Author Description

Best-selling author Aldous Huxley's American years have been a period literary historians discounted. His reputation suffered after his exile to California, which he undertook partly for the sake of his failing sight, partly out of disappointment with the European peace movement, and partly in search of new spiritual direction. His writing and life underwent many transformations, and many crucial unanswered questions remained about his sojourn: Were the writings of the American years as self-indulgent as critics claimed? What sort of screenwriter was he: did this nearly blind writer ever learn the craft of scriptwriting? How did the cinematic conventions influence his own art? How and why did he become involved with mysticism and vision-inducing drugs? Did he ever reach that unitary mystical experience he sought throughout the last decades of his life? Prominent oral historian and biographer David Dunaway responds to these questions in this new revised edition, using interviews with co-workers, family and friends, and an analysis of Huxley's FBI files and little-known scripts for Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice.