This part of Huxley's brave new world has come to pass
Daily Breeze: September 17, 2010 by Adell Shay
My husband, Jay, has been reading to me again. He's been doing that since his inaugural visit, me on the couch with the Hong Kong flu, him reading Edgar Allan Poe as I blew my nose in approval.
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Lately, he has been reading Aldous Huxley's essays.
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That's how he came to read me "Censorship and Spoken Literature," from "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and other essays."
In the piece, Huxley discusses how economic censorship is enforced - however unintentionally and blindly - in democratic countries by the steady rise in the cost of producing books, plays and films, and the unwillingness of publishers, studios, etc. to sponsor projects unless they promise commercial success. The essay, written in 1954, described a theme that has, like most of Huxley's premises, become more glaringly true over time.
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He notes:
"Listen to the reading aloud ...; you will find yourself getting more out of it than you got when you read it to yourself - particularly if you were compelled to read it under the threat of not getting a credit. Printed, the Hundred Great Books are apt to remain unopened on the library shelves. Recorded they can be listened to painlessly - at meals, while washing up in bed on Sunday morning."
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Huxley ends the essay with the following recommendations:
1. "Make the best of mankind's literature of wisdom available on cheap, slow-playing records."
2. "Do the same, in each of the principal languages, for the best poetry written in that language. Also, perhaps, for a few of the best novels, plays, biographies and memoirs."
3. "Encourage manufacturers to turn out phonographs equipped to play these recordings and at the same time arrange for (low-cost) distribution.
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Aldous Huxley's fondest desire has been realized. READ MORE !
Brave new world - Read by Michael York
Aldous Huxley
Audio Partners, 2003
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