Huxley in Hollywood

"Pleasure is strictly finite and any attempt to extend its boundaries results in its transformation into Pain."

Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

"After Many a Summer Dies the Swan" by Aldous Huxley

Nick Harvill Libraries Capsule Review

Huxley, Aldous. After Many a Summer Dies the Swan 

In this strange but fascinating novel, Huxley imagines a brave new Hollywood in which a mogul and his mistress (William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies?) begin a well-financed quest for eternal youth. There is a shocking and macabre denouement, but not before Huxley teases with a hilarious caricature of boomtown Los Angeles. Delving into Existentialism, he theorizes that it is only the ego craving immortality. But what if the ego is attached not to the soul but to the body? Then the quest for life after death becomes an impossibility, a cruel joke.