I'm rereading this, and I am still boggled by the genius of it. I know most of my students will not appreciate the unfamiliar language and stilted style, though the concept is enough to keep anyone awake at night. To imagine the appearance of a photo (or painting) of oneself distorted by evil is true horror. First, I must admit to my sins, then list them and then assign a physical manifestation of each of them. Then I must paste them together and the cumulative effect on my face will be screamingly disgusting. It makes one see the advantages to plastic surgery.
The perpetrator of atrocities in the SAW movies has nothing on the nightmares a person can create for him or herself. Enjoy! P.S. Who is the subject of the photo?
UPDATE: from a review of another book, The Road, which I read directly after I finished Dorian Gray:
"I was in a weird frame of mind, having just finished The Picture of Dorian Gray. I had been thinking of the contemporary reactions to Dorian Gray during the century that had also produced Frankenstein. Their mouths must have dropped open to hear Wilde announce in the preface “the only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.”
So—Wilde says, 'read at your own risk. This is something new, and I don’t care who knows it.' The audacity, the genius of it still thrills me.
UPDATE: from a review of another book, The Road, which I read directly after I finished Dorian Gray:
"I was in a weird frame of mind, having just finished The Picture of Dorian Gray. I had been thinking of the contemporary reactions to Dorian Gray during the century that had also produced Frankenstein. Their mouths must have dropped open to hear Wilde announce in the preface “the only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.”
So—Wilde says, 'read at your own risk. This is something new, and I don’t care who knows it.' The audacity, the genius of it still thrills me.
