Crome Yellow

This is a social satire of the most relaxed sort. The blend of intelligent humour, sadness, fantasy and farce established Huxley’s reputation as a leading spokesman and critic of the brittle world of the 1920s.

On vacation from school, Denis goes to stay at Crome, an English country house inhabited by several of Huxley’s most outlandish characters–from Mr. Barbecue-Smith, who writes 1,500 publishable words an hour by “getting in touch” with his “subconscious,” to Henry Wimbush, who is obsessed with writing the definitive “History of Crome.” Denis’s stay proves to be a disaster amid his weak attempts to attract the girl of his dreams and the ridicule he endures regarding his plan to write a novel about love and art. Lambasting the post-Victorian standards of morality, Crome Yellow is a witty masterpiece that, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words, “is too ironic to be called satire and too scornful to be called irony.”