The Picture of Actonb
So, last night, after a hard day of not going to the dawn service (because I am a lazy arse person who spent Tuesday sick as a dog) (and man, is PossumBoy going to have something to say about that, 'specially when I promised I'd take the Big Girls), but having cleaned the house, washed the floors and re-arranged the rumpus room, I decided to relax.
In style.
By sitting in a hot bubble bath, eating King Island Belgian Chocolate Creme Dessert and reading The Picture of Dorian Gray. Which I like to think Mr Wilde would have found entirely appropriate.
...I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream - I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal - to something finer, richer, then the Hellenic ideal, it may be...
It's fun to finally approach some of the classics, especially ones that you feel you know quite well, despite never having read them. I'm not sure why I've shied away from Wilde before, but I've had Dorian Gray on my shelf for ages without having picked it up.
[Oh! Embarrassing realisation: I bought it after watching the critically panned The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which I actually enjoyed), as DG is one of the characters]
I absolutely adore The Importance of Being Earnest, and remember seeing the Ruth Cracknell production at the Opera House on a school excursion (the same day that Nelson Mandela was giving his famous address on the Opera House Forecourt). So really, it's not that great a stretch of the imagination to assume that I'm going to love Dorian Gray either. The same turn of phrase, same biting wit though elegantly expressed... I'm loving it so far, and am intrigued as to how the story will unfold. Knowing the basic premise is actually adding to my enjoyment of the novel.
I had the same experience reading Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: was expecting an out-and-out horror story, but instead encountered a beautifully and simply told psychological drama. It wasn't at all what I was expecting, and now I am left wondering how many other novels I have crossed off in my mind as being not 'my thing'... Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is probably one of them.
What else am I missing out on?
In style.
By sitting in a hot bubble bath, eating King Island Belgian Chocolate Creme Dessert and reading The Picture of Dorian Gray. Which I like to think Mr Wilde would have found entirely appropriate.
...I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream - I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal - to something finer, richer, then the Hellenic ideal, it may be...
It's fun to finally approach some of the classics, especially ones that you feel you know quite well, despite never having read them. I'm not sure why I've shied away from Wilde before, but I've had Dorian Gray on my shelf for ages without having picked it up.
[Oh! Embarrassing realisation: I bought it after watching the critically panned The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which I actually enjoyed), as DG is one of the characters]
I absolutely adore The Importance of Being Earnest, and remember seeing the Ruth Cracknell production at the Opera House on a school excursion (the same day that Nelson Mandela was giving his famous address on the Opera House Forecourt). So really, it's not that great a stretch of the imagination to assume that I'm going to love Dorian Gray either. The same turn of phrase, same biting wit though elegantly expressed... I'm loving it so far, and am intrigued as to how the story will unfold. Knowing the basic premise is actually adding to my enjoyment of the novel.
I had the same experience reading Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: was expecting an out-and-out horror story, but instead encountered a beautifully and simply told psychological drama. It wasn't at all what I was expecting, and now I am left wondering how many other novels I have crossed off in my mind as being not 'my thing'... Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is probably one of them.
What else am I missing out on?
Labels: Navel-gazing
posted by actonb at 10:04 am
16 Comments:
'Wuthering Heights' - awesome.
'Dracula' - really freaking scary.
'The Picture of Dorian Gray' - I just read it recently for the first time and it is ace ace ace.
Also, like the following Wilde quote (paraphrased, quite possibly):
"The purpose of visiting others if not to waste my time, it's to waste theirs"
GW - I may try WH again. I read it when I had just finished my HSC and detested it. I may just possibly have been a little burnt out and didn't give it the concentration it deserved.
Dracula I've been meaning to read, what with my fascination with vampires (and slayers) and all, but never got around to. Victor Kelleher did a pretty cool re-telling of the story from a faithful manservants POV. But I should read the original. Have you read 'The Historian'?
I liked Frankenstein and Dracula and I love Wilde's stories. Try his plays as well if you like to read drama - there's more than just Ernest. You've probably read some of these already, but I'll let rip anyway:
The Sherlock Holmes stories - they're lots of fun
Ryder Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, Alan Quartermain and She - boys' own adventures, but very entertaining.
HG Wells' stories
Edgar Allan Poe's stories.
Moby Dick is surprisingly entertaining if you can get past The Whiteness of the Whale and all that guff.
Anything by Mark Twain (Huckleberry Finn is full of sheer comic genius)
Presumably, since you're actonb, you've done all the Brontes, and Jane Austen too, I imagine. I don't mind a small amount of George Eliot, but I would rather set my hair on fire than touch Hardy.
redcap - oh thank you! I hadn't thought of Twain - he's exactly the type of author I had decided I wouldn't bother with (unfortunate experience with tv series at an early age I think) And now I will swallow that pride and get to reading!
Yay!
I've read all of Conan-Doyle - have a massively thick anthology. And I've read most Poe, but not HG Wells, and not Ryder Haggard.
And yes, Eliot is very... thorough. And well-meaning. And I did finish Adam Bede and Middlemarch, but boy was it a struggle...
may i please throw a Waugh, Evelyn into the mix?
its too too delightful...
If it's The Loved One, then no, you can't...
Anything else I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt.
joyce - hard work, but illuminating....
I'm slowly building up the classics collection at home, and try to intersperse with other readings. Unfortunately the fluff often wins at the end of a busy day / week.
anon - are you serious? Joyce? He that is the butt of all jokes about impenetrability? But they're short aren't they? I may give it a go (but only because I trust you)
Fluff always wins out. And I don't like getting the classics damp, as I do most of my reading in the bath... it just doesn't seem right somehow!
GAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! Joyce!! No!!!!!! Don't... do... it!!!!!!!
Sorry, I had A Bad Moment there. JJ does that to me. I wasn't illuminated by the Modernist experience - just scarred. ~rocks and drools in corner~
I'm sure you will like Mark Twain, though. Tom Sawyer is the more "kiddy" book, but still worth the time invested and necessary before tackling Huckleberry Finn, since it's the sequel. Finn is divine. I must re-read, actually...
And Mex is right! The little Waugh I have tasted has been wonderful. Try Scoop. It's very Graham Greene in his best absurdist style. I put Scoop and Greene's Travels With My Aunt in the same basket and I loved them both to death.
oooo i hear scoop is good. try Brideshead Revisited and Vile Bodies. hilarious. all they do is socialise and get pissed and create scandals.
I shall try Scoop. But if it tries to make any controversial comments about the US funeral industryI will throw it across the room in disgust.
Urgh.
Waugh makes me think of Robert Lowell and how much I detested him (mainly because he wasn't Keats, but y'know, logic means nothing to a stressed-out 17 year old)
The HSC should be tried for crimes against literature...
You're safe - no funeral industry references, US or otherwise, to be seen. It's about a hopeless war correspondent.
While you whiled away your time with the classics - I had jigged school (on the very sane advice of my history teacher who had also chuked a sicky) and was sitting at the feet of Nelson Mandela - You can see earnest anytime! Revjen
Hmmm. We were ushered past the crowd to our buses awaiting to whisk us back to the Shire... Does that count?
Frankenstein is great, and if you can't be arsed, they did a pretty good movie of it a few years ago that remains true to the book.
I'd also suggest some of the classic sci-fi writers like John Wyndham and Isaac Asimov. Very much before it's time, and still revelant.
And don't forget Kurt Vonnegut.
relevant!
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