Description:
Oscar Wilde's literary influence, while enormous, has usually been seen by critics as exerting itself mostly on the stage. Yet Wilde's sensibility and art has had considerable impact on other literary forms and figures as well. Jonathan Fryer's Andre & Oscar is a fascinating and beautifully researched account of the complicated relationship between the Anglo-Irish wit who died in disgrace and the distinguished man of French letters who would eventually win a Nobel Prize for literature. The Wilde/Gide friendship was intense even if their meetings were intermittent--they met only a handful of times (and Gide's career only began after Wilde's death)--and Wilde's influence on the younger writer was both paradoxical and formative. Fryer is an astute commentator on each writer's career and output (as well as their complicated personal relationship with lovers, mothers, wives, and critics), but his most original thinking is seen in the analysis of how the gayness of both Gide and Wilde--which manifested itself in radically different ways--lay at the heart of their writing. Andre & Oscar is a remarkable work of literary criticism and an important new addition to queer and cultural studies. --Michael Bronski
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