After Many a Summer
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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After Many a Summer (1939) is a novel by Aldous Huxley that tells the story of a Hollywood millionaire who fears his impending death; it was published in the USA as After Many a Summer Dies the Swan. This satire raises philosophical and social issues, some of which would later take the forefront in Huxley's final novel Island. The title is taken from Tennyson's poem Tithonus, about a figure in Greek mythology to whom Aurora, the goddess of dawn, gave eternal life but not eternal youth. The book was awarded the 1939 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.
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Plot summary
The action revolves around a few characters brought together by a Hollywood millionaire, Jo Stoyte. Each character represents a different attitude toward life. Stoyte, in his sixties and conscious of his mortality, finds himself in deep contemplation of life. Enlightenment eludes him, though, as he is ruled by his fears and cravings. Stoyte hires Dr Obispo and his assistant Peter to research the secrets to long life in carp, crocodiles, and parrots. Jeremy, an English archivist and literature expert, is brought in to archive a rare collection of books. Jeremy's presence highlights Stoyte's shallow attitude toward the precious works of art that he affords himself. Other characters are Virginia, Stoyte's young mistress; and Mr Propter, a professor who lives on a neighboring estate. Mr Propter believes:
...every individual is called on to display not only unsleeping good will but also unsleeping intelligence. And this is not all. For, if individuality is not absolute, if personalities are illusory figments of a self-will disastrously blind to the reality of a more-than-personal consciousness. So that even intelligence is not sufficient as an adjunct to good will; there must also be the recollection which seeks to transform and transcend intelligence.
This is essentially Huxley's own position. Though other characters achieve conventional success, even happiness, only Mr Propter does so without upsetting anyone or creating evil.
Dr Obispo places great faith in science and medicine as saviours of humankind. He sees everyone as a stepping stone to science, the greater good, and thus only derives happiness at others' expense. According to Propter's philosophy, he is trapped in ego-based "human" behaviour that prevents him from reaching enlightenment. Obispo seduces Virginia in a characteristically egotistical way. She is unable to resist him despite her loyalty to Stoyte. When she is found out by Stoyte, he wants to kill Obispo but accidentally kills Peter (whose thoughts and morals had slowly started to expand under Propter's tutelage) instead. Obispo covers up the act for money and continued research support. This takes him, along with Virginia and Stoyte, to Europe, where they find an immortal human, who now resembles an ape. Stoyte cannot grasp that transcendence or goodness should be one's ultimate goal, rather than prevention of death, and expresses his wish to undergo treatment so that he too will live forever.
Characters
- Jeremy
- Mr. Propter
- Peter
- Dr. Obispo
- Jo Stoyte
- Virginia
Major themes
These characters expose questions and answers depicting their various life philosophies until the climax in a Socratic method.
The story works scientific knowledge into a more traditional form of narrative. The evolutionary principle of neoteny (a phenomenon of adult retention of juvenile-like morphology or behaviour) has been invoked to explain the origin of human characteristics from ape ancestors. The storyline suggests that if we lived longer, we would continue to develop along the path of an ape and eventually become ape-like.
Huxley came from a well-known family of biologists, and his grasp of the principle of neoteny seems to reflect this influence. The story has been interpreted Template:Fact as the British Huxley's contemptuous nod to the Hearstian reality of the United States in the early part of the twentieth century: Jo Stoyte is an allegory for William Randolph Hearst by his acquisitions of art, etc., and living in an opulent estate -- similar to Hearst Castle -- with Virginia, who can be taken as a parody of Marion Davies. Orson Welles may have been inspired by this novel -- after RKO Radio Pictures rejected Welles's two earlier ideas for scripts -- to write the screenplay for Citizen Kane with Herman Mankiewicz, although their screenplay is very different from the novel.
References
- Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale (2004)
Dawkins sheds an illuminating light upon the story in 'The Axolotl's Tale', by referring to Aldous Huxley's older brother, the biologist Julian Sorell Huxley. Julian Huxley made a name for himself with a biological experiment involving an axolotl. The experiment had originally been done by Vilém Laufberger in Germany, but this fact was unknown to Julian Huxley at the time. The experiment involves an axolotl, an amphibian expressing neoteny. By injecting hormones the axolotl grows into a fully adult salamander of an unknown species. Apparently, evolution of the creature had blocked growth beyond the tadpole stage, but further growth was activated by the injected hormone.
When Dr Obispo finally finds the Fifth Earl of Gonister again in Europe, still alive at 200, the Earl has fully matured from the juvenile ape that man really is. Apparently, Huxley is referring to man as an immature, not fully grown ape.
- The Book is mentioned in the novella and film A Single Man
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
- NBC University Theater radio adaptation December 12, 1948, starring Paul Henry and Alan Hale, Sr., with intermission commentary by Norman Cousins
- After Many a Summer (UK, 1967) (TV)
- In early 2000 the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation commissioned a 35-minute dance for the White Oak Dance Project called After Many a Summer Dies the Swan after Huxley's novel
- Book title appeared in the movie "A Single Man (2009)" when George Falconer (Colin Firth) also took an empty pistol and some notes alongside in his briefcase.
Release details
- UK, Chatto and Windus, 1939, hardback (first edition)
- USA, Harper and Row, 1939, hardback, originally as After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
