Oscar Wilde: Classic or Dud? Search and Destroy

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Make sure you read the uncut De Profundis if you can. Either way, it's an amazing example of a confession with the truth just dressed up enough to seem even more dramatic.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 11 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Crazy, I was thinking about a thread like this on some of my 500 mile drive round the country this weekend. (ILE is all pervasive)

I adore the happy prince, it is so beautiful, even more so in frecnh because the 'swallow, swallow, little swallow...' become 'hirondeau, hirondeau, petit hirondeau' ( i know this because we did thr happy prince as a french play in my prep school under the auspices of a french teacher who looked like alaister sim in a wig (a big orange plastic beehive of a wig))

however I do think its a wonderfull little fable

― Ed, Monday, 12 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I didn't really think the message of Dorian Grey was that bad actions lead to physical ugliness in the real world. But that was the premise for the world he created in the book in order to relate the message you mentioned. I just thought it was a weird metaphor to use, that's all. I wasn't totally sure it worked for me. My phrasing was a little provocatively obtuse. I did generally like the book.

I only saw the one play.

― sundar subramanian, Monday, 12 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

He was especially good in my eighteen-year-old velvet jacket phase. Still good now. I agree about De Profundis.

― Will, Monday, 12 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

nine years pass...

Alex Ross in the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/08/08/110808crat_atlarge_ross?currentPage=all

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 8 August 2011 21:15 (twelve years ago) link

An excellent piece.

― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 8 August 2011 21:16 (twelve years ago) link

And as we already both agree on, the Ellmann bio remains the gold standard for any general approach.

Only finally recently read the Lippincott Dorian Gray so this article was well timed. Knowing that earlier versions exist intrigues. (I'd read some on the initial changes but not all.)

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 8 August 2011 21:22 (twelve years ago) link

six years pass...

hbd Oscar, millennial Twitter rageaholics would demonize you worse than the Crown did.

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Monday, 16 October 2017 20:43 (six years ago) link

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