A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

2/5 rating. 165 pages.

Book #45 of 2022. Read December 10, 2022.

This book tells the story about Dorian Gray who wishes to keep his youth and instead have his portrait age and reflect his soul.

I didn’t really get this book, I felt like it was just a bunch of rich, immoral and vain people bickering amongst themselves. It’s been a while since I have read a book with a more contemptible character than Lord Henry, Dorian’s friend. He continually spews koans and beautifully-said nonsense, but his statements are purposefully provocative paradoxes. As stated: “He never means anything he says.”

Meanwhile, Dorian spends the entire book complaining about how all of the horrible things he has done are other people’s fault. His lack of owning up to his actions just killed me.

I felt almost dirty reading this book because of the lack of empathy or care the main characters have. People keep dying around them (sometimes because of them) and their response is generally “how inconvenient” and “let’s move on from this, it’s a bore.”

At the very least, it was short.

Quotes:

“we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.”

“‘Harry,’ said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, ‘every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.”

“Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.”

“All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it with me, if you care to.”

“There is a luxury of self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.”

“Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him, Basil,”

“He was prisoned in thought. Memory, like a horrible malady, was eating his soul away.”

“To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.”

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