A Bazaar of Dangerous and Smiling Chances

“My great tragedy is that I put my genius into my life—and only my talent into my work.” –Oscar Wilde

If I had to pick one thing about Wilde to really love, it’d be his strange, frighteningly apt little aphorisms. I assume that would please him.

I’ve just finished Neil McKenna’s “The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde”. I thought it was an excellent biography—very frank, painstakingly researched, and as little colored by partiality as we could reasonably expect from someone in love enough with his subject to spend years researching him. In spite of McKenna’s belief, touted in the end, that Wilde was one of the first and most important modern martyrs for the cause of gay rights (a point I can’t imagine anyone can refute), he’s still brutally forthcoming about the man’s deep flaws of character (so described by Wilde himself, near the end of his life). But then, those flaws are what make him so wonderful as a character, to the point where his life seems fantastic, and not in the “wonderful” sense, but in the “that can’t be real” sense. I always want my characters flawed and mostly unlikable. If there’s something they’ll stand up for in the end, even better.

Admittedly, I had to put the book down for a few weeks in the middle. Lately I’ve been reading more than one book at once, which is odd for me, but since there’s been a lot of nonfiction floating around in the last few years it’s been easier. I can’t just read nonfiction, so I need to add a few more to my list to keep me going. But this book I actually laid aside because it was a little too detailed, or really just exhaustive, on subjects that grew tedious quickly. Another schoolboy scandal involving Wilde or his friends, the state of his bed-sheets and nightshirts every morning when the maid came in, a list of boys he bought things for and petted and kissed in public, a trail of rent boys he and his friends brought back to their lavish hotel suite for champagne and the inevitable enjoyment of their “sugar-lipped” sweetness. But in spite of the fantastic state of the life described, it is nonfiction, and therefore commendable in its attention to each little detail (most of which really did come back to haunt him in the end.) It just makes the middle of the book drag more than I wanted—I’m not as in love with Wilde as some, maybe. As a writer, yes. As a person, it’s academic, though I’m eternally thankful that people like him stood up in defense of homosexuality at a time when it was considered a worse crime than murder. (Boggles the mind, I know.)

But the second half of the book flew by, as it’s mostly about things falling apart. And my god, if the first part was fantastic, the second is impossibly surreal. The evidence that there was a large plot against him, geared toward getting him into prison and away from his persecutor’s son (with whom he had the “great love affair” of his life), is astounding. Not to mention presented so engagingly that it becomes even more of an impossible tall tale. But it’s not, and love him or hate him, he was a remarkable man.

Naturally my interest in what his life was about comes from a desire to know his motivations. It’s hard to read “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and not realize what’s going on, the “Uranian” subtext of the whole thing is… pretty much not subtext at all. Wilde had all the subtlety of a modern slash fic writer about it. But the book, its characters and themes have always fascinated me. What makes a man write this as his one novel? What kind of life leads to this kind of art? He says in the prologue, ironically of course, that “All art is quite useless”, but I think that’s absolutely true unless it says something about the time and place that created it. (And there’s the art historian in me. Oh yeah, could see that one coming.) So as an exercise in trying to carbon date, society-wise, what made one of my favorite books and several of my favorite plays, it was really useful. And flat out interesting, in a morbid sort of way.

Which is my favorite, obviously.

-Katey

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