Crome Yellow, Version 2


Read by Expatriate

(4.4 stars; 16 reviews)

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


(4 stars)

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


(3 stars)

well read but dumb plot