The Picture of Dorian Grey

 

Author:  Oscar Wilde

Begun: Feb 6th 2025

Finished: Feb 7th 2025

Type: Audiobook on Libby

Narrator: Simon Prebble

Rating: 5/10

This book is filled with hatred.  

An evil man corrupts an innocent young man, delighting in leading him astray and encouraging him in vice.  The young man, thus corrupted, delves deeper and deeper into depravity, and leaves a swath of evil, death, and destruction in his wake. 

Given that Lord Henry's witty personality and outrageous sayings are so similar to Wilde's, one can only assume it is somewhat of a self portrait.  And given that Lord Henry is the first villain of the piece, one can also only assume it's a description of self-hatred.

The book also has many passages of truly nauseating misogyny and anti-semitism in its vilest forms.  Wilde really really hated women and Jews.

The middle bit was a bunch of chattering about musical instruments, jewels, and embroideries in deep detail that seemed to have no real bearing on the story at hand, but rather the author was fascinated with those things and wanted to show off his knowledge.  That bit definitely needed a good editor.  Get on with it, Oscar.  It was almost as tedious as the conversations that Wilde tried very hard to make clever, but only succeeded in making shallow and boring.  Which, admittedly, may have been his point: that upper English class society are shallow, tedious, degenerate murderers.

And then, almost as if Wilde were bored to death of the whole thing, BOOM it was all over in ten minutes.  The ending was so incredibly rushed and unsatisfying.  If only he had put the effort into it that he'd put into prosing on about musical instruments, jewels, and embroideries.  Very disappointing.

All in all, a really good premise, a good idea of a book, some interesting bits, but not terribly well executed.  Yes yes the prose is sometimes good blah blah, but it's also sometimes not.  He does a very good job of represent insidious evil masquerading as popular wit though.  Most of the things coming out of Lord Henry's and Dorian Gray's mouth made my skin crawl. 

One can only assume Wilde had some really deep seated insecurities because he wanted so desperately to be seen as witty and clever.  

5/10. A classic, so I suppose it's important to read for one's education, but not something I'd be interesting in reading again.  It's too slimy.