Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley

Eyeless in Gaza covers the life of Anthony Beavis, from the death of his mother in 1902 when he is 11, until 1935 when he is 44. It is a story of finding courage, both physical and moral courage, and achieving purpose and meaning in life.

The book focuses on selective periods of the protagonist's life: the year of his mother's death, a year while he is attending university and having an affair with an older woman, a year in his mid-30s when he is involved in his career as a sociologist and writer, a year in his early 40s when he is having an affair with the daughter of the older woman, and finally a year of self-discovery.

Until the last pages of the book, we see Beavis behaving badly: he bullies classmates and betrays friends in order to impress others; he takes pride in his intellectual superiority and despises those who fail to meet his standards; he rejects love in favor of sensuality; he is cynical and arrogant. Then he meets a man who changes everything for him (rather suddenly, and almost unbelievably).

All of this seems fairly straightforward, but Huxley chose to structure the book with all the years mixed together: each of the 54 chapters is from a different year, and they are not in order. Thus, the book begins in 1933, then it's 1934, then it's 1933 again, then it's 1902, then it's 1926, then it's 1902 again, and so on. This means the reader will probably spend some time turning back in the book to locate the narrative thread. I can't understand exactly why Huxley did this, except possibly to place the two climactic events close together at the end of the book. It seems to me that this could have been done with the use of the flashback.

The writing is very good, and the plot is interesting. The structure makes it time-consuming to read, but I have the time. The ending is rather preachy, expounding on Huxley's life-views, which were influenced by humanism, Buddhism, and pacifism.

I'm glad I read this, and I might even read it again, if only to try to understand why Huxley structured it the way he did.

Favorite quote: (about allegiance to an economic system rather than to a life-philosophy) "Individuals must murder one another, because the interests of the Nation demand it; must be educated to think of ends and disregard means, because the school-masters are there and don't know of any other method; must live in towns, must have leisure to read the newspapers and go to the movies, must be encouraged to buy things they don't need, because the industrial system exists and has to be kept going; must be coerced and enslaved, because otherwise they might think for themselves and give trouble to their rulers."