available to school, church and civic groups upon request. The film drew generally good reviews (with one critic calling it "the finest anti-drug dr... |
In 1976, a stage play version of the book, adapted by Frank Shiras, was published by The Dramatic Publishing Company. The play has been produced by various high school and community theatre groups. |
Stand-up comedian Paul F. Tompkins' 2009 comedy album "Freak Wharf" contains a track titled "Go Ask Alice" in which he derides the book as "the phoniest of balonies" and jokingly suggests it was authored by the writing staff of the police drama series "Dragnet". The album title comes from a passage in the book in which... |
The Midnight Line is a novel by British writer Lee Child. This is the twenty-second book in the Jack Reacher series. The book was released on 7 November 2017. The plot finds Reacher once again in the Midwest, this time being thrust into an investigation involving the illegal opioid trade, the pharmaceutical companies t... |
After spending the night with a woman named Michelle Chang (from "Make Me"), Jack Reacher is traveling through Wisconsin when he happens to stop at a pawnshop selling an unusual item: a 2005 West Point class ring. Unwilling to accept that such a priceless thing would be willingly sold, Jack suspects it to be stolen and... |
In Rapid City, Reacher encounters two other people with an interest in Scorpio: Gloria Nakamura, a detective who has tried and failed for years to find incriminating evidence of Scorpio's criminal enterprise, and Terrence Bramall, a private investigator hired by Tiffany Jane Mackenzie, a woman searching for her missing... |
Reacher travels to Mule Crossing, a rural town in Wyoming, where Porterfield last lived. A local shopkeep reveals that Sy has been dead for well over a year, supposedly killed by a wild bear. Bramall runs into Reacher at Billy's house, and the two agree to partner up, at least temporarily. They search Sy's house, and f... |
As Rose will likely die without a new supply of opioids, Reacher, Bramall, and Mackenzie steal what she needs from Stackley's suppliers, and Reacher cuts a deal with Noble to protect Rose from having to testify against the dealers on the DEA's behalf. Nakamura attempts to arrest Scorpio, who she realizes is the head of... |
Reacher returns Rose's ring to her, and she promises to get clean before she, Bramall, and Mackenzie drive off. Reacher then hitches another ride out of South Dakota, heading towards Kansas. |
Cherry is a 2018 debut novel by American author Nico Walker. It concerns an unnamed narrator's time in college, as a soldier during the War in Iraq, and life as a drug addict and bank robber after returning from the war during the midst of the American opioid epidemic. It was published by Alfred A. Knopf on August 14, ... |
The book is an example of autofiction, as the author was a military veteran who struggled with drug addiction and robbed banks, but there are several differences between Walker's real-life actions and the book's contents. |
The unnamed narrator, a young man from Cleveland, drops out of college and enlists in the United States Army as a medic during the Iraq War. Suffering from PTSD, the narrator starts self-medicating with opiates while deployed and continues once back home. His opioid use quickly becomes a devastating addiction that hurt... |
Walker had been in a federal prison in Ashland, Kentucky, for bank robbery since 2013, and wrote the book on a typewriter over the course of several years. He was released from prison early, in October 2019. |
Janet Hansen, a designer at Alfred Knopf, created the book cover, which features a skull originally by Swedish graphic designer Daniel Bjugård. Walker’s literary agent dismissed an earlier version as it "[looked] like it should be sold in Hot Topic". |
The book was published to positive reviews and "near-universal praise" as per the review aggregator website Book Marks and Vulture.com, respectively. Book Marks reported that 54% of critics gave the book a "rave" review, whilst 31% of the critics expressed "positive" impressions, based on a sample of 13 reviews. |
"Cherry" debuted at number 14 on "The New York Times" bestseller list. |
The book and the film adaptation have been criticized for presenting the bank robber sympathetically, while overlooking the innocent victims of the crime, such as the Black bank teller. |
Porno is a novel published in 2002 by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, the sequel to "Trainspotting". |
The book describes the characters of "Trainspotting" ten years after the events of the earlier book, as their paths cross again, this time with the pornography business as the backdrop rather than heroin use (although numerous drugs, particularly cocaine are mentioned throughout). A number of characters from "Glue" mak... |
This sequel picks up ideas of the film adaptation of "Trainspotting". One example is the fact that "Spud" has received his share of the drug money, which is shown in the film, but only alluded to in the book. |
The novel is divided into three sections, each of which comprises chapters with different narrators. Unlike "Trainspotting" which had more narrational diversity, "Porno" is reduced to just five narrators: Sick Boy, Renton, Spud, Begbie and Nikki. Another difference from the format of "Trainspotting" is that each charac... |
Each narrator is associated with a distinctive prose style. Renton, Sick Boy, and Nikki's chapters are written almost entirely in "standard" English while Begbie and Spud's chapters are in Scots. For example, in Chapter 25, Spud narrates, "So ah'm downcast git intae the library, thinkin tae masel" ("So I'm downcast whe... |
Welsh picks up upon ways in which Edinburgh has changed. |
Danny Boyle stated his wish to make a sequel to "Trainspotting" based on "Porno" which takes place nine years later. He was reportedly waiting until the original actors themselves age visibly enough to portray the same characters, ravaged by time; Boyle joked that the natural vanity of actors would make it a long wait. |
On 10 September 2009, Robert Carlyle revealed that Boyle was "edging closer" to making "Porno". Carlyle, who played Begbie in the film, said he would "jump through hoops of fire backwards" for the filmmaker and would "do "Porno" tomorrow for nothing." Ewan McGregor, who played anti-hero Renton, expressed his reluctance... |
In 2013 Boyle said that any sequel to "Trainspotting" would be loosely based on "Porno". On 6 May 2014, Welsh confirmed that he had spent a week with Boyle, Andrew Macdonald and the creative team behind "Trainspotting" to discuss the sequel. Welsh stated that the meeting was in order to "explore the story and script id... |
On 17 November 2014, Welsh revealed that McGregor and Boyle had resolved their differences and had held meetings about the film, saying "I know Danny and Ewan are back in touch with each other again. There are others in the cast who’ve had a rocky road, but now also reconciled. With the "Trainspotting" sequel the atten... |
Filming on a sequel to "Trainspotting" began in May 2016, with all the major cast members reprising their roles and Danny Boyle directing. It was released on 27 January 2017. |
Miss MacIntosh, My Darling is a novel by Marguerite Young. She has described it as "an exploration of the illusions, hallucinations, errors of judgment in individual lives, the central scene of the novel being an opium addict's paradise." |
The novel is one of the longest ever written. |
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