Book Report!

(Goal 61 - Read all the books on my reading list)

The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde

Random Fact:Wilde was so extremely disliked at Magdalen College, Oxford that his fellow students dunked him in the river and trashed his room.

One word review: Lordy.

Okay, I'll elaborate. First I'll back up: when I was making up a reading list I consulted various "must-read" lists floating around the internets--the ones that claim in order to be considered well-read or educated, you have to have read the following, blah blah blah. Dorian Gray was on at least one of them, and I thought it would be entertaining, since Oscar Wilde usually is.

I whiled away the long idle stretches of rehearsal last week (at the recent Bard Festival) with this carbuncle of a novel. A fellow "literati" had warned me, when I told him that Dorian Gray was next on my list, that it was a bit "ugh," and sure enough it is. This exercise in decadence is beautifully and overly wrought, and the story is extremely unpleasant if fascinating.

The plot is well-known, but I'll excerpt the Wikipedia summary here:

The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward...Realising that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian cries out, expressing his desire to sell his soul to ensure the portrait Basil has painted would age rather than himself. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, plunging him into debauched acts. The portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement of his form.

So, you gotta know this isn't going to end well.

Wilde's prose is very, very purple, ornate and exotic. Not that it isn't beautiful. Every now and then he throws in a witticism; the most famous one in this book is uttered by the impossibly effete Lord Henry: "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." Dorian late in the story calls Lord Henry "Prince Paradox." I'm not sure whether that was because he considered Henry personally paradoxical, or because of Henry's penchant for uttering paradoxes and passing them off as witticisms (unless we should really credit Wilde with that). That first one isn't bad, but they become annoying as the story slithers on. (Lord Henry's witticism formula: "[noun] is [superlative] except for when it isn't.")

To give Wilde all the points he deserves, his anti-hero's long spiral down into debauchery and cruelty seems to point up the limitations of the aesthetic philosophy that Wilde held, or professed to hold, so dear. Or maybe it illustrates, or he hopes it does, that if you make something really beautiful it doesn't matter if the subject is depraved. I guess the question is how beautiful it really is.

I will now, absent Oscar Wilde, go dunk this book in the river.

Second Random Fact: the cover image for this edition (Barnes & Noble Classics) shows a portrait of the composer Franz Liszt by Henri Lehmann. (Coincidentally we just "did" Liszt at the Bard Festival a couple of years ago.)

Goal 61 - Read all the books on my reading list

The Poisonwood Bible
Barbara Kingsolver

Interesting Fact that I Didn't Know until I Read the Wikipedia Entry Just Now: Kingsolver is a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock and roll band consisting of published writers, including Amy Tan, Matt Groening, Dave Barry, and Stephen King among others. Also, she grew up in rural Kentucky, like me.

I loved this book so much, I'm not sure how I can possibly convey it in this stupid little book report that I've been wondering all week how to write so as to do the book justice. I now have to put all Kingsolver's other books on my reading list.

My decision to read this book in the first place came from an odd place: one of those peculiar quizzes, "What novel would you be if you were a novel?" I can't remember where I came across it. I have this vague idea it was from one of Cranky Fitness's Random Friday posts, which are always entertaining. So I took the quiz, and I came up as The Poisonwood Bible. This meant nothing to me at the time, but I thought the title was interesting, and I had heard that Kingsolver was a great writer. So I noted it down, and when I got around to making my reading list, on it went.

Having now read it, I have to say I am hugely flattered at the idea that I would be The Poisonwood Bible if I were a book. It makes me impressed with myself.

The bulk of the story takes place in Africa, but it's about Americans from the state of Georgia (USA). This bare plot fact didn't speak to me that much, and I might not have read it because I'm not that into Americans in Africa, so I'm glad I had an impelling reason to read it, or I would have so lost out.

I can't reveal any more of the plot than that.

This book is so beautifully and, yes, entertainingly written, that it took me forever to read it, because I had to go so slow and savor every word, and sometimes go back and re-read sentences because they were so great I had to "hear" them again.

The last part of the book becomes slightly less musical and more historical than the first, but it is all riveting. It is also heartbreaking, so be warned.

Read it, and you'll not only find out a lot about Africa that you didn't know you wanted (needed) to know, you'll experience incredible adventures with some truly amazing characters.