Friday, March 15, 2013

Friday's Forgotten Book: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Forgotten book? Surely not. I must be an exception to have read this book only now, when I'm 40. I guess my teachers were suspicious of such radical stuff. And for some reason or another, I've been a bit wary of classics all my life.

What surprised me reading Oscar Wilde's book was that it's essentially a noir book. It's a crime-related novel about an individual crossing his boundaries and suffering from the consequences.

What bugged me a bit was that there's a bit too much talk and not enough action. Of course Oscar Wilde could throw a very funny line anytime he wanted to - I mean, the book is full of them! -, but it's probably just me being too American-related in my reading habits. And I'm actually a bit ashamed to have written the sentences above.

More Forgotten Books here.

2 comments:

Russell said...

The original 13 Chapter novel is more terse than the more common 20 Chapter version most readers are familiar with, and would perhaps be a better text upon which to base "Dorian Noir"

Juri said...

I don't have the book at hand, so I can't check how many chapters it has (I believe, though, it was the longer version). This is interesting information, as I indeed thought the book was a bit too long.