The Picture of Dorian Gray

My dear reading public, I'm sure that both of you are becoming rather concerned about the quality of my reading, so I thought I'd raise the tone a little bit by finally getting around to reading a classic that I've meant to read for years, The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde.

It's a story that's part of the fabric of our culture; I can't remember a time when I didn't know the basic premise of this book - that a vain young man has a portrait painted which takes on the consequences of his sin and depravity, so that he remains young and breathtakingly handsome, while the person in the picture ages and becomes hideous, and displays the evidence of all his sins.

Ten years ago Jen and I went to Egypt, and saw the Pyramids, among other things. Everyone knows what the pyramids look like, and probably can't remember the first time they saw them; they've just Always Known. But going there, I was absolutely blown away by their grandeur, by how simply colossal they were. The Picture of Dorian Gray is like that; it's far better than you'd imagine it to be.

For starters, it's frequently hilarious. Wilde is famous for his witty epigrams, but the sheer volume of them in this book is staggering. Several time I had to put the book down and just sit there, laughing. The writing is lyrical and delightful throughout. It shows that for a language slapped together by germanic peasants and invading French thugs, English can be breathtakingly beautiful.

As an aside, I just did a Google search for a page of quoted to link you off to, but the pages out there on the interwebs really don't do justice to the novel. There are some deliciously spiky barbs that are frequently quoted, but it's a book you can flip to any page and be lost in the language.

One thing I found is that I can't read it without hearing it in Stephen Fry's voice. It's not just that he played Wilde in the 1997 movie; Fry really is a modern reincarnation of Wilde. I don't know that it was a bad thing, since Stephen Fry's voice is probably the ideal way to hear Wilde's characters speak. He has in fact put out at least one audiobook of Wilde's short stories; I'm sure there are, or will be, more.

This is a book that is worth reading. Don't be put off by knowing the premise, or even the ending. There's much more to the book than the basic plot points and some witty quotes. Go, get it now. Heck, you can download it for free.