Wild About Oscar
He's been dead 100 years, but his words live on: PlanetOut celebrates
Oscar Wilde on the centennial of his passing with a brace of books about
the lively quipster.
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The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. by Merlin Holland
A century after his death at age 46, Oscar Wilde comes back to life in a
door-stopping 1,280-page collection of his correspondence,
including 200-plus letters never before published. "Wilde's wit, charm
and genius for paradox often surface, but the letters of his
post-prison years, from 1897 to 1900, expose a
pathetic and paranoid derelict unwilling or unable to control his bent
for self-destruction."
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The Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Centenary Edition, ed. by Martin Holland
This equally hefty (also 1,280 pages) collection of all of Wilde's work
(including some letters) has been in print since 1948, but a
comprehensive bibliography and a chronology of his work have been added
for this anniversary edition.
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The Man Who Was Dorian Gray, by Jerusha Hull McCormack
Just who was that eternal beauty Dorian Gray? A figment of Oscar's
imagination? A projection of his own
narcissism? Nope. Turns out, according to Wilde/Yeats scholar Jerusha
Hull McCormack, that the real Dorian was John Gray, a
working class lad who had a passionate friendship with Wilde, developed
into a young decadent poet, then turned to
religion and ministered to the turn-of-the-century poor in London. All
the while he maintained a lifelong relationship with a male companion.
McCormack's claim that John was truly the model for Dorian is tenuous at
best, and her prose is more Oxford University Press than People
magazine, but her story of Gray's life and its overlap with Wilde's is a
fascinating look at the culture of gay fin-de-siecle literary society.
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Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius, by Barbara Belford
No question that Oscar and his tragic end have gripped the imagination
of generation after generation of gay readers. One more
good read is Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius, by Bram Stoker
profiler Barbara Belford. There's more fizz than philosophy to this
biography, which vividly evokes his place and time, arguing persuasively
that the playwright/poet/critic's forceful personality helped
shape an era. This is a fresh, really readable book. But, please, that
tired old cover: Wilde one more time in his foppish hat.
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Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas, by Douglas Murray
Bosie was the boy Wilde loved too much. His sad story unfolds with
panache in the hands of the young British writer Douglas
Murray, barely into his 20s when he began this book, Bosie: A
Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas. Murray squirreled through a
trove of diaries, letters, and manuscript drafts to craft what turns out
to be, despite the hype about the author, a compelling read. After
parting ways with Wilde, Lord Alfred grew to be a poet of some acclaim
but, bedeviled by the notoriety of the trial that sent Oscar
to jail, he converted to Roman Catholicism, renounced homosexuality,
endured a hollow marriage, and died in 1945, eccentric and
neglected. With this bit of literary detective work, Murray provides a
great coda to the life and times of Wilde.
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An Ideal Husband, by Oscar Wilde
For anyone who saw the film, here's a new edition of An Ideal
Husband, with an introduction by Laurie Wolf
that sets Wilde's subtle, searing satire of private hypocrisy artfully
into the context of upper-class titled British life of the late 1800s.
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Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, by Moises Kaufman
Playwright Moises Kaufman took the transcripts of the three trials Oscar
Wilde went through because he'd loved another man and distilled them
into a gripping, dismaying narrative which reads as well on the page as
it plays on stage.
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Son of Oscar Wilde, by Merlin Holland
Merlin Holland, grandson of Oscar Wilde, writes about how his father
Vyvyan's life was affected by the notoriety of Wilde's
scandalous life, sensational trials, and sad death. Why isn't the author
named Wilde? Because except for a brief period in his
early '20s, Vyvyan dropped the name out of shame.
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The Wilde Album, by Merlin Holland
Grandson Merlin, meanwhile, never shied away from his ancestor Oscar's
wild ways -- he's devoted decades of his professional life
to the Wilde legacy, including assembling this scrapbook of ephemera and
memorabilia (press clippings, political cartoons, theatre
reviews, rare family photos) to give a glimpse of the self-invented
media celebrity behind the epigrams.
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-- Richard Labonté
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