A | The Picture of Dorian Gray (Konemann Classics)

Beautiful and witty | The Picture of Dorian Gray (Konemann Classics) | Oscar Wilde

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	• The Picture of Dorian Gray (Konemann Classics) Oscar Wilde Konemann, 1996 - 262 pages average customer review:based on 257 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame

Wilde sees the world more clearly than any writer of fiction in the last century. It is for that reason that his work is so filled with countless paradoxes and contradictions that challenge the mind and titillate the senses. Wilde lived in an infinitely ironic age, when society had grown so influential as to crowd out the individuals that made it up. Today, we have taken for granted this incongruity and so our writers cannot express the kind of irony that Wilde mastered, despite the fact that we all know that something is amiss.

`The Picture of Dorian Gray' is filled with this irony. The plot shows us the ultimate irony of a man giving up his soul for the beauty of youth--the condition that is exalted in the modern age above all else, intellect, truth, justice, life itself. Interspersed are dialogues and epigrams that persist one hundred years later as some of the finest word handling ever recorded. Even a few samples should compel the potential reader:

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter."

"A man cannot be too careful in his choice for his enemies."

"The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little bit longer."

"Men marry because they are tired, women marry because they are curious. Both are disappointed."

"I love acting, it is so much more real than life."

- "I am on the side of the Trojans, they fought for a woman."
- "They were defeated."

The mastery of wit that Wilde displays must be seen in its context. He was a decadent as much as the characters he portrays are. Ultimately, the disillusion that the decadent faces comes through in the story and the reader is left with a very uneasy feeling upon completing `Dorian Gray.' Is life as absurd as it seems? Is there a solution? Or are we stuck with a life of paradox? Perhaps our current period of decadence will show us an alternative. Until it does, we can enjoy the astounding word play offered here.

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There isn't much to say about Wilde's masterpiece that hasn't been said already. Filled with deliciously witty, catty wordplay and bon mots from a day where banter was highly valued, Wilde was skillfully adept at scrutinizing society and all of its flaws. The Picture of Dorian Gray is tragically ahead of its time, its philosophies on aestheticism and art are still relevant today - and will most likely always be. There were a few downsides (as I said, very few), including some dense chapters expelling the virtues, of well, non-virtue. Wilde would swiftly make up for these with delightful conversations taken straight out of the parlors of the age in which he lived. While some of them felt contrived, Dorian's slow decay into hedonism is wonderfully depicted, and the haunting last paragraph of the novel will stick with every reader. The theses the author conveys are spellbinding and dead-on, and the descriptions colored with imagery and allusions referencing Shakespeare and mythology are vivid. Wilde makes one question their own limits and passions, and engages the reader into being an active participant in life and reading.

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Beautiful and witty

This is a beautiful and witty tale about a depraved man. His ugly soul is mirrored by his ever-changing portrait while he retains his youthful visage. Suspenseful throughout. A classic.

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Dated

I would give this 5 stars but its message has been repeated so frequently that it is hardly worth hearing again. In spite of that criticism the characters are interesting enough that it is definitely worth reading

Further reading

If you want a new slant on this classic novel, read 'The Ripper Code' by Thomas Toughill. This is the book which reveals that Oscar Wilde was blackballed by the Oxford Union.

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Enthralled by an exquisite portrait of himself, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to exchange his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Thus is he able to indulge his desires while only his picture bears the traces of his decadence and the gradual corruption of his soul.

Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succès de scandale. Early readers were shocked by its hints at "unspeakable sins," and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde in the trials for "acts of gross indecency" that would make him the most notorious sexual outlaw of his time. A knowing account of a secret life and an analysis of the darker side of late Victorian society, Wilde's compelling examination of art and morality still fascinates readers more than a hundred years after its first publication. This edition has all new apparatus, but retains Peter Ackroyd's introduction from the previous edition as an appendix.

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