Aldous Huxley, Telepathy and the Decentring of Personality in the Novel of Ideas

This chapter sees Huxley’s firm belief in telepathy as the spur for innovation in his literature. In part thanks to a friendship with J. B. Rhine, whose research at Duke University convinced a wide audience that telepathic phenomena were real, Huxley comes to doubt the limits of the self. The chapter links a process of ‘decentration’ Huxley suggests can assist telepathic transmission with a decentration in Huxley’s literary rendering of personality. As the integral, individuated character is seen as false by Huxley, the development of ideas replaces the development of the individual as the structuring force in Huxley’s fiction. As such, where Huxley’s novel of ideas has typically been seen to stem from an inattention to human character, they can instead be seen to reproduce the forces Huxley deems to shape character. The chapter also considers other novelists of ideas in this light, including Iris Murdoch and A. S. Byatt.