Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley
This is a ‘novel of ideas’ decked out with the facile erudition of pre-war Oxbridge and consequently containing a good many Latin, French and Italian quotations as well as copious references to artists as disparate as Domenichino and Wyndham Lewis, though the story, concerning the unlikely invention of inflatable trousers, gets submerged under the interaction of characters seeking distraction in the febrile atmosphere of post-war London in the 1920s.
The writing is rather precious by today’s standards but there are some genuine laughs as the author highlights some of the absurdities of modern life, including that of advertising.
Here’s Mr Boldero the financial backer of the inflatable trousers extolling the virtues of advertising to the inventor: "We must pull the string of snobbery and shame; it's essential. We must find our methods for bringing the weight of public opinion to bear mockingly on those who do not wear our trousers," Mr Boldero repeated emphatically. “We might even find a way of invoking patriotism to our aid. “ English trousers filled with English air for Englishmen.”
The author’s comments on architecture couldn’t be truer: “It has always struck me as very curious,” Gumbril Senior went on, “ that people are so little affected by the vile and discordant architecture around them.
Suppose, now, that all these brass band’s of unemployed ex-soldiers that blow so mournfully at all street corners were suddenly to play nothing but a series of senseless and devilish discords -- why, the first policeman would move them on, and the second would put them under arrest, and passers-by would try to lynch them on their way to the police station.
There would be a real spontaneous outcry of indignation. But when at those same street corners the contractors run up enormous palaces of steel and stone that are every bit as stupid and ignoble and inharmonious as ten brass bandsmen each playing a different tune in a different key, there is no outcry.
The police don’t arrest the architect; the passing pedestrians don’t throw stones at the workmen. They don’t notice that anything’s wrong. It’s odd,’ said Gumbril Senior. “ It’s very odd.”
The style of the novel is very much in the vein of Evelyn Waugh, although Waugh’s stories are more characterful and, on the whole, better written.
