the picture of dorian gray – Cannonball Read 17

A Portrait of Long-Lasting Wit

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

February 9, 2020 by Wanderlustful Leave a Comment

I feel like the premise of this novel has entered our general cultural consciousness, but in case not, consider this a spoiler alert: a portrait is painted of an attractive young man, and the bad things he does are reflected not in his appearance but in the painting, which grows increasingly hideous. Given that I knew this plot going in, the pleasure in reading this novel wasn’t primarily in watching the plot develop (although there were several twists I didn’t see coming) but in Wilde’s […]

A Classic and a Classic and a Classic

November 8, 2017 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

The Picture of Dorian Gray – 5/5 Stars I wasn’t sure I was going to listen to this audiobook or not. I like the era (love Sherlock Holmes) and I’ve read a handful of Oscar Wilde plays, but never his fiction. Luckily, Simon Prebble is a great reader (he narrated The Moonstone earlier this year for me and I like that a lot), and it turns out this is a great novel. It’s interesting because I have a huge schema for what I thought this […]

Dazzled by a Pretty Face: It Gets You Every Time

August 3, 2017 by Lisa Bee 2 Comments

“The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.” – pg 161 Aaaaah, my dramatic boy Oscar Wilde did cause a stir, didn’t he? And it’s kind of ironic that this line was included in a book that then faced so much controversy and was considered immoral, huh? But there are indeed some psychological truths to be found in this novel, even after all this time. I first read this novel a few years ago and enjoyed […]

All art is quite useless.

September 6, 2015 by tillie Leave a Comment

Sometimes the classics are classics for a reason. The Picture of Dorian Gray is playful, imaginative, and dark in all the right places. Even today its witty one-liners shine in this fast paced tale of one beautiful man’s great decline. The plot is simple. Amidst flowers and a light summer breeze from the open door into the sunfilled garden Basil Hallward paints a picture of Dorian Gray. It is the most beautiful picture, made so both by Dorian Gray’s physical beauty as well as the intangible […]

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”

June 5, 2014 by narfna Leave a Comment

Welp. That was different. And very unlike the Wilde I have previously known and loved. I enjoyed the story of this book, but I think what I loved most about it were all the underhanded (and not so underhanded) things Wilde had to say about art and artists. I’m pretty sure all of you already know the basic premise, even if you haven’t read the thing. The beautiful and amoral Dorian Gray, who doesn’t age, has a secret portrait that bears all signs of corruption […]

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