Back to classics: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Every once in a while I like to pull out an old classic book.

(I only really read a book "every once in a while" though, so this is a pretty large portion of my overall reading).

I'm also rather excited to start tracking my reading here, and hopeful I'll read more as a result. Readability has been dead to me for a long time, and lately bookwyrm wasn't cutting it either.

The old masters of English literature are considered so for a reason, and I'm always pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoy them.

I was already aware of the plot of The Picture of Dorian Gray, but I don't believe I ever actually read it in school. At this point I'm just a chapter in, but the writing absolutely sucks you in. It might even be better to already know of the overall plot ahead of time, because Wilde is already foreshadowing the major plot themes as he first introduces characters.

And the characters! The dialogue forms these characters into more clear, distinct, and full humans than what most authors ever pull off. They are at once varying levels of clever, optimistic/pessimistic, artistic, and have dramatically different motivations. I usually find that an author's characters are (probably) just reflecting different aspects of the author's own character, and are thus limited to being less than a full person, lest they overlap too much with other characters. I don't know how Wilde conceives of these characters and so effortlessly gives them complete voices of their own, but he does.

I'm thoroughly enjoying this, and even just having barely cracked it open, I can heartily recommend it.

=> Home