The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

I really enjoyed reading The Picture of Dorian Gray. The story itself was certainly interesting enough, but reading it also made me curious about the time and society and personality that produced it. I picked up the book for The Picture of Dorian Gray, but continued on and read Lady Windemere's Fan and Salome, just because they were there in the same novel. I haven't yet gotten to his two most famous plays (The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband, both of which I have seen in movie form), but I'm falling behind on my book blog and wanted to get my review posted sooner rather than later. Or later rather than much later, I guess.

You might already know the story of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Dorian is a young man whose friend and admirer paints him a remarkable portrait. In a thoughtless moment, Dorian wishes that all the imperfections that will mar his youth over time will appear on the portrait instead of himself, and then is surprised (and unnerved) to find that the portrait really does take on these properties. At first Dorian sees it as a blessing. When one callous action leads to tragedy, the portrait takes on the sin for him, and Dorian is faced with a physical reminder of what he has done. This ever-present physical reminder, he believes, will help him to stay away from the misdeeds that would mar the portrait further.

Of course, it wouldn't be a good story if the portrait didn't instead lead to the exact opposite. After all, even though the consequences of his actions are more directly visible to him than to most people, they are also easier to hide from view, and don't directly touch his life or other people's opinions of him. I don't know that Dorian Gray read as a particularly deep book, but it's nevertheless substantial, and provides a lot to think about in terms of character and human morality.

Oscar Wilde himself was a character and a celebrity in his day, and his writings reflect this. At some point it gets to be almost overwhelming. In both Dorian Gray and Lady Windemere's Fan, there is one inevitable character whose every word is a pithy one-liner. The lines are often insightful, but coming one after another as they do it gets just a little wearying. And occasionally Wilde drifts into long, flowery tangents, in complete and casual disregard of the reader. And yet I was still drawn into both the story and the writing. I'm sure I'll make it through the rest of the book eventually.