WOW. Of course, I have known the story for years (who doesn't?) but for some reason I had never read the book. I had gotten maybe three chapters in on one occassion and couldn't get much further at all. This time however.......... this time.....Oscar Wilde is such a brilliant writer. I remember getting roped into reading transcriptions of his trials one evening browsing at Barnes and Noble. He was a hero of a speaker!
In this book, his thoughts on life, age, society, morality - are all so generously and wittily explained through the two rakish characters of Lord Henry and Dorian Gray. Wilde questions how intrinsic our virtue really is and what kind of relationship we have with art.
I have so much more to say on the book, but I feel sort of strange about it - it being such a staple in literature, I feel much like I might if I were reviewing Goodnight Moon or Green Eggs and Ham. So, I'll be terse: read it. It is thoroughly disturbing (and the disturbing ones are always the good ones)!
In other news: My internet connection seldom works properly; Children of mothers who eat plenty of apples during pregnancy are less likely to develop asthma, research suggests; Seven US soldiers and an interpreter have been killed in insurgent attacks in Iraq, the US military says; and the U.S. government has issued a quarantine order, the first since 1963, for a man with a rare and dangerous form of tuberculosis.
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