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Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Edmund White
Edmund White provides an introduction to one of the most haunting and celebrated stories in English literature.
A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden." As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment."
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| The Picture of Dorian Gray |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Oh what sinister fun! A morality tale wrapped up in a story dripping with homoeroticism and hedonism. I can't imagine how much pleasure Wilde had when he wrote this story and how much went on his head that never actually made it onto the page as a result of the laws of the time. This luscious, lusty Faustian tale is so dark and delicious; discreet when it has to be, suggestive when it wants to be. And the picture I have of Dorian Gray in my mind is that of the most beautiful man on earth--yes, we're all suckers for a bad boy, aren't we!
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| Beauty is skin deep, but vanity goes to the heart |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Dorian Gray is an exceptionally handsome young man, but when he sees his portrait and realizes his own beauty he wishes that the painting would grow old while he could remain young. At first he is mortified when he finds changes in his painted image, but influenced by a friend Dorian begins to seek the pleasures in life. No matter what depths he sinks to his handsome face remains unchanged, while the portrait grows uglier and more hideous, burdened not only by age but by his debauched lifestyle.
I don't know if this work of literature is as widely read as it maybe once was but I was quite taken in by the story. It's interesting that Dorian, instead of using the portrait as a type of conscience to correct his actions, instead takes strange delight in observing the change. He revels in his freedom from outward consequences and digs deeper, delving into every pleasure. In some ways the separate manifestations of the individual reminded me of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, while his recognition of his outward appeal and how it would fade seemed to have shades of Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. And the character of Lord Henry is interesting, always in the background congratulating him and encouraging Dorian's sensual hedonism. But it's also a critique of society, both Victorian and today: we spend our time and money trying to reverse the effects of age (the gym, cosmetics and cosmetic surgery, etc.); companies spend billions idealizing (or idolizing) "youth"; and some even even seek to excuse away weakness and place blame elsewhere. In all, it may not be a perfect story but it's very interesting and thought-provoking.
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| be careful what you wish for |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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This story is having a profound impact within me. It raises many deep questions for oneself; how should I live? who should I listen to and trust? is there a point of no return? These and other questions are raised throughout. The answers are answered as the story unfolds...for Dorian Gray, but for me, can only be asked and sought individually. Some things are healthy for some, and unhealthy for others. Lord Henry played the role of Mephistopheles. For some, few, this Luciferian influence is necessary for transformation. For others it's destruction.
It's very interesting how many different levels one can apply the particulars of this story. Individual, societal, universal and creationary; high art, pscychology with sprinkling of philosophy. Micro Macro. Dorian Gray is a scientist, and his life is an experiment; calculating the experience of states with external events.
A truly great existential novel.
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| Perhaps we are all just as corruptible as Dorian Gray... |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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The picture of Dorian Gray may have been shocking for its taboo innuendoes when it was first published late in the 19th century, but to a modern reader, almost seeking out an element of that shameful pleasure a well written novel of vanity and desire might evoke, such a thrill-seeker will be a bit disappointed here. That said, the higher threshold of today's readers for topics that would have made a Victorian-era bookworm blush doesn't take away at all from the bona-fide quality of writing, and depth of thought, manifested within the complex discourses of Oscar Wilde's characters time and again throughout "The Picture of Dorian Gray."
The storyline itself is interesting -- a young man, driven to trade his soul for lifelong youth and beauty, is left with a brutally accurate reminder that the burdens of the soul are inescapable. Nevertheless, the clever plot is the lesser of the art forms Wilde exhibits in this book.
The most impressive feature of Wilde's writing in this novel is the manner in which his characters express and justify devious thoughts. Corrupt and evil notions are so explicitly well-rationalized, with such a seemingly undeniable logic, that the reader is almost forced to pause, mid-paragraph at times, to debate in his own mind whether he agrees with what he just read. As the story unfolds, and the maladies brought about through the gradual corruption of Dorian Gray grow more and more apparent and profound, one almost needs to turn the pages back to the stanzas previously used to justify an ill-fated thought simply to reconsider why such statements at first seemed to be such decent insights about humanity. Perhaps we are all just as corruptible as Dorian Gray? If so, that is the genius of Oscar Wilde in this work.
This novel is not simply one to be read; rather it is a novel to be read deeply into. There is a little bit of Dorian Gray in us all.
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| "Vanity, definitely my favorite sin" |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Those poignant words spoken by the devil (Al Pacino) in The Devil's Advocate come to mind when talking about Dorian Gray. As a young, beautiful and conceited man, Dorian finds comfort in the company of Lord Henry, a morally corrupt aristocrat in Victorian England. Already teetering on the verge of chronic narcissism, Dorian is pushed off the edge into the abyss of eternal damnation by Henry's seductive, imaginative, and in the end, destructive speech.
This classic, cautionary tale of the woes of youth has vanity at its core. Dorian, like all of us, is afraid of becoming irrelevant and unloved as a consequence of old age. Only in his case, he let his paranoia coupled with bad influence (Lord Henry) devour him. The story isn't unique in the sense that it happens everyday in the form of inconsequential lives consumed by gyms, beauty salons and drugs, chasing reluctant love and evasive youth.
If you haven't read this classic in school, I highly recommend you do now. Lord Henry's lines, though evil, are very entertaining and almost too poetic. No man I know has a wit and sharp tongue like Lord Henry, but again, he is not a man. He is the devil's incarnate.
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