The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (Penguin Classics)
Oscar Wilde's first and only novel begins with a 'Preface'. In slightly less than three pages, Wilde (below) outlines many of his most famous thoughts about life and art in characteristically languid epigrams. To (if you'll pardon the pun) wit: 'There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all' and 'All art is quite useless'.
Quite how these aphorisms make their way into the new film version, simply called Dorian Gray, is anyone's guess. Perhaps through the character of Lord Henry Wotton, the idle aesthete who dispenses one-liners like a chemist does painkillers. 'Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,' he cries at one point. Wilde should sue.
Although The Picture of was clearly deemed surplus to the requirements of the title, it's hard to imagine it being excised from the plot. After all, the true star of Wilde's narrative isn't Lord Henry, Basil Hallward, the elegantly troubled artist, or even Dorian Gray himself; instead, it's 'the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty' that so captivates and unnerves its creator. 'I have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry,' Hallward explains.
Most will know the plot: the gracious, comely and fatally superficial Dorian Gray fascinates everyone he encounters, from Hallward and Wotton to innocent young actress Sybil Vane.
Worshipped wherever he promenades, Dorian's morals slide faster than an ice cube down the Cresta Run. Initially, his descent into degradation affects everyone but himself - yet Hallward's picture tells a thousand words, exposing our anti-hero's degeneracy even as his beauty appears to cover his multitude of sins.
