Sunday, January 25, 2009

Classics corner 003 / The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Classics corner 003: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Robin McKie
Sunday 25 January 2009 00.01 GMT

ilde's only published novel has gathered a mighty reputation since it was published in 1890, its fame resting largely on the clever conceit of the plot. The exquisitely handsome Gray prays for eternal good looks as his portrait is being painted. Thus his picture ages and withers while he remains an Adonis "made out of ivory and rose leaves" despite the corrupt and dissolute life that he starts to lead.

It's a striking stratagem that opens up myriad possible routes for the exploration of the nature of good and evil. Yet Wilde never properly follows these up. Yes, the language is marvellously piquant, as one would expect. One character is described as being "so dreadfully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly bound hymn book". And the opening encounter, in which artist Basil Hallward and his friend Lord Henry Wotton become infatuated with Gray is gloriously conceived, the heavy scents of "honey-sweet laburnum" conveying a homoerotic charge and a sense of the doomed flowering of youth.

But this momentum evaporates and the plot staggers between Wildean frolics in which epigrams are dropped like confetti, most of them from the tiresome Wotton ("My dear boy, anybody can be good in the country: there are no temptations there") and attempts at gothic horror. The latter are feeble compared with those in Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a vastly superior work.

Such views may seem harsh. Dorian Gray is certainly readable and it is hard not to be swept along by its exuberance. But the claim that it is a classic of western literature is shaky. On the other hand, Bill Amberg's new, leatherbound edition is a delight to handle and at £50 a copy would surely have delighted Wilde.

THE GUARDIAN