ultimately there are far greater novels that are not nearly as entertaining [Music] better than food man good morning everyone welcome to better than food book reviews i'm your host clifford lee sergeant great to see you as always hope you're doing well get that coffee beautiful morning out there if you enjoyed this review please subscribe and hit the thumbs up it helps out with just about everything i'd also like to bring to your attention this beautiful first edition of don carpenter's hard rain falling that we have in the bed of the food bookstore link below you
can check it out it's definitely not cheap but it is worth every penny look at this a really fantastic first edition i highly suggest you check it out if you've never read hard rain falling it's an excellent book kind of a 60s crime novel takes place in portland oregon and up and down the west coast very very unusual book i really enjoyed it if you're interested please check it out thank you okay it's a long time coming on this one today is the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde published in 1890 oh man first
time for me i can't believe it took me this long to read oscar wilde's masterpiece in fact i'm embarrassed to say this is my first oscar wilde ever don't know what happened time flies and all of a sudden you're 33 and you've never read an oscar wilde book before yeah i've seen a performance of the importance of being earnest which i thought was very funny at the time you know cucumber sandwiches and bunbury and all that but you know i feel like this was the perfect trajectory because i've read many of wild's influences leading up
to this novel which out of all the books i've read associated with it is obviously by far the most popular dorian gray that is if you've never had the pleasure of reading oscar wilde let's see how to put it if a man's wit could kill wilde would have surpassed genghis khan the irish author oscar wilde was predominantly i believe a playwright a poet but uh but mostly playwright and uh you know very very famous for his aphorisms declarative clever lines this was oscar wilde's only novel one about obsession beauty youth aging love the desire for
love and to be loved coupled with the impossibility of actually loving anyone identity guilt morality that all results in a misanthropic solitude and heavy psychological distress for its main character dorian gray speaking of psychological distress these are certainly psychologically distressing times and so i'd like to tell you about the sponsor of today's video better help during hard times such as these that we're all living in right now it can get really difficult if you don't have anyone to talk to sometimes you have friends and family to speak with sometimes you have a spouse sometimes you
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much for your consideration and if you have a friend or family member who might benefit from it if you would pass it along i sincerely appreciate it thanks so much so the picture of dorian gray starts off as a kind of like a floppish romantic comedy of manners almost like ernest then turns into like a darker decadent bodelarian fandusque novel before finally propelling into the abyss as a gothic almost like edgar allan poe horror story it's a real amalgamation it's a it's a real it's taken from so many different places it doesn't always work but
that that's also kind of its um its appeal and unique flavor it also displays the callousness of the the british upper crust and so in a way also you know operates as this kind of uh social critique takes place in the circles of british aristocracy and the men of uh privileged leisure basically these guys sitting around all day and discussing art and philosophy and beauty making witty puns eating seducing criticizing socializing and doing a very great deal of all this man named basil halward is a painter and has found himself obsessed with a beautiful fappish
young man named dorian gray who appears to be the quintessence of youthful beauty so basil draws his portrait but inside this portrait he puts in something of himself as he alludes to his aristocratic cynical friend lord henry in the beginning too much too much of himself too much of something that part's never explained that's kind of the the magical realist stretch here so he shows the portrait to dorian and this triggers the most famous case of narcissism in the history of literature dorian realizes he's beautiful and wants to remain so forever and somehow in this
kind of vampiric way due to the nature of this painting this special painting he does instead of aging his portrait ages and heavily influenced by lord henry much to the chagrin of basil as dorian descends further into the kind of rimbaudian bodillarian dionysian and eventually satanic realms his portrait increasingly displays the corruption and cruelty in his face and features but his face his real face always remains young always remains beautiful nothing changes just a portrait so he hides it away he sequesters it and keeps it in like an attic it's interesting to know that wild
and rambo were born the same year but this can't last of course and things begin to fall apart what results is manipulation suicide murder opium revenge blackmail and the proverbial shitload of witty banter from lord henry it's kind of all over the place it's clunky it's weird it's dark it's bizarre disjointed indulgent extremely indulgent at times it's like a g-rated version of the marquis assad's philosophy in the bedroom where del bonsei goes on one of his crazy tirades again you know which is like interspersed between that and the hardcore sex instead of some extremely depraved
sex there's just a bunch of wild geon banter and emotional outbursts who knows maybe it could have maybe could have used morsod wild probably put it in there but then had to take it out because he was in hot water already as we'll soon find out and the publication of this book i believe was not a scandal but but produced some outrage and criticism but all the homoeroticism which as many of us could guess the novel is flooded with is alas subdued at le at least compared to sod its tonal shift is one of the
major refreshing things about the novel but what's of course iconic and the reason to read it is wild's iconic and iconoclastic aphorisms or his one-liner quips some of which are actually recycled from other works of his and many of them are placed in in the dialogue scenes near the beginning of the novel almost in rapid succession one after the other you're going to recognize a lot of them at least i did ultimately there are far greater novels that are not nearly as entertaining and i'd wager of all the great novels none of them will be
as charming one of the most interesting things about the novel for me is the the obsession of dorian or what triggers it basically or or kind of propels him further this gift from lord henry a book a poisonous book this book in the novel that is never named but it's actually a real book the book is against nature by j.k wii's mom one of my favorites i did a terrible review of it years ago it's more of just me on camera stumbling over words and not understanding what i just read but having clearly loved it
i will re-review it it's around here somewhere oh there it is yep yeah this one god that's a good one dandy dandy extraordinaire right love that book against nature is a tale of this decaying dandy desert salt the very last in line of this aristocratic bloodline who has sequestered himself in his own artificial world filled with rare and eccentric objects in his in his i think it's a farmhouse in the countryside in a kind of sick and grand attempt to replicate nature or the natural world through gaudy decadent and unnatural means and so there's just
lists and lists of all kinds of things like references to authors and art and jewels and stuff and so in an homage wild writes about dorian's obsession it takes on the exact same tone and style of against nature and so there's just lists of things that dorian's obsessed with and so you have references everywhere just piled on an excessive decadent deluge but then it flips back to like the comedy of manners and then it goes into like the the pose story right that is a very odd book it's just like what is going on that's
the part about which i'm going to read just because it's my own personal obsession too his eye fell on the yellow book that lord henry had sent him what was it he wondered he went toward the little pearl-colored octagonal stand that had always looked to him like the work of some strange egyptian bees that rot in silver and taking up the volume flung himself into an armchair and began to turn over the leaves after a few minutes he became absorbed it was the strangest book that he had ever read it seemed to him that in
exquisite raymond and to the delicate sound of flutes the sins of the world were passing a dumb show before him things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to him things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed yeah so the book basically ruins dorian and he blames lord henry and it's interesting it was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club where he found lord henry sitting alone in the morning room looking very much bored i am so sorry henry he cried but really it is entirely your fault that book
you sent me so fascinated me that i forgot how the time was going yes i thought you would like it replied his host rising from this chair i didn't say i liked it harry i said it fascinated me there is a great difference ah you have discovered that remember lord henry and they passed into the dining room yeah and that's very much the the case with against nature it's one of the most beautiful books i've ever read you know advocating the picture of dorian gray at the same time i would really like to advocate for
that book as well because it is a masterpiece it is one of my top 10 books of all time it is one of my favorite books just the the nature of it and the style of it it's very unique uh there's nothing like it it's exhilarating but then you kind of like read it or you step back and think about it you're like well how is it exhilarating it's really just like lists of stuff and it's like this weird dude like just talking about the things that he loves and you know this kind of weird
weasley dandy character it's like why is this so powerful why is this so strong i don't know it has something to do with the interior life and the celebration of art and excess and and the descent into obsession with beautiful things and maybe beauty itself i'm not sure i have to think about it a little more it's a great book yeah so he hides this portrait and lives the illusion of his youth meanwhile the hidden portrait shows the true degradation of his life but as one could guess eventually dorian can't stand it anymore and decides
to destroy his portrait but is it just a portrait is it not actually himself you know ironically i was sent this portrait from a very kind fan recently thanks a bunch ryan i really appreciate it the irish author oscar wilde barely needs an introduction no matter what you think of him there's always an element of surprise it's written on wikipedia that when he was younger he scorned manly sports right except he occasionally boxed it also said that he was once attacked by four young men maybe more common and horrific occurrence for gay men back in
the day but then he took them on all of them by himself everything about wild contains the element of surprise he was a beautiful animal of the rarest kind an irish poet playwright novelist who died far too young after being publicly humiliated in a trial wherein he was convicted for his homosexual behavior which they called at the time i think he was convicted for gross indecency what i didn't realize uh before researching it was that i believe he was actually trying to take legal action for libel but it backfired on him and resulted in the
worst possible outcome i think i've ever heard of he was in prison for almost two years i think and then transferred during that time to various penitentiaries and on the night of his release he fled to france he got the out of there and he changed his name to sebastian melmoth which was a reference to melmoth the wanderer which was a gothic novel written by his great uncle by marriage charles maturin i have melmoth the wanderer somewhere around here i haven't read it yet but i'm told it's very good it's a big book too it's
a big thick book sebastian if you hadn't guessed refers to the same saint that obsessed yukio mishima half a century later mishama was massively influenced by wild's illustrated play salome which was written in french actually gustav moreau's painting of salome with the severed head of john the baptist actually graces the cover of an addition that i had of wise moles against nature as well beautiful addition you start to get the feeling when researching all these things that nothing dies but is rather just transmuted everything and everyone just changes form and that's what we've come to
call time oscar wilde died at 46 from meningitis in exile after converting to catholicism which was kind of a trend at the time just like wise mom this was kind of a fantastic apparently like converting to catholicism right before you die but yeah terrible tragedy one of the most famous in literary history i think and his grave is infamous in paris because uh it's uh covered in lipstick uh from the kisses of fans and they had to it's a giant sphinx i've been to it in uh per laches yeah it's this beautiful sphinx statue they
had to put like these plastic wall around it it's really funny which is also just mired in lipstick and writing and all these things and yet he left us with perhaps the best last words we've ever heard referring to the horrific decor of his parisian fleabag hotel room where he was spending the last days of his his uh tragic impoverished life he reportedly said this wallpaper and i are fighting a duel to the death either it goes or i do and then he died in life as well as death nothing oscar wilde did was mediocre
his influence is vast but wilde wasn't about legacy right wild was about living he and his works just like all of us may disappear after several generations but what he represented his essence his kind of poisonous complex joie de vivre his punk rock soul though broken maybe by the end of his life is immortal better than food without question so what did i dislike about it well look i mean it's purple as hell i mean it's a book of defeat men dealing with tempestuous emotions and falling upon divines and tears i mean it's you know
it's ridiculous it's ridiculous i mean it's completely ridiculous it's a very particular aesthetic leaning right that is flagrantly almost ostentatiously homoerotic it's gay as hell ambrose beerus the notoriously scathing american literary critic and author who you know disappeared after he went to go and join the mexican revolution in his 70s writing about wild when wild did a lecture tour of the united states called him called wild the sovereign of insufferables so yeah you know i mean it's like it's a very particular tone it's a very very particular voice and flavor if you're into it then
you're into it if not you're gonna you're gonna hate it but that's fine i think it's great even if structurally it's kind of like what the what the hell is this you know it makes no sense there's a lot of artifice you know it's not realism uh there's truth inside of it there's shitloads of truth inside of it but it's it's almost um surreal it's almost proto-surrealist in a way which is great you know because i mean he was he was on that whole trip before like anybody in the 20s and 30s so bully for
him so you should read it well if you're a fan of british humor and wit i mean noel coward and look no further but you're also a fan of jkb's mom baudelaire and yukio mishima don't hesitate for a second essential reading and there are plenty of shakespearean references as well there's there's tons of references in this book down the rabbit hole gateway drug you know it's just a great way to get recommendations and and uh explore the new paths that open up before you in literature and art and otherwise so yeah highly recommended coffee time
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