Dorian Gray
I have become rather absorbed by this book entitled The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde.
It has everything I would like in a book. Some romance, some murder (or so I've heard... I haven't gotten to that part yet) and best of all some pretty interesting ideas.
As most of you are well aware, I have this fascination with the idea of hedonism, and complete and utter selfishness, particularly because everyone is "secretly" hedonistic and selfish. We all have these thoughts in the back of our heads (or at least I do) and we simply just refuse or perhaps rationalize not going through those selfish actions.
Here we have a character... Dorian Gray who lived absolutely isolated from the real world, pure and well... unspoiled by anything. Suddenly he was exposed (by Henry) to certain hedonistic schools of thought that leave him completely uninhibited by societal rules... blah blah blah and lives life fulfilling his "evil" id. Then we have this Lord Henry who loves to have Dorian as some sort of play thing to test out his ideas in the real world. He is pretty interesting and he has a gift of summing up societal norms that just makes me go... huh.
Bah. Have I mentioned I suck at book reviews... that's why Maria did all the book reviews back in the day when I was part of the publishing team for our school newsletter.
Anyways, let me just jump into it, here's a couple of quotes from the book,
"It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts to the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves in the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well informed man - that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value."
Isn't that true? It is ridiculous how we fill our minds with useless things that end up fogging up our thoughts instead of giving them that crisp clarity and direct-ness that school or work would normally require. It actually ends up inhibiting our thought functions. Instead of thinking of a fresh new idea... we dig around in our brains for something - someone else's idea - that has been said or taught to us that may be of some use.
"A great poet, a really great poet is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second rate sonnets makes a man irrisisstable. He lives the poetry he cannot write. The others write the poetry he dare not realize."
Been there. Its true though. It seems that what one cannot express in his life (or actions) seems to come out in his writing and well... vice versa. It seems that expression just oozes out of our bodies, if we fear to act it out... it will come out in our words. If we dare to live it, we rarely discuss it.
Perhaps the thing I like most about this book is that it was written in the time when english was just a little bit more expressive and artistic than the way we use it today. In my opinion, we've raped the language and robbed it of its former dignity. To speak now the way they did back then, we would be all too well ridiculed. Sad.
Read it yeah.
It has everything I would like in a book. Some romance, some murder (or so I've heard... I haven't gotten to that part yet) and best of all some pretty interesting ideas.
As most of you are well aware, I have this fascination with the idea of hedonism, and complete and utter selfishness, particularly because everyone is "secretly" hedonistic and selfish. We all have these thoughts in the back of our heads (or at least I do) and we simply just refuse or perhaps rationalize not going through those selfish actions.
Here we have a character... Dorian Gray who lived absolutely isolated from the real world, pure and well... unspoiled by anything. Suddenly he was exposed (by Henry) to certain hedonistic schools of thought that leave him completely uninhibited by societal rules... blah blah blah and lives life fulfilling his "evil" id. Then we have this Lord Henry who loves to have Dorian as some sort of play thing to test out his ideas in the real world. He is pretty interesting and he has a gift of summing up societal norms that just makes me go... huh.
Bah. Have I mentioned I suck at book reviews... that's why Maria did all the book reviews back in the day when I was part of the publishing team for our school newsletter.
Anyways, let me just jump into it, here's a couple of quotes from the book,
"It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts to the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves in the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well informed man - that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value."
Isn't that true? It is ridiculous how we fill our minds with useless things that end up fogging up our thoughts instead of giving them that crisp clarity and direct-ness that school or work would normally require. It actually ends up inhibiting our thought functions. Instead of thinking of a fresh new idea... we dig around in our brains for something - someone else's idea - that has been said or taught to us that may be of some use.
"A great poet, a really great poet is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second rate sonnets makes a man irrisisstable. He lives the poetry he cannot write. The others write the poetry he dare not realize."
Been there. Its true though. It seems that what one cannot express in his life (or actions) seems to come out in his writing and well... vice versa. It seems that expression just oozes out of our bodies, if we fear to act it out... it will come out in our words. If we dare to live it, we rarely discuss it.
Perhaps the thing I like most about this book is that it was written in the time when english was just a little bit more expressive and artistic than the way we use it today. In my opinion, we've raped the language and robbed it of its former dignity. To speak now the way they did back then, we would be all too well ridiculed. Sad.
Read it yeah.
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