Oscar Wilde is best known for his quips, quotes and aphorisms, at least to me. The Importance of Being Ernest gave to me my first real appreciation of plays. It is a light, comic romp full of misdirection and subtle and not so subtle puns. For various reasons I have seen the play three times over the years. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a classic of this epoch. The novel also in many ways led to his downfall. While he wrote the book before his fall from grace I found The Picture of Dorian Gray metaphorically autobiographical of his entire life. In the end Oscar Wilde ended up destroying himself. The book raised the rancor of puritanical 1890 England due to its homoerotic theme, and allusions of an underworld of what was then considered deviant behavior.
I knew Oscar was gay(in the modern sense of the word) and had gone to jail for two years for this “crime”. However, I had always pictured him as this bon vivant, a social gadfly. The Oscar I discovered in this book Continue reading “Oscar Wilde – His Life and Confessions by Frank Harris”