Robert Briggs (character)
Encyclopedia
Robert "Bob" Briggs is a fictional screenwriter living in 1940s Hollywood. His one appearance to date is in Aldous Huxley
's dystopia
n satire Ape and Essence
.
Briggs is famous for his fascinating smile.
Hunt Stromberg
, William Goetz
, Kenneth Macgowan
and Orson Welles
, as well as a life of Mme. Curie
for Sidney Franklin
). He has just been denied a raise, a disappointment with repercussions for his love life. The industry is tightening its belt; Hollywood mogul Schmuel Gelbfisz
has announced to the press that those under him may well see their salaries reduced by half.
He has no automobile of his own, but uses his wife Miriam's Buick
convertible
.
Briggs is—or was—serious about art; he deplores popular escapism as an abuse of it. He knows exactly how many tens of millions of dollars were raked in by Amanda, a vapid musical love story, three winters previously—during the Ardennes Offensive
.
In early 1946 he began scripting a life of Catherine of Siena
, who in 1366 had mystically married Jesus. Having to sex it up, he elaborated a character from a suitor mentioned in her letters. His script has been reworked three times by others before getting to production, but the lover-character remains; Lublin hopes to get Humphrey Bogart
for the part (an unlikely prospect, as 1948 will see him starring in several films by John Huston
).
Brigg's relationship with Elaine began as his involvement in the Catherine script was concluding. His long avoidance of its physical consumation—ie of technical adultery
--mirrors his disenchantment with what in Hollywood passes for the creative process. "When you finally get what you want," he tells his friend, Huxley's narrator, "it's never what you thought it was going to be."
Another symbol of spiritual death is the long drought (or drouth) upon southern California; this finally breaks when Briggs instinctively reads a script by a Mojave recluse (rejected by Lublin) after the Narrator reads him part of it.
, dying in love
; as Shelley
, recklessly following his heart; as Byron
, the darkly towering exile; as Beddoes
, the mortality-obsessed suicide.
Yet of these fatal figures it is Shelley who resonates most in Brigg's life, and not for the manner of his death but for his dereliction regarding his infant son and pregnant 19-yr-old wife Harriet. (But on the bright side, cf also his poem Adonaïs
with which Huxley closes the Script, the novel's second, main and final section).
It has been noted that Briggs is a reader of letters. He would in all likelihood have read Fanny Brawne's letters to Keats, published ten years before Brigg's encounter with Tallis.
The butte
s of the south-western Mojave desert
remind Briggs of a one of Goya's evil landscapes, though it was the foreground matter that had compelled him to buy his lover a reproduction of the work.
for an adulterous get-away. Though he 'd long put off moving their relation to that level, he is yet disappointed, claiming to have thought it was going to be what he wanted.
The precise nature of the disappointment is hinted at by Huxley's narrator, who tells us Briggs is basically impotent and hence may have been avoiding the physical act of love for these nearly two years only in order to protect himself. If that is so then his voicing of moral qualms may be dishonest: his behaviour with Rosie (below) is evidence for this; the Narrator's reference to Goya's terrifying "saurian rats", however, suggests that Briggs' impotence may have honest roots.
in the kitchen of the Cottonwood Ranch. The song would be a year-long hit for Huxley's compatriot the vocalist Gracie Fields
, who during the war had come to the USA with her husband Mario Bianche
lest he be interned
as an enemy alien. Fields picked up Now is the hour in New Zealand, a place of some importance in Tallis's screenplay.
She appears in a fetching black sweater and tartan skirt. The narrator notes the "technically perfect" look with which she greets Briggs, and is reminded of other upwardly-mobile kittens in history and literature: of Ninon de l'Enclos
, mistress of France Antarctique
founder Gaspard de Coligny
; of Emy Lyon
, installed at Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh's South Downs mansion
; of Anna Karenina
; of Morphil.
That she is disquieteningly “simultaneously innocent and knowing” foretells (by seven years) the words of another, masochistic and unreliable narrator
, Humbert Humbert
.
Completing the picture of pre-nubile predation, Rosie's cousin Katie is annoyed by her laziness.
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
's dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n satire Ape and Essence
Ape and Essence
Ape and Essence is a novel by Aldous Huxley, published by Chatto & Windus in the UK and Harper & Brothers in the US. It is set in a dystopia, similar to that in Brave New World, Huxley's more famous work...
.
Briggs is famous for his fascinating smile.
Hollywood career
Briggs writes for Lou Lublin Productions. (Huxley wrote screen versions of 19th century English novels for producersHunt Stromberg
Hunt Stromberg
Hunt Stromberg was a film producer during Hollywood's Golden Age. In a prolific 30-year career beginning in 1921, Stromberg produced, wrote, and directed some of Hollywood's most profitable and enduring films, including The Thin Man series, the Nelson Eddy/Jeanette MacDonald operettas, The Women,...
, William Goetz
William Goetz
William Goetz was an American Hollywood film producer and studio executive. William Goetz died of cancer in 1969 at his home in Los Angeles and was buried in Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California....
, Kenneth Macgowan
Kenneth Macgowan
Kenneth Macgowan was an American film producer. He won an Academy Award for Best Color Short Film for La Cucaracha , the first live-action short film made in the three-color Technicolor process....
and Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
, as well as a life of Mme. Curie
Madame Curie (film)
Madame Curie is a 1943 biographical film made by MGM. It was directed by Mervyn LeRoy and produced by Sidney Franklin from a screenplay by Paul Osborn, Paul H. Rameau, and Aldous Huxley , adapted from the biography by Eve Curie....
for Sidney Franklin
Sidney Franklin (director)
Sidney Franklin was an American film director and producer. His brother Chester Franklin also became a director during the silent film era best known for helming the early Technicolor film Toll of the Sea....
). He has just been denied a raise, a disappointment with repercussions for his love life. The industry is tightening its belt; Hollywood mogul Schmuel Gelbfisz
Samuel Goldwyn
Samuel Goldwyn was an American film producer, and founding contributor executive of several motion picture studios.-Biography:...
has announced to the press that those under him may well see their salaries reduced by half.
He has no automobile of his own, but uses his wife Miriam's Buick
Buick
Buick is a premium brand of General Motors . Buick models are sold in the United States, Canada, Mexico, China, Taiwan, and Israel, with China being its largest market. Buick holds the distinction as the oldest active American make...
convertible
Convertible
A convertible is a type of automobile in which the roof can retract and fold away having windows which wind-down inside the doors, converting it from an enclosed to an open-air vehicle...
.
Briggs is—or was—serious about art; he deplores popular escapism as an abuse of it. He knows exactly how many tens of millions of dollars were raked in by Amanda, a vapid musical love story, three winters previously—during the Ardennes Offensive
Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge was a major German offensive , launched toward the end of World War II through the densely forested Ardennes mountain region of Wallonia in Belgium, hence its French name , and France and...
.
In early 1946 he began scripting a life of Catherine of Siena
Catherine of Siena
Saint Catherine of Siena, T.O.S.D, was a tertiary of the Dominican Order, and a Scholastic philosopher and theologian. She also worked to bring the papacy of Gregory XI back to Rome from its displacement in France, and to establish peace among the Italian city-states. She was proclaimed a Doctor...
, who in 1366 had mystically married Jesus. Having to sex it up, he elaborated a character from a suitor mentioned in her letters. His script has been reworked three times by others before getting to production, but the lover-character remains; Lublin hopes to get Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
for the part (an unlikely prospect, as 1948 will see him starring in several films by John Huston
John Huston
John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
).
Brigg's relationship with Elaine began as his involvement in the Catherine script was concluding. His long avoidance of its physical consumation—ie of technical adultery
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
--mirrors his disenchantment with what in Hollywood passes for the creative process. "When you finally get what you want," he tells his friend, Huxley's narrator, "it's never what you thought it was going to be."
Another symbol of spiritual death is the long drought (or drouth) upon southern California; this finally breaks when Briggs instinctively reads a script by a Mojave recluse (rejected by Lublin) after the Narrator reads him part of it.
Romantic Identity
Briggs thinks of himself as a Romantic -- "as all the Romantic poets rolled into one", according to his fellow, the unnamed narrator of the Tallis section of Huxley's novel -- specifically as KeatsJohn Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
, dying in love
Bright Star (film)
Bright Star is a 2009 film based on the last three years of the life of poet John Keats and his romantic relationship with Fanny Brawne. It stars Ben Whishaw as Keats and Abbie Cornish as Fanny...
; as Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
, recklessly following his heart; as Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
, the darkly towering exile; as Beddoes
Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Thomas Lovell Beddoes was an English poet, dramatist and physician.- Biography :Born in Clifton, Bristol, England, he was the son of Dr. Thomas Beddoes, a friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Anna, sister of Maria Edgeworth. He was educated at Charterhouse and Pembroke College, Oxford...
, the mortality-obsessed suicide.
Yet of these fatal figures it is Shelley who resonates most in Brigg's life, and not for the manner of his death but for his dereliction regarding his infant son and pregnant 19-yr-old wife Harriet. (But on the bright side, cf also his poem Adonaïs
Adonais
Adonaïs: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion, etc. , also spelled Adonaies, is a pastoral elegy written by Percy Bysshe Shelley for John Keats in 1821, and widely regarded as one of Shelley's best and most well-known works...
with which Huxley closes the Script, the novel's second, main and final section).
It has been noted that Briggs is a reader of letters. He would in all likelihood have read Fanny Brawne's letters to Keats, published ten years before Brigg's encounter with Tallis.
The butte
Butte
A butte is a conspicuous isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; it is smaller than mesas, plateaus, and table landform tables. In some regions, such as the north central and northwestern United States, the word is used for any hill...
s of the south-western Mojave desert
Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert occupies a significant portion of southeastern California and smaller parts of central California, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah and northwestern Arizona, in the United States...
remind Briggs of a one of Goya's evil landscapes, though it was the foreground matter that had compelled him to buy his lover a reproduction of the work.
Sexual Delusion
Briggs has recently taken Elaine to AcapulcoAcapulco
Acapulco is a city, municipality and major sea port in the state of Guerrero on the Pacific coast of Mexico, southwest from Mexico City. Acapulco is located on a deep, semi-circular bay and has been a port since the early colonial period of Mexico’s history...
for an adulterous get-away. Though he 'd long put off moving their relation to that level, he is yet disappointed, claiming to have thought it was going to be what he wanted.
The precise nature of the disappointment is hinted at by Huxley's narrator, who tells us Briggs is basically impotent and hence may have been avoiding the physical act of love for these nearly two years only in order to protect himself. If that is so then his voicing of moral qualms may be dishonest: his behaviour with Rosie (below) is evidence for this; the Narrator's reference to Goya's terrifying "saurian rats", however, suggests that Briggs' impotence may have honest roots.
Rosie
Briggs is first made aware of Rosie when he hears her singing the popular song Now is the hourNow Is the Hour
"Now Is the Hour" is a popular song, though often described as a traditional Māori song. It is usually credited to Clement Scott, Maewa Kaihau & Dorothy Stewart....
in the kitchen of the Cottonwood Ranch. The song would be a year-long hit for Huxley's compatriot the vocalist Gracie Fields
Gracie Fields
Dame Gracie Fields, DBE , was an English-born, later Italian-based actress, singer and comedienne and star of both cinema and music hall.-Early life:...
, who during the war had come to the USA with her husband Mario Bianche
Monty Banks
Montague Banks was a comedian and film director. In the 1920s, he worked in Hollywood, starring in many silent short comedies and in the feature-length action thriller Play Safe...
lest he be interned
Internment
Internment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning as: "The action of 'interning'; confinement within the limits of a country or place." Most modern usage is about individuals, and there is a distinction...
as an enemy alien. Fields picked up Now is the hour in New Zealand, a place of some importance in Tallis's screenplay.
She appears in a fetching black sweater and tartan skirt. The narrator notes the "technically perfect" look with which she greets Briggs, and is reminded of other upwardly-mobile kittens in history and literature: of Ninon de l'Enclos
Ninon de l'Enclos
Anne "Ninon" de l'Enclos also spelled Ninon de Lenclos and Ninon de Lanclos was a French author, courtesan and patron of the arts.-Early life:...
, mistress of France Antarctique
France Antarctique
France Antarctique was a French colony south of the Equator, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which existed between 1555 and 1567, and had control over the coast from Rio de Janeiro to Cabo Frio...
founder Gaspard de Coligny
Gaspard de Coligny
Gaspard de Coligny , Seigneur de Châtillon, was a French nobleman and admiral, best remembered as a disciplined Huguenot leader in the French Wars of Religion.-Ancestry:...
; of Emy Lyon
Emma, Lady Hamilton
Emma, Lady Hamilton is best remembered as the mistress of Lord Nelson and as the muse of George Romney. She was born Amy Lyon in Ness near Neston, Cheshire, England, the daughter of a blacksmith, Henry Lyon, who died when she was two months old...
, installed at Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh's South Downs mansion
Uppark
Uppark is a 17th-century house in South Harting, Petersfield, West Sussex, England and a National Trust property.The house, set high on the South Downs, was built for Ford Grey , the first Earl of Tankerville, c. 1690 and was sold in 1747 to Sir Matthew Fetherstonhaugh and his wife Sarah...
; of Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger...
; of Morphil.
That she is disquieteningly “simultaneously innocent and knowing” foretells (by seven years) the words of another, masochistic and unreliable narrator
Unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually...
, Humbert Humbert
Lolita
Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian...
.
Completing the picture of pre-nubile predation, Rosie's cousin Katie is annoyed by her laziness.