The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray is an old novel, something like 1895 or something, but it has an interesting implications in the present as well. It is full of all the quotes that are now attributed to Wilde, and that is really what is has boiled down to; a book of quotes. It seems like a very young, audacious and supremely confident novel that spews broad sweeping adages that are very interesting to go through. I like reading short stories because every single word has significance to the themes that the stories are trying to put forward. This book somewhat reminded me of James Joyce's collection of short stories "Dubliners" just in its time period and its modern, moral plots.
This book is an example of art that is supposed to influence. One of my policies is that I don't review books when I have them in front of me. I try to write on only what I can remember distinctly from the novel. This is not only why I'm not putting in many of the potent and apt quotes that I could, but this statement also, ironically, serves to demonstrate the kind of statements that appear in the book. One of the main characters, Lord Henry, is an extremely opinionated man who feels it necessary to tell others what he thinks about everything. One of his founding ideas is that life is for pleasure. That we should always strive for pleasure and experience through any means necessary, but he also uses many paradoxes that according to him are the only things that hold truth. It is hard therefore, to express their meaning without simply expressing the paradox. Anyways I feel like I'm rambling. I have a bit of a head ache tonight and tomorrow I have to work twelve hours. I tell you this not to excuse my writing, but to give an insight into the mind of the writer.
I found that the morals exposed in this novel were the kind that can't really be debated but aren't necessarily correct. They are broad sweeping enough into the general ways of life that they're applicable to many situations in their ideal, but in practice, they aren't reliable as actual modes of life. I can just see the guy who, when confronted by a life problem, whips out his handy copy of Dorian Gray and checks the chapters for something and ends up spewing something about how one should never do anything that one couldn't talk about after dinner then getting kicked in the balls by his girlfriend.
It really seems fun to look at this private school curriculum novel and praise it for being the answers to all of lifes moral dillemas but I think this kind of British writing needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Don't get me wrong, I think that countless people could be helped by reading this book, but I don't necessarily think that it should be taken in as dogma. I guess that applies to everything. Ok maybe that didn't help.
I'm going to bed. Yeah I know its quarter to 9, but I have to get up at 512 tomorrow morning.

Read it because it's 200 pages and anyone who would read this site should be intelligent enough to be able to sift through it.
talk to you soon
Andrew