{"id":230,"date":"2007-08-16T12:15:48","date_gmt":"2007-08-16T19:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/archives\/2007\/08\/16\/oscar-wildes-picture-of-dorian-gray\/"},"modified":"2007-08-16T12:15:48","modified_gmt":"2007-08-16T19:15:48","slug":"oscar-wildes-picture-of-dorian-gray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2007\/08\/oscar-wildes-picture-of-dorian-gray\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Wilde\u2019s Picture of Dorian Gray"},"content":{"rendered":"

The book\u00adclub dis\u00adcussed Oscar Wilde<\/a>\u2019s The Pic\u00adture of Dori\u00adan Gray<\/a>. Read\u00ading this was a remind\u00ader that one reas\u00adon I go to book\u00adclub is to be encour\u00adaged to read books I oth\u00ader\u00adwise would\u00adn\u2019t, and to get more out of them than I can on my own.<\/p>\n

The Pic\u00adture of Dori\u00adan Gray (Wiki\u00adpe\u00addia review<\/a>) is the story of a beau\u00adti\u00adful young man who becomes evil and debauched after he views his por\u00adtrait and real\u00adizes how much he wishes to stay look\u00ading young and beau\u00adti\u00adful. His wish is gran\u00adted; his out\u00ader form stays young and vig\u00ador\u00adous while the paint\u00ading shows the effects of his life\u00adstyle; he keeps the paint\u00ading hid\u00adden from the world as long as pos\u00adsible. The book played a role in Oscar Wilde\u2019s tri\u00adal and prob\u00adably influ\u00adenced his being convicted.<\/p>\n

I had a hard time get\u00adting through the book and skimmed many of the more bor\u00ading pas\u00adsages. While we were dis\u00adcuss\u00ading the book, it became obvi\u00adous that part of the reas\u00adon I did\u00adn\u2019t enjoy it as much as the oth\u00aders did was because I got a ver\u00adsion without foot\u00adnotes or an explan\u00adat\u00adory intro\u00adduc\u00adtion. Know\u00ading some\u00adthing of the lit\u00ader\u00adary allu\u00adsions makes a big dif\u00adfer\u00adence. Those bor\u00ading pas\u00adsages, for example, were sup\u00adposedly inten\u00added to illus\u00adtrate the tedi\u00adum of parts of Dori\u00adan Gray\u2019s life. Not that any\u00adone at book\u00adclub read them in detail. <\/p>\n

The second edi\u00adtion has a lot of changes from the first edi\u00adtion; new char\u00adac\u00adters, pas\u00adsages designed to tone down the homo\u00aderoti\u00adcism, and we had some fun try\u00ading to fig\u00adure out how the Vic\u00adtori\u00adan-era audi\u00adence would have seen the nov\u00adel, com\u00adpared to the way it would be under\u00adstood today. This is where those foot\u00adnotes (which the oth\u00aders in book\u00adclub had in their edi\u00adtions) came in handy. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s prob\u00adably an import\u00adant book to have read, giv\u00aden its his\u00adtor\u00adic\u00adal sig\u00adni\u00adfic\u00adance; I doubt that I\u2019ll read it again in the near future but if I did, I\u2019d get anoth\u00ader, annot\u00adated, version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The book\u00adclub dis\u00adcussed Oscar Wilde\u2019s The Pic\u00adture of Dori\u00adan Gray. Read\u00ading this was a remind\u00ader that one reas\u00adon I go to book\u00adclub is to be encour\u00adaged to read books I oth\u00ader\u00adwise would\u00adn\u2019t, and to get more out of them than I can on my own. The Pic\u00adture of Dori\u00adan Gray (Wiki\u00adpe\u00addia review) is the story of \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cOscar Wilde\u2019s Pic\u00adture of Dori\u00adan Gray\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}