Rating: Summary: Bring a Pen... Review: A true work of art that anyone can hold in their hand and return to again and again. I found myself constantly reaching for a pen to underline all those Wilde words thast only Oscar could have penned. He saw the world in such a unique way that will never be replicated. And if you ever need a quick comeback, quoting Dorian Gray will throw off most anyone. And if it doesn't, perhaps you will have a new friend!
Rating: Summary: Off the Charts! Review: Even on its own, Dorian Gray is a 9 or 10. But the Norton edition pulls everything together that you could possibly want to know as you are reading the book. Both editions are included, the 1890 version that was published as a serial, and the 1891 version that was printed in novel form. The 1890 version is much more potent, and clearly more controversial than that of 1891, which has many chapters added to soften the overall effect of the book. Profuse footnotes illuminate Wilde's sources, which range from the pedestrian to the fantastic. Finally, the book concludes with some contemporary responses to the story, Wilde's rebuttals of them, and modern criticism. After the book's end, the criticism pulls readers into making long leaps of inference and symbolic interpretation. The Norton Critical Edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray transforms reading the book from entertainment to an almost religious experience.
Rating: Summary: One of the truly great works of British Literature Review: Wilde's literary genius shows brightly in this captivating story of a young man who decides that the one verity of nature is living life for the pleasure of it. The "new hedonsim," a philosophy of our own age, illustrates the futility of knowledge and the problems of an orderly society. His doctrines and delightful epigrams continues to enthrall us and is a testament of the novels value as one of the greatest books of the world.
Rating: Summary: It was a very deep book, yet somehow managed to be funny. Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray, was perhaps one of Oscar Wilde's best works. In this story, Dorian Gray is an extraordinarlily good looking man. As he is so beautiful, painters use him as a sitter. One day, as he is looking over a portait of himself he realizes the fragility of his beauty and wishes for portrait of himself to grow old, rather than himself. For this, he would give his soul; and that was exacly what happened. This is no ordinary book. This book is funny and interesting. While reading this book, you will find that it is saturated with Wilde's epigrams and wonderful sense of humor. I admired it quite intensely, just as Wilde has.
Rating: Summary: One of the Best Review: After reading this story of a man who is so caught up in beauty that he ruins his life over it, I took the time to examine my own feelings on many things....Wilde has done it again in this one.I LOVED IT!!
Rating: Summary: Wilde's social view Review: The picture of Dorian Gray is an excellent story that shows how money and beauty not allways lead to happiness. It reflects a wish that many of us have probably made: the permanence of beauty. Dorian Gray is granted a wish so that his beauty remains always but the terrible social conduct effects don't. Do you want to know why this doesn't make him happy? Magnificent ending. Read it
Rating: Summary: Timeless, controversial, poetic, disturbing Review: Still controversial today, Wilde's study of a man's moral distintigration is both richly poetic and ultimately disturbing. The book even resists classification today. Is it part of the Decadence movement or the Symbolist movement?
Or is it an experimental novel, fashioned perhaps as a psychological gothic study? More importantly, though, Wilde's creation poses the question: Can a book be poisonous? Gray succumbs to the "evil" influence of Huysmans' book A Rebours. As Wilde as written, "there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written or badly written." Wilde may have created a well written book, but he also, albeit purposely, created a book when, viewed from its many horizons, can be seen as terrible moral study in the lesson Gray undergoes.
Rating: Summary: A sub-Faustian tale of self-love and self-obssession Review: Though it's rather slow to get going in the initial chapters, Oscar Wilde's "Picture of Dorian Gray" builds up into a splendidly effective piece, written in highly polished prose. Dorian Gray, who is suggestively described as "charming" and "beautiful" ... is painted by his friend and admirer, Basil Hallward. Dorian, a self-centered social luminary whose character is reminiscent of Narcissus, makes a bizarre sub-Faustian wish which tragically comes true: that his beautiful portrait may age, while he retains his youthful looks. The conclusion is disastrous, the culmination of a narrative containing elements of murder, suicide, blackmail, a confrontation in a grimy alley and an episode in an opium den. The characters are very well sketched out, particularly the triad of Dorian, Basil and the intellectual cynic, Lord Henry, Dorian's mentor and the mouthpiece of some of Wilde's most cutting amoral opinions. The style is, typically, marvellous, characterised by brilliant exchanges and aphoristic gaiety. Wilde lacerates English bourgeois culture, the conceptions of sin and virtue and the attitudes towards art of his time with tremendous aplomb. Some of his quips are patently snide, sometimes mysogynistic, as in: "Woman represents the triumph of matter over mind, while man represents the triumph of mind over morals." Oh, isn't that just despicable?! I love it!
Rating: Summary: Hopelessly Ambiguous or Unambiguously Hopeful? Review: Who knows? But right-wing orthodox Catholic monarchist readers will be required to steel themselves through the first two chapters which consist of a drawn-out slap fight between Elton John, Graham Norton and Ian McKellan. Now I like a cat-fight as much as the next guy, but a tussle among effete Brit cats with man parts is just icky. So the narcissistic homo-erotic banter opening the book was significantly under-appreciated by this reader. But after you get through those chapters the book gets much, much better. It is difficult to maintain that the book represents a defense of amoral Aestheticism, since the embodiment of the aesthetic ideal, Dorian Gray, is shown to be a damned man. That is not to say that Wilde embraces Catholicism in the novel, as the narrator often posits confusing opinions on issues of conscience and sin. At times Wilde seems to suggest that only immoderate (quantitatively speaking) behavior is immoral; and yet, at other times, it appears some actions themselves ought to be avoided. Is Wilde acknowledging that there are exceptionless moral norms? And what is the reader to make of rotten Wotton, whose epigrammatic phrases seem so akin to Wilde's? Hallward points out that Wotton's cynicism is a pose. He never says a moral thing, but he never does a wrong thing. So are we to take his Wilde-isms seriously? Are we to take Wilde seriously? Wilde says art is neither moral nor immoral, yet Gray is poisoned by A Rebors, a book by another decadent author who, oddly enough, also converted to Catholicism. And then there's the picture itself, the fruit of Hallward's homosexual obsession, which is clearly cursed, in spite of its initial apparent beauty. Wilde's protests notwithstanding, it is a book with a moral informing the reader that he cannot escape his conscience, that he cannot reject nature and nature's God, and that the wages of sin are death. But therein lies hope, for if God is to be believed regarding the wages of sin, then why should we doubt Him regarding our Redemption? Unfortunately, this message is made ambiguous by an author who, rather than unintentionally creating a distorted image of an idea that cannot be fully represented, intentionally peppers the novel with paradox for the sake of cuteness. But the Truth is not cute. He's terrifying, and Wilde knows better. Therefore the book is best left to the orthodox or the decadent. The lukewarm will simply be confused.
Rating: Summary: A Timely Message Review: I had to go back and rethink and reread this story, but profoundly moved by how timeless the message seems to be. Modern culture (Hollywood etc...) would benefit from what seems to be the basic MORAL of this story. The more shallow and superficial the pursuits in life, the more corrupt, evil, wicked and proverted one can become. This is a fact, no "religious right" or anyone else, made it up. Many just turn their backs or ignore the truth. Mr. Wilde himself should have taken a lesson or two from his own story. What a tragedy with his talent to die sick, corrupt, lonely and penniless. At least this classic work came from all the sadness and despair.....too bad.
I have often thought that this tale may be one that would be a great stage production/story....Mr. Wilde should have possibly considered it, again............too bad!
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