Editing Point Counter Point (section)

==Title and construction==

The novel's title is a reference to the flow of arguments in a debate,<ref name=":1" /> and a series of these exchanges tell the story.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.editoreric.com/greatlit/books/Point-Counter-Point.html |title=Point Counter Point - The Greatest Literature of All Time |website=www.editoreric.com |access-date=2019-12-11}}</ref> Instead of a single central plot, there are a number of interlinked story lines and recurring themes (as in musical "[[counterpoint]]").<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Watt |first=Donald |date=1977 |journal=Studies in the Novel |volume=9 |issue=4 |pages=509–517 |issn=0039-3827 |jstor=29531894 |title=The Fugal Construction of "point Counter Point"}}</ref> As a [[roman à clef]]''','''<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.britannica.com/art/novel |title=Novel - Roman à clef |website=Encyclopedia Britannica |access-date=2019-12-11}}</ref> many of the characters are based on real people, most of whom Huxley knew personally, such as [[D. H. Lawrence]], [[Katherine Mansfield]], [[Nancy Cunard]], and [[John Middleton Murry]], and Huxley is depicted as the novel's novelist, Philip Quarles.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.dalkeyarchive.com/product/point-counter-point/ |title=Point Counter Point {{!}} Dalkey Archive Press |access-date=2019-12-11}}</ref> Huxley described the structure of Point Counter Point within the novel itself, in a stream of consciousness musing of Quarles:

{{blockquote|The musicalization of fiction.  Not in the symbolist way, by subordinating sense to sound. . . . But on a large scale, in the construction.  Meditate on Beethoven.  The changes of moods, the abrupt transitions . . . More interesting still, the modulations, not merely from one key to another, but from mood to mood.  A theme is stated, then developed, pushed out of shape, imperceptibly deformed, until, though still recognizably the same, it has become quite different. . . . Get this into a novel.  How?  The abrupt transitions are easy enough.  All you need is a sufficiency of characters and parallel, contrapuntal plots.   . . . You alternate the theme.  More interesting, the modulations and variations are also more difficult.  A novelist modulates by reduplicating situations and characters. He shows several people falling in love, or dying, or praying in different ways -- dissimilars solving the same problem.  Or, vice versa, similar people confronted with dissimilar problems.  In this way you can modulate through all the aspects of your theme, you can write variations in any number of different moods.  Another way: The novelist can assume the god-like creative privilege and simply elect to consider the events in the story in their various aspects -- emotional, scientific, religious, metaphysical, etc.  He will modulate from one to the other -- as, from the aesthetic to the physico-chemical aspect of things, from the religious to the physiological or financial. . . . Put a novelist in the novel.  He justifies aesthetic generalizations, which may be interesting -- at least to me. He also justifies experiment.  Specimens of his work may illustrate other possible or impossible ways of telling a story."<ref>Huxley, Point Counter Point, Harper's Perrenial Classic, chapter XXII, page 301 (1965)</ref> }}