Читать книгу The Primal Urge - Brian Aldiss - Страница 6

This light-hearted novel has a juicy futuristic edge: someone has invented an electronic device that indicates if the person you are looking at – or talking to – is sexually attracted to you. If attraction is detected, an ER (Emotional Register) – like a coin on one’s forehead – flares with a pinkish glow.

And then? Well, the next move is up to you …

Real figures from the twentieth century feature heavily in The Primal Urge: Rock Hudson, Dr Kinsey, Bertrand Russell, Patience Strong, Eric Linklater, Gaudi and, most importantly, Aldous Huxley are referenced in the narrative. Huxley was a writer I particularly admired; in The Primal Urge I have him speak up for the ERs. I wrote to him in California, asking his permission to include a quote, and to my absolute delight received a friendly letter of consent in return.

Think of it. A real letter from Aldous Huxley!

The least I could do, in my estimation, was to offer him a copy of the finished book. A tactful second letter from him pleaded partial blindness …

By the late fifties, when I began to formulate the idea for the book, I was on the way to becoming an established writer. I had been appointed Literary Editor of the Oxford Mail. I had become rather a man-about-town and was enjoying life. London, with parts still ruinous from the air raids of WW2, was heaving itself back to various fresh pleasures. Khaki was no longer the fashion.

The text of The Primal Urge reflects that enjoyment. Elegant and prankish, it says things like, ‘Now they were together again, the evening was riding on their shoulders once more like a tame raven.’ It puts its protagonist in a swimming pool with the woman he calls Rangy: ‘Her face and the reflections of her face seemed to palpitate before him like butterflies in a cupboard.’ The Canadian physiotherapist – if indeed that is what he is – Croolter, turns out to have the full name of Croolter B. Kind.

The plot drifts pleasantly along, ending with the lovers in London, arm in arm, emerging into the air of the capital, evening-calm, gasoline-sweet …

The British version of The Primal Urge appeared in 1961. I had some trouble in getting it published; when it was accepted, the British publisher asked, ‘Couldn’t you clean it up a little?’ The American publisher, on the other hand, was asking me to make it a bit dirtier …

Nowadays, I doubt such questions would arise. The mores of 1961 have more or less sunk below the sexual waterline. Waterlines themselves have also sunk.

Brian Aldiss

Oxford, 2012