The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray is a philosophical novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde. A shorter novella-length version was published in the July 1890 issue of the American periodical Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. The novel-length version was published in April 1891. )
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- Interesting. When I first read the Picture of Dorian Gray, I had no idea of its social context -- I didn't know Oscar Wilde was gay, I didn't know the book was considered controversial. I just picked it up on a whim and thought it was a well-written book full of fantastically clever dialogue and over-the-top cynicism. But I was, ironically, left with an impression that the Victorian era was more comfortable with male intimacy, and appreciation for male beauty, than our own. That turned out not to be quite true, of course, as demonstrated by what they did to Wilde himself.
But it's still a fantastic novel.
- They're all great, but the 2012 "The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray" is the closest to the original script before the editor cut out things that he deemed... checks notes... "too gay".
It restores parts that were cut, and essentially bans chapter 3 and some other digressions on art history that Wilde added as a literary Beard to the footnotes - still there to read, but set in context)
It's not a huge different honestly, but I believe Oscar Wilde would want you to read that version.
It
- Oh, sure!
1. The Book of Disquiet by Bernardo Soares/Fernando Pessoa ("Livro do Desassossego" in the original Portuguese)
2. 1984 by George Orwell
3. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
4. The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
5. (As mentioned) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
It doesn't make much sense, but between 1. and 2. I'd put all of the currently known poetry and prose by Álvaro de Campos, Alberto Caeiro, and Ricardo Reis (in that order). I have a 3-book collection with this.
- Some literature is almost certainly more accessible than others. I'm not sure where Dickens is on that list but it's almost certainly not on the very accessible side, especially at the high school level. Mind you, I'm not sure that some of the more modern novels we did in high school age especially well. But I loved A Picture of Dorian Gray, for example.
- Crime and Punishment, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Frankenstein, Lord of the Rings, 1984, The Great Gatsby, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Odyssey (by Homer) are all books that I enjoyed that are varying degrees of old. I think comparing old vs new books is fundamentally different from old vs new movies. Let’s bring in another form of media since you brought up books: what about video games? Most gamers have some cutoff before which they either generally don’t play games older than that or they do but wouldn’t call any of them “greatest of all time.” This is not a deliberate decision, but a product of revealed preference. Even then, newest doesn’t mean good.
I think Morrowind, Ocarina of Time, and FF7 are GOATed, but I also don’t go out of my way to play older 2D games and certainly would never call them the greatest. On top of that, I have to admit that the games I mentioned are less enjoyable today than they were back then, and are on the same level as other 10/10s that I played in more recent times.
The medium by which books are conveyed hasn’t really changed meaningfully (holding fixed what is being written about). They’re still words. That’s not true of movies and video games.
- I think it's the 18th and 19th century tomes that are tough sledding in high school a lot of the time; many like Moby Dick and much of Dickens are pretty long in addition to the somewhat archaic language.
There are exceptions like The Picture of Dorian Gray although that's very late 19th century--and, of course, Wilde is very accessible.
ADDED: In general, I don't think I read any, but both Fitzgerald and Hemingway seem pretty reasonable for a high school English class. Probably better choices than the like of Catcher in the Rye and A Separate Peace to be honest.
