High School and Huxley

I read constantly as a young boy and all the way through adolescence - encyclopedias, fiction, even a bit of poetry - I was an avid writer as well.  I spent a good deal of time in the middle school library, checking out books of ghost stories, historical fiction, etc.

Yet, teenagehood being what it often is, I lost interest in reading and mired in video games (not that video games are bad, I love them still) and depression - though I still continued to write.  I could not, at the time nor later in life, understand the idea that being a teenager was meant to be the best period in one's life.  The notion still riles me and engenders in me nothing but disdain for its falseness.

A combination of neurological and situational maladies contributed to my deep melancholia and I still have that melancholy disposition to this day, though it is more now a permanent piece of my personality than an impediment to general happiness.


My teenage years being what they were, my list of "Read" books on Goodreads.com consists mainly of books I've read since freshman year of high school and a small smattering of books I remember distinctly from when I was a child. 

My reluctance to read during my teenage years was due in large part to the intense apathy that comes with depression.

My depression morphed into a sort of war of attrition which I waged against myself.  I intentionally sabotaged my academic career throughout high school, purposefully earning Ds in classes where I should have handily earned As.  This inner antagonism occurred even in English classes, the one subject I should have enjoyed.

During my senior year I took English with Mrs. Chappell.  I had taken English with her once before during my Sophomore year in which I read All Quiet on the Western Front.  I remember little else of the literature from that year, but I do remember the impression which Remarque's anti-war malaise made upon me.

If I recall correctly, I believe that Mrs. Chappell's class was my second to last of the day, immediately following lunch.  I never felt unsafe in high school but I most certainly always felt myself to be teetering on some wavering ground.  I had no friends (this by choice) and so I spent much of my time during lunch, between classes, or before and after school, entirely by myself.  Still, in Mrs. Chappell's class, as had been the case during my Sophomore year, I felt more grounded than I had anywhere else on campus.

I remember when we began reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.  In retrospect the selection of that novel had to have been a bold one.  It's easy to envision the book being challenged on any number of points, especially in the small, southern seaside town where I attended school.

I was immediately impressed by the novel, though, and the dystopian-by-consent society which it portrayed.  Huxley's world was one of voluntary enslavement not through the use of coercion but of pleasure.  A lack of monogamy with an emphasis on consumerism, mindless entertainment, and drugs, all were a part of the lives of the citizens of the novel. 

I remember immediately rooting for the bland main character - thinking that somehow he would take it upon himself to be the first to stand up and say no to the unquestioning, unfeeling nature of the world around him.  I was sorely mistaken.

In regard to the novel I was sorely mistaken about quite a number of plot points.  This for some reason jarred me at the time.  I did not think that I was necessarily excellent at predicting the movement of fiction but I was certain about several of my notions pertaining to the novel. All failed.

I have not re-read Brave New World since my senior year of high school.  Part of me doesn't want to do so because I'm afraid I would not be so nearly impressed as I was at the time.  Rarely is anything ever as good as we remember it to be.  I did recommend the book to my wife and she read it.  

I think that reading Brave New World that year remains the key turning point in my transition from being a teenager to being an adult (or at least giving me the idea to make the attempt).  The book was not full of the most inspiring prose nor was it particularly emotionally riveting but, in some way, it managed to appear that way to me and to be even more.  It filled me with the notion that I had created my own dystopia within my personality and, though it took me many more years to completely break free of that device, I doubt it would have happened with Mrs. Chappell's English class.

Huxley's novel was the reason that, during my senior year of college, I decided to read Island - one of his lesser known books and, I think, far more enjoyable and profound than Brave New World (certainly his most famous work).

I think that Island inspired within me the first inklings of my now ardent pacifism (though I joined the Army for a brief period after college: see war of attrition above) and possibly even caused me to break my final links with the religion in which I had been raised and to move myself into the world, for the first time, without any anger and without the fear of doubt, or of Heaven and Hell.  This is not to say that religion is not appropriate - it simply was not and is not appropriate for me.

The ultimate aim of all of this rambling is to say that Mrs. Chappell's class is the reason that I came back to reading, and have come back to it so fully.  I cannot now imagine the course of my adult life without having read Voltaire, Paine, Spinoza, Sagan, Saramago, Lowell, Hardy, and others.

Since my senior year of high school I have graduated college, married, joined the Army (stupid idea to begin with/got booted out for being a neurological mess, thank goodness), taught high school English for three years, got laid off, and now have a beautiful eight-month-old son.  During all of that time I have been reading.

I owe that to Mrs. Chappell.