Crome Yellow, Version 2
Aldous Huxley
Read by Expatriate
Fascinating and brilliant at many levels, Huxley's spoof of Lady Ottoline Morrell's famous bohemian gatherings is difficult to categorize. The ironic tone and caricaturish rendering of some characters makes it partly entertaining satire, but intertwined with the irony are a very human love story and much poignant social commentary. Denis Stone (Huxley himself) is a young poet hopelessly enamored of the languid Anne Wimbush, who comes to Priscilla Wimbush's Crome estate for several weeks of intellectual and artistic escape. Along the way of his love affair, he engages in or eavesdrops upon conversations with other guests about the War, about eschatology, about future society, about Sex, about Art, about Love. Several of these dialogues directly foreshadow themes of Huxley's later dystopian masterpiece, Brave New World. Others show a tragic prescience of another great European war on its way, an awareness that future tragedy might attempt to complete the unfinished business of the recent Great War. Huxley's first novel, Crome Yellow is well worth reading in its own right, while containing embryonic forms of so much of Huxley's later intellectual themes. - Summary by Expatriate (6 hr 4 min)
Chapters
Chapter 01 | 7:03 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 02 | 12:53 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 03 | 11:49 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 04 | 11:11 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 05 | 8:58 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 06 | 15:44 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 07 | 9:38 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 08 | 4:32 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 09 | 18:14 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 10 | 6:41 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 11 | 12:26 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 12 | 11:35 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 13 | 32:54 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 14 | 8:10 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 15 | 7:28 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 16 | 6:21 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 17 | 18:40 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 18 | 8:08 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 19 | 31:38 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 20 | 10:41 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 21 | 7:22 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 22 | 17:49 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 23 | 5:37 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 24 | 12:19 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 25 | 11:46 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 26 | 6:05 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 27 | 18:48 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 28 | 10:16 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 29 | 10:41 | Read by Expatriate |
Chapter 30 | 9:09 | Read by Expatriate |
Reviews
adam
While simple in plot and apparently shallow at times, this was also bewilderingly deep. It felt as though seen from the eyes of a young man but he was looking at a swirling world of complex events within a swirling and complex cosmos. It was confounding in a way that leaves one reflecting on what it is to be young and also to try to grasp at this world, it's reality, where it is all going, and ones use in it. While not on the level of his more popular, later works, this is an intriguing and challenging voyage into the world and life, set in a funny and satirical house party.
water 5 hours
Tom Williams
well read but dumb plot