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Dorian: An imitation
Dorian - Will Self's brilliant 'imitation' of Oscar Wilde's original tainted love story
'Brutal, savage, infinitely readable' Observer
'Chilling, hysterical, tasteless and haunting. A Gothic thriller complementing and enriching its original' Independent on Sunday
In the summer of 1981, aristocratic, drug-addicted Henry Wooten and Warhol-acolyte Baz Hallward meet Dorian Gray. Dorian is a golden adonis - perfect, pure and (so far) deliciously uncorrupted. The subject of Baz's video installation, Cathode Narcissus, and the object of Henry's attentions, Dorian is launched on a hedonistic binge that spans the '80s and '90s. But as Baz and Henry succumb to the disease du jour, how is it that Dorian, despite all his sexual and narcotic debauchery, remains so unsullied - so vibrantly alive?
'Brutal, savage, infinitely readable' Observer
'Chilling, hysterical, tasteless and haunting. A Gothic thriller complementing and enriching its original' Independent on Sunday
In the summer of 1981, aristocratic, drug-addicted Henry Wooten and Warhol-acolyte Baz Hallward meet Dorian Gray. Dorian is a golden adonis - perfect, pure and (so far) deliciously uncorrupted. The subject of Baz's video installation, Cathode Narcissus, and the object of Henry's attentions, Dorian is launched on a hedonistic binge that spans the '80s and '90s. But as Baz and Henry succumb to the disease du jour, how is it that Dorian, despite all his sexual and narcotic debauchery, remains so unsullied - so vibrantly alive?
288 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 26, 2002
51 people are currently reading
1860 people want to read
About the author
Will Self
175 books1,010 followersWilliam Self is an English novelist, reviewer and columnist. He received his education at University College School, Christ's College Finchley, and Exeter College, Oxford. He was married to the late journalist Deborah Orr.
Self is known for his satirical, grotesque and fantastic novels and short stories set in seemingly parallel universes.
Self is known for his satirical, grotesque and fantastic novels and short stories set in seemingly parallel universes.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 148 reviews
October 18, 2017
Another book from the 2002 Booker longlist, this is a book full of surprises. It is basically an updated version of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, starting in 1981 and finishing in 1997. For much of the book Self mirrors the original narrative, though his wit is more heavy-handed than Wilde's and his excesses are more extreme. He is never able to resist showing off his knowledge of linguistic obscurities, peppers the book with a huge range of both high and low brow references, and he also revels in some pretty grisly and unsavoury scenes, so it is not a book for the easily offended.
The updates work fairly naturally - Basil Hallward's picture becomes a video installation, and Henry Wotton and Dorian Gray move from the narcissism of the gay scene of early 80s London and New York to the dark shadow of AIDS in the late 80s and early 90s. Both Wotton and Gray are portrayed as much more vicious characters than in Wilde's original.
The book gets much more interesting towards the end.
This is only the second Self book I have read after the atypical The Book of Dave, which I read a few years ago and did not really impress me. It is difficult to ignore his archly exaggerated media persona, but this one was much more interesting and memorable than I expected.
The updates work fairly naturally - Basil Hallward's picture becomes a video installation, and Henry Wotton and Dorian Gray move from the narcissism of the gay scene of early 80s London and New York to the dark shadow of AIDS in the late 80s and early 90s. Both Wotton and Gray are portrayed as much more vicious characters than in Wilde's original.
The book gets much more interesting towards the end.
This is only the second Self book I have read after the atypical The Book of Dave, which I read a few years ago and did not really impress me. It is difficult to ignore his archly exaggerated media persona, but this one was much more interesting and memorable than I expected.
August 1, 2014
Sacreligiously, I prefer this to Wilde's original. And I greatly prefer it to any of Will Self's other fiction I've read. (Always been a big fan of his non-fiction, the stories less so.) I doubt I'll ever read a better re-write of a classic - those things are not known even for being good, but this is superlative.
Such profusion and richness of language as Self uses is a precarious act - most people can't get away with their attempts at this, making a long series of risible pratfalls as can be seen all over sites like this one, including in not a few of my old posts. Many of us are better with the sort of pruned simplicity advocated here, in a post wonderfully entitled '"Don't Use Said", He Bellowed: Creative Writing Lessons From the Primary School Classroom' - and only the occasional decorative flourish to mix it up. (Of course, there are those who think nobody should go all baroque with words, but that's not the point here.) I even think Self overdoes it sometimes, repeating what he's just said in different vocab for the sheer fun of it.
But the story of Dorian Gray, all that elite decadence and the famous blooming of all the flowers at once, regardless of season, could not be a more perfect fit for Will Self's writing style and reference-dropping. And for his personality. Very few contemporary writers could come up with so many new aphorisms of such high quality and just the right tone. Wilde said "Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry is what the world thinks me: Dorian is what I would like to be — in other ages, perhaps." The 1980s version of Henry Wootton in Dorian is - except for being gay rather than straight - just what Will Self was popularly thought to be during his heroin years. Although HW has, interestingly, Patrick Melrose's childhood as per Edward St. Aubyn's Never Mind; he turns his dissociation into an extra sense to use whilst driving. (There is another Self-insert - his Hallward - in the form of a supporting character who's a novelist and high-functioning addict.) Plus, this version ninety years on from the original doesn't have to leave out the sex, and can venture inside the doors of the opium den. Contemporary sincerity isn't always a bad thing, and makes Dorian more moving and more philosophical, more, dare I say, relevant and relatable, than the original. (Somehow, ridiculously to some of those who know me, I had never quite thought of social work and allied occupations as a way of safely feasting with panthers - but the early scenes around Henry's mother's pet good works suddenly made it quite glaring.)
Wilde's story has given Self's work what I now realise I found lacking in it before: beauty and glamour. The other stuff is grotesque in all but language. For me, anyway, Dorian might be the ultimate decadent novel: it has the brilliant allure of beauty and nostalgia alongside utter horror and fatalism in equal measure ... on some level I wanted to be there, to be one of them, despite knowing how hideously it would end. (In reality I know I prefer a part-time watered down version, just like when I was younger I wanted to find friends like the characters from The Secret History - but not murderous and more accepting.)
Self's characters are all themselves, fitting perfectly with the rhythm of their own times, the 1980s and 90s. Yet they remain absolutely excellent analogues to the originals. (This is the same glamorous, soon to be AIDS-ravaged, gay London as Hollinghurst's later The Line of Beauty. 'Tainted Love' - a song I've always found to have a habit of popping up at spookily apt times - made its second appearance in a few days in books I was reading, the others being in Beigbeder's A French Novel and Five Miles From Outer Hope by Nicola Barker.) As with every version of the story I've read or seen, Hallward - here a video installation artist ranked alongside Bill Viola, and a former Warhol acolyte - is my favourite of the main characters. Lord Henry's wit is very impressive, and Dorian might be beautiful to look at (no-one's ever cast him right in a film), but Baz/Basil is (to me) likeable, dammit, and completely understandable in his human fallibility and semi-requited love, as well as being an unwitting magician in this darkly glittering world.
The further metafictional flourish in the last chapter was a surprise. I can't decide whether it added to the book or not, but a certain type of reader less wholly enamoured with the world of the book, and admiring the whole thing more as an intellectual exercise will quite probably appreciate it.
Looking back, I'm more likely to regret things I have done than those I haven't. (Going against general advice.) But I did rather miss a trick with this book. I went to a pre-publication reading and signing back in 2002 but, unperceptively true to the un-Wildean cult of authenticity, I decided to avoid this re-write in favour of Will Self's original works, and saved money by getting an old paperback essay collection signed instead. I'm most glad of the inadvertant shove back in the direction of Dorian, thanks to a now-vanished GR profile which displayed excellent taste. One of the best things I've read this year; nigh on perfect as far as I was concerned.
Such profusion and richness of language as Self uses is a precarious act - most people can't get away with their attempts at this, making a long series of risible pratfalls as can be seen all over sites like this one, including in not a few of my old posts. Many of us are better with the sort of pruned simplicity advocated here, in a post wonderfully entitled '"Don't Use Said", He Bellowed: Creative Writing Lessons From the Primary School Classroom' - and only the occasional decorative flourish to mix it up. (Of course, there are those who think nobody should go all baroque with words, but that's not the point here.) I even think Self overdoes it sometimes, repeating what he's just said in different vocab for the sheer fun of it.
But the story of Dorian Gray, all that elite decadence and the famous blooming of all the flowers at once, regardless of season, could not be a more perfect fit for Will Self's writing style and reference-dropping. And for his personality. Very few contemporary writers could come up with so many new aphorisms of such high quality and just the right tone. Wilde said "Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry is what the world thinks me: Dorian is what I would like to be — in other ages, perhaps." The 1980s version of Henry Wootton in Dorian is - except for being gay rather than straight - just what Will Self was popularly thought to be during his heroin years. Although HW has, interestingly, Patrick Melrose's childhood as per Edward St. Aubyn's Never Mind; he turns his dissociation into an extra sense to use whilst driving. (There is another Self-insert - his Hallward - in the form of a supporting character who's a novelist and high-functioning addict.) Plus, this version ninety years on from the original doesn't have to leave out the sex, and can venture inside the doors of the opium den. Contemporary sincerity isn't always a bad thing, and makes Dorian more moving and more philosophical, more, dare I say, relevant and relatable, than the original. (Somehow, ridiculously to some of those who know me, I had never quite thought of social work and allied occupations as a way of safely feasting with panthers - but the early scenes around Henry's mother's pet good works suddenly made it quite glaring.)
Wilde's story has given Self's work what I now realise I found lacking in it before: beauty and glamour. The other stuff is grotesque in all but language. For me, anyway, Dorian might be the ultimate decadent novel: it has the brilliant allure of beauty and nostalgia alongside utter horror and fatalism in equal measure ... on some level I wanted to be there, to be one of them, despite knowing how hideously it would end. (In reality I know I prefer a part-time watered down version, just like when I was younger I wanted to find friends like the characters from The Secret History - but not murderous and more accepting.)
Self's characters are all themselves, fitting perfectly with the rhythm of their own times, the 1980s and 90s. Yet they remain absolutely excellent analogues to the originals. (This is the same glamorous, soon to be AIDS-ravaged, gay London as Hollinghurst's later The Line of Beauty. 'Tainted Love' - a song I've always found to have a habit of popping up at spookily apt times - made its second appearance in a few days in books I was reading, the others being in Beigbeder's A French Novel and Five Miles From Outer Hope by Nicola Barker.) As with every version of the story I've read or seen, Hallward - here a video installation artist ranked alongside Bill Viola, and a former Warhol acolyte - is my favourite of the main characters. Lord Henry's wit is very impressive, and Dorian might be beautiful to look at (no-one's ever cast him right in a film), but Baz/Basil is (to me) likeable, dammit, and completely understandable in his human fallibility and semi-requited love, as well as being an unwitting magician in this darkly glittering world.
The further metafictional flourish in the last chapter was a surprise. I can't decide whether it added to the book or not, but a certain type of reader less wholly enamoured with the world of the book, and admiring the whole thing more as an intellectual exercise will quite probably appreciate it.
Looking back, I'm more likely to regret things I have done than those I haven't. (Going against general advice.) But I did rather miss a trick with this book. I went to a pre-publication reading and signing back in 2002 but, unperceptively true to the un-Wildean cult of authenticity, I decided to avoid this re-write in favour of Will Self's original works, and saved money by getting an old paperback essay collection signed instead. I'm most glad of the inadvertant shove back in the direction of Dorian, thanks to a now-vanished GR profile which displayed excellent taste. One of the best things I've read this year; nigh on perfect as far as I was concerned.
September 24, 2008
Self's title here works two ways. His Dorian is an imitation of Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, and Self's Dorian Gray, which is to say his hero, is an imitation of whatever he needs to be, given the situation at hand. Numerous times the narrator refers to this man as a chameleon, and indeed there's something far more sinister about this Dorian than Wilde's.
Self has updated the story to AIDS-era Britain. Instead of a picture, Dorian is reproduced as Cathode Narcissus, a nine-monitor video installation of Dorian's nude body seen voyeuristically at all angles at once. It's this video that Dorian wishes would age while he stays young, and, indeed, this is what happens. But Self pushes the central magic further: Dorian's video self also bears AIDS's ravages of the body, while the live Dorian is able to live with (and spread) the virus without any personal threat.
What's great about this novel is how it sits right at that line between anti-gay and anti-"gay"—which is to say, borderline homophobic but really in the end just smartly critical of all the failures of post-Stonewall gay culture. Self attacks the whole notion of gay identity and identification, most explicitly in the dialogue of his heroin-shooting novelist stand-in character Devenish: "'It's been the misfortune of people who prefer sex with their own gender to be forced to regard this as some essential part of themselves. After all, homosexuality was only defined as a pathology in response to the alleged healthiness of heterosexuality. It's the great mistake of you ... erm ... you gays to mistake a mere attribute for an essence'" (212). And the same character attacks gay/our culture's youth obsession: "'If Gray were able to stay young and have this video installation age in his stead, he'd be the icon of an era in which everyone seeks to hang on to their childhood until they're pressing furry fucking teddy bears against wrinkled cheeks.'" [. . .] "'You homosexuals are only the vanguard of a mutton army dressed as denim lambs'" (220).
Will Self is straight (or, well, "straight" or whatever), which complicates all this in stupid ways. What I mean is, if it were, say, Foucault saying this (which he did, essentially, regarding the first quote), or Roy Cohn in Angels in America (who said something similar to the second quote regarding clout and anti-discrimination laws), I'd be fine with it. The "community" or whatever would be fine with it, but as Self doesn't identify as gay (nor could he I don't think), his writing could be seen as homophobic.
It's not. I for one am glad for Self's book. I'd much rather read something critical and thought-provoking than the easy bromides of rah-rah, "Good for us!" gay fiction. Even if the former isn't accurate, the latter feels like a lie.
Self has updated the story to AIDS-era Britain. Instead of a picture, Dorian is reproduced as Cathode Narcissus, a nine-monitor video installation of Dorian's nude body seen voyeuristically at all angles at once. It's this video that Dorian wishes would age while he stays young, and, indeed, this is what happens. But Self pushes the central magic further: Dorian's video self also bears AIDS's ravages of the body, while the live Dorian is able to live with (and spread) the virus without any personal threat.
What's great about this novel is how it sits right at that line between anti-gay and anti-"gay"—which is to say, borderline homophobic but really in the end just smartly critical of all the failures of post-Stonewall gay culture. Self attacks the whole notion of gay identity and identification, most explicitly in the dialogue of his heroin-shooting novelist stand-in character Devenish: "'It's been the misfortune of people who prefer sex with their own gender to be forced to regard this as some essential part of themselves. After all, homosexuality was only defined as a pathology in response to the alleged healthiness of heterosexuality. It's the great mistake of you ... erm ... you gays to mistake a mere attribute for an essence'" (212). And the same character attacks gay/our culture's youth obsession: "'If Gray were able to stay young and have this video installation age in his stead, he'd be the icon of an era in which everyone seeks to hang on to their childhood until they're pressing furry fucking teddy bears against wrinkled cheeks.'" [. . .] "'You homosexuals are only the vanguard of a mutton army dressed as denim lambs'" (220).
Will Self is straight (or, well, "straight" or whatever), which complicates all this in stupid ways. What I mean is, if it were, say, Foucault saying this (which he did, essentially, regarding the first quote), or Roy Cohn in Angels in America (who said something similar to the second quote regarding clout and anti-discrimination laws), I'd be fine with it. The "community" or whatever would be fine with it, but as Self doesn't identify as gay (nor could he I don't think), his writing could be seen as homophobic.
It's not. I for one am glad for Self's book. I'd much rather read something critical and thought-provoking than the easy bromides of rah-rah, "Good for us!" gay fiction. Even if the former isn't accurate, the latter feels like a lie.
March 30, 2011
Oscar Wilde: foppish aesthete. Limp-wristed intelligence with prepared wit, language so ethereal that it's like being smothered in a bed of marshmallow clouds. Famous book: Picture of Dorian Gray, about a man who sells his soul to stay forever young and debauch.
Will Self took that and has written a novel inspired by Picture of Dorian Gray, about drug use, gay sex, and ... well, actually, I never got to the point where the plot starts. By page 50, I was still struggling my way through hard jagged language and in-your-face amoral and immoral unpleasantness. It feels wrong to say this, like I'm some tut-tutting septuagenarian who thought they were getting a Victorian novel, but it's not the drug use and gay sex that I object to: no problem with that in other stories. It's the fact that that everything is deliberately unpleasant--in your face, sharp and ugly, not to be liked. You can't like the characters, you can't like what they do nor why they do it, and you probably won't even like the vacuous upper-crust-meets-low-drug-culture worlds they flit through.
Life's too short to be yelled at. And that's what this feels like: like Self has you pigeonholed at the bar and is reading you the poem he wrote after an unpleasant divorce, the one that starts "fuck you with a spade, you dog-faced bitch" and goes downhill from there.
Back to the library it goes, with no remorse.
Will Self took that and has written a novel inspired by Picture of Dorian Gray, about drug use, gay sex, and ... well, actually, I never got to the point where the plot starts. By page 50, I was still struggling my way through hard jagged language and in-your-face amoral and immoral unpleasantness. It feels wrong to say this, like I'm some tut-tutting septuagenarian who thought they were getting a Victorian novel, but it's not the drug use and gay sex that I object to: no problem with that in other stories. It's the fact that that everything is deliberately unpleasant--in your face, sharp and ugly, not to be liked. You can't like the characters, you can't like what they do nor why they do it, and you probably won't even like the vacuous upper-crust-meets-low-drug-culture worlds they flit through.
Life's too short to be yelled at. And that's what this feels like: like Self has you pigeonholed at the bar and is reading you the poem he wrote after an unpleasant divorce, the one that starts "fuck you with a spade, you dog-faced bitch" and goes downhill from there.
Back to the library it goes, with no remorse.
August 10, 2007
My addiction to Self began here; an interlibrary loan that, afterwards, I foisted upon Melanie with a fever.
"Oh, man, unreliable narrators! You should...you gotta...oh, man...just...just read!"
It brings to mind the taste of tuna melts and fries at Swarthmore's (secondary) cafeteria, as I discussed my amazement with the sustained wordplay, the in-your-face use of big, eldritch words.
Melanie listened patiently, probably feeling a bit sad for me that I'd never been out of my literary gutters before to discover that there are...are...practically reams of wordplay and unreliability lining the shelves (some of them even are catalogued as Current History).
Nowdays, though, Self has become kind of a dick, following his hero, Martin Amis (who, in turn, is following pied piper Christopher Hitchens), into the realm of Neo-Connery.
But this was when he was cool.
"Oh, man, unreliable narrators! You should...you gotta...oh, man...just...just read!"
It brings to mind the taste of tuna melts and fries at Swarthmore's (secondary) cafeteria, as I discussed my amazement with the sustained wordplay, the in-your-face use of big, eldritch words.
Melanie listened patiently, probably feeling a bit sad for me that I'd never been out of my literary gutters before to discover that there are...are...practically reams of wordplay and unreliability lining the shelves (some of them even are catalogued as Current History).
Nowdays, though, Self has become kind of a dick, following his hero, Martin Amis (who, in turn, is following pied piper Christopher Hitchens), into the realm of Neo-Connery.
But this was when he was cool.
February 27, 2010
Clever, twisted and stunning.
February 10, 2023
Glorified fan fiction of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wattpad could do better, though.
December 29, 2022
'The Picture of Dorian Gray' but 100 years later, in the 1980s to mid 90s. And like most media from or set in the fin de siecle of the 20th century, the reading experience is heroin chic; sleek and glamorous, but grimy, kind of like running your hand along the edge of a neon sign in Times Square and then immidiately wondering where you can wash your hands. But you're still kind of glad you did it.
After reading over a decade and a half's worth of reviews on Goodreads covering this novel, it's clear that this is one of those 'minefield' works that everyone seems to love or hate, to find over-written or perfectly written, offensively brutish or daring to go where the original couldn't or wouldn't. Some people think it's a poor man’s Oscar Wilde pantomime, some people think this is better than its 1890 counterpart. Some people thought the reframing of the story around the AIDS crisis was brilliant, but there's also the question of the ethics (perhaps) of someone from outside the queer community writing a story like that.
Needless to say: there's a lot to unpack and even more to wade through before that unpacking can even begin. I get the impression, without even knowing much about the author, Will Self, that that's kind of the point. To that end: mission accomplished.
To start off, I think that we have to be very careful when criticizing works about queerness on the grounds of whether or not the author is themself queer. Unlike other marginalized identities (with some exception), queerness isn't something visible. Without getting too in the weeds about 'gay affects' and so on, suffice it to say that coming out is an experience largely unique to queer identity, with the exception of disability (a topic for another time).
I think a lot of times we forget that coming out, even now in the 2020s, can come with some hefty blowback, and that people who do can stand to lose a lot by doing so. So it's not really a surprise that many people choose not to, especially publicly. All this to say that forcing someone to come out for the sake of optics is...not good.
Having authentic representation in media is obviously very important, but it can be a bit of a teeter-totter, and we have to be careful, that's all.
Besides, it's not like something being 'authentic' automatically makes it good. There are plenty of 'pick-mes' out there who are more than willing to lick the boots of anyone who'll offer scraps of social mobility and clout even if it means throwing their community under the bus with their work.
Does it matter to me whether or not 'Dorian' is an authentically queer story from a queer writer? In this case, honestly, not really.
The criticism of 'Dorian' isn't whether or not it's 'authentic' (unlike something like the 'Three Day Road' Joseph Boyden scandal), it's whether or not it's homophobic, and even queer people can manage that on occasion. So let's explore.
Though published in 2002, 'Dorian' takes place between 1981 and the late-ish 1990s. This works well as a parallel to the original, setting both at the turn of their respective centuries, and using the AIDS crisis as an explicit plot point rather than the maybe, blink and you'll miss it implication of venereal disease in Wilde's novel. The heavy drug use implied in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' is brought to the forefront in 'Dorian.'
The bare bones of the plot itself faithfully follow the original ... to a point (and we'll get to that), so it's certainly recognizable to anyone familiar with the 1890 version. And really, I think that's who this is for. You don't have to have read 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' to get what Self is doing with this retelling, but I just don't know why a person would pick this up unless they were a fan of Wilde's story.
Let's return to the explicit drug use and sex and the AIDS crisis. These are both the strengths of 'Dorian' and also the things that make it so dicey.
The explicitness of the drugs and sex, and the direct connection of those things to the AIDS crisis are strengths because they allow for clearer stakes than 'The Picture of' had. In 'The Picture of' we're told that Henry Wotton is the poisonous influence that sends Dorian off along the track of a dangerous hedonism, but that Henry doesn't truly engage in this philosophy himself, at least, not in any serious capacity. How could he? Everyone would be able to see if he was indulging in the degree of opioid abuse Dorian is implied to indulge in, and it would at some point become obvious if he contracted one of the pesky STIs making the rounds in Victorian London at the time. And as a society man, that simply wouldn't do -- he'd be outcast.
But in Self's 'Dorian' Wotton does in fact practice what he preaches, and it does show, and in the end, well...let's just say he loses a lot because of it. This was cool, because it gives us this sharp contrast between the reality of heavy drug use and reckless, unprotected sex, and the glamorous fiction we get of such things through media and advertising through the paralleling of the experiences of Wotton and Dorian.
Self very cleverly ties the idea of the glamorization of drugs and sex in the age of television to Dorian's portrait by having the portrait in this version be a video installation. Very fitting, albeit a little bit clunky in practice (in a literal sense, there's something just inherently clunky about the idea of nine tvs stacked on top of each other).
I really liked the video installation angle, both for this aforementioned reason, and also because film lends itself better to the idea of the 'portrait' being alive than an actual portrait does. Here, as the ravages of drugs and disease and immorality take their toll on the installation, the increasingly horrific Dorians on screen cavort about rather than just sitting there getting more repellent looking. The grotesqueness of these moving figures was so much more horrific and disgusting, and allowed the 'portrait' to feel sentient in a way I never got in the original.
Loved that.
Now, to the elephant: the AIDS crisis.
Eep.
This is where we start to get into the territory of 'things that make you go hmmm...'.
I don't think it was a bad choice to set this novel during the AIDS crisis, nor do I even think that Self's decision to turn Dorian into this angel of death figure who spread AIDS on purpose to his sexual partners was bad (it certainly gives us a clear example of what it was that made Dorian such a menace), but combined with the fact that every character we follow (Henry, Basil, The Ferret, Dorian) is a gay man who is a drug addict and engages in what Self goes out of his way to describe as debaucherous sex there are...implications.
I hadn't even been born yet when all of this was going on, but it's still a sore point in the queer community of today. The mismanagement of the crisis at the time, and the flagrant demonization of the (mostly) men suffering from the virus as merely reaping what they'd sown, of recipients of 'god's punishment' for sinful behavior-- something joked about by then press secretary to Ronald Reagan during a press conference where AIDS was referred to as the 'gay plague'-- did a lot to re-enforce already negative attitudes towards the gay community. Attitudes that were still incredibly prevalent when this novel was published in 2002.
But Self is British, writing a story that primarily takes place in London (with a few forays into the NYC art scene of the 80s). Maybe the Brits had a different, more measured, compassionate take?
Well. I think this quote from the then constable of Greater Manchester about covers it. According to
an article published on the BBC History Magazine website, he said of people with AIDS: "[they're] swirling around in a human cesspit of their own making."
Ok, so, comparable.
And Self, having been a heroin addict at the time this was all happening, definitely knew this.
Yet, in 'Dorian' while we get a perfect caricature of the 'human cesspit' (gay men and drug users--or both) that so many people believed spawned a disease that killed thousands and thousands of people, there is pithy little nuance, if any at all.
Henry Wotton is, by all accounts, not a nice guy, so doesn't he... deserve to be punished for that? And what of our 'angel of death', Dorian. Surely he, who knowingly transmits HIV to two innocent women (that we know of), and murders a few of his friends and allies, surely he deserves to be punished, right?
Even if I were a believer in punitive justice, I just can't imagine reading this without wincing a little, not least because Dorian Gray is well known as a cautionary tale, a parable about vice, with a very clear message: even if you could 'get away with it', you can never really get away with it, because the only way to 'get away with it' is to be damned. And staying young forever isn't worth that now, is it?
But Self didn't create a story weighing the pleasures of vice against eternal damnation; certain choices made in the epilogue make that clear by stripping back the 'magic.' So, what are we talking about? If this isn't a quasi-religious parable, then what exactly makes drug use and (gay) sex 'vices' worthy of punishment?
Something in that just feels a little off to me. At the very least it's a nuance that's missing, and it makes the novel weaker for its absence. Because all it leaves us with are: drug addicts and sexual degenerates (*source missing) are icky for...reasons.
Similarly, Self's employment of non-white characters as shorthand for 'slumming it' felt at best, thoughtless, and at worst, well...racist. Again, with a bit of nuance, it could have been fine. It's true that a lot of people of color get and got caught up in the worlds of drug abuse and prostitution, but Self doesn't explore that at all; these characters are just props. And even that could have been a fine choice if it had felt intentional, like that was how the Henry Wottons and Dorian Grays viewed these people--because they were titillated by the idea of 'slumming it', because they came from privileged backgrounds and saw no issue with using people from these marginalized groups as props. But we don't get that.
It's hilarious to me that one reviewer compared this novel to Hollinghurst's 'Line of Beauty' which also deals with the AIDs crisis and its impact on the gay community because while that may well be true, it reminded me of Hollinghurst for a totally different reason: Hollinghurst did this exact same thing in 'The Swimming-Pool Library': he used black and brown characters as props to demonstrate that many of his rich white characters liked to 'slum it.' Now, to be fair to Hollinghurst, I did note in my review of that novel that attempts were made at some kind of commentary, but here in 'Dorian', not even a whisper. And by saying nothing at all...he says a lot.
Well, geez, Ren, if you thought this was so reckless and possibly racist, what the hell are the 3 stars for: lambast it!
The truth is that despite these pretty fatal (at least to me) flaws, I did like a lot of it. As I said, I think some of the ideas are good ones. But we don't have to label heavy drug abuse and addiction as a 'vice' to recognize that it ruins lives, and that the dangers of it are oft at odds with the casual and often glamorized depiction of drug use in a lot of media. And we don't have to label people who enjoy casual sex as degenerates to recognize that that lifestyle comes with risks that a lot of people aren't educated to protect against. Especially queer people, who often aren't included in the already lacking sex education we get in school (if we do at all).
And it's not untrue that gay culture, or at least parts of it, do worship youth and beauty in unhealthy ways (but let's not pretend that the AIDS crisis had zero impact on that when for a lot of people there was an entanglement of youth and beauty equating being healthy). Self goes into this through the mouthpieces of two of his few straight characters, but his analysis lacks empathy, and again, the narrative is weaker for this.
But the writing, ooh, the writing. Self has some writing chops on him when we just look at the language and kind of ignore what it's saying. Apparently, it's typical of Self to juxtapose clever, satirical, and sometimes very beautiful writing with grotesque or otherwise dark subject matter. And boy is 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' the perfect story for that. Indeed, while Wilde used pretty, witty prose to skate over much of the debauchery and grime, Self uses pretty, witty prose to revel in it.
And we do get the witticisms, most of them (true to type) from Henry Wotton, and a lot of them are pretty good.
"Basil: don't they object to you smoking in here?
Henry: they object to just about everything I do in here, Baz. It's peculiar how terminal illness is so constrained; it explains what martyrs mean when they describe death as "liberation", hmm?" (p.92)
"It was amazing that he believed himself enough of a pussycat to affect a purr." (p.123)
"Neither death nor vulgarity is likely to be cured by modern medicine." (p.126)
"It's true that you're the spirit of the age, but it's drunk so much of you it's become cirrhotic." (p.243)
None of this touches on the cynical commentary on art that twines its way through 'Dorian', and which is probably worth a second read. And yes, I do think it's worth a second read, questionable though its intentional or unintentional politics might be, because the bones of a truly great 'Picture of Dorian Gray' redux are right there. If I do come back to this at a later point, I'll follow Henry's advice:
"You tell me how it was, Baz-- I'll listen to how it should have been." (p.92)
After reading over a decade and a half's worth of reviews on Goodreads covering this novel, it's clear that this is one of those 'minefield' works that everyone seems to love or hate, to find over-written or perfectly written, offensively brutish or daring to go where the original couldn't or wouldn't. Some people think it's a poor man’s Oscar Wilde pantomime, some people think this is better than its 1890 counterpart. Some people thought the reframing of the story around the AIDS crisis was brilliant, but there's also the question of the ethics (perhaps) of someone from outside the queer community writing a story like that.
Needless to say: there's a lot to unpack and even more to wade through before that unpacking can even begin. I get the impression, without even knowing much about the author, Will Self, that that's kind of the point. To that end: mission accomplished.
To start off, I think that we have to be very careful when criticizing works about queerness on the grounds of whether or not the author is themself queer. Unlike other marginalized identities (with some exception), queerness isn't something visible. Without getting too in the weeds about 'gay affects' and so on, suffice it to say that coming out is an experience largely unique to queer identity, with the exception of disability (a topic for another time).
I think a lot of times we forget that coming out, even now in the 2020s, can come with some hefty blowback, and that people who do can stand to lose a lot by doing so. So it's not really a surprise that many people choose not to, especially publicly. All this to say that forcing someone to come out for the sake of optics is...not good.
Having authentic representation in media is obviously very important, but it can be a bit of a teeter-totter, and we have to be careful, that's all.
Besides, it's not like something being 'authentic' automatically makes it good. There are plenty of 'pick-mes' out there who are more than willing to lick the boots of anyone who'll offer scraps of social mobility and clout even if it means throwing their community under the bus with their work.
Does it matter to me whether or not 'Dorian' is an authentically queer story from a queer writer? In this case, honestly, not really.
The criticism of 'Dorian' isn't whether or not it's 'authentic' (unlike something like the 'Three Day Road' Joseph Boyden scandal), it's whether or not it's homophobic, and even queer people can manage that on occasion. So let's explore.
Though published in 2002, 'Dorian' takes place between 1981 and the late-ish 1990s. This works well as a parallel to the original, setting both at the turn of their respective centuries, and using the AIDS crisis as an explicit plot point rather than the maybe, blink and you'll miss it implication of venereal disease in Wilde's novel. The heavy drug use implied in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' is brought to the forefront in 'Dorian.'
The bare bones of the plot itself faithfully follow the original ... to a point (and we'll get to that), so it's certainly recognizable to anyone familiar with the 1890 version. And really, I think that's who this is for. You don't have to have read 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' to get what Self is doing with this retelling, but I just don't know why a person would pick this up unless they were a fan of Wilde's story.
Let's return to the explicit drug use and sex and the AIDS crisis. These are both the strengths of 'Dorian' and also the things that make it so dicey.
The explicitness of the drugs and sex, and the direct connection of those things to the AIDS crisis are strengths because they allow for clearer stakes than 'The Picture of' had. In 'The Picture of' we're told that Henry Wotton is the poisonous influence that sends Dorian off along the track of a dangerous hedonism, but that Henry doesn't truly engage in this philosophy himself, at least, not in any serious capacity. How could he? Everyone would be able to see if he was indulging in the degree of opioid abuse Dorian is implied to indulge in, and it would at some point become obvious if he contracted one of the pesky STIs making the rounds in Victorian London at the time. And as a society man, that simply wouldn't do -- he'd be outcast.
But in Self's 'Dorian' Wotton does in fact practice what he preaches, and it does show, and in the end, well...let's just say he loses a lot because of it. This was cool, because it gives us this sharp contrast between the reality of heavy drug use and reckless, unprotected sex, and the glamorous fiction we get of such things through media and advertising through the paralleling of the experiences of Wotton and Dorian.
Self very cleverly ties the idea of the glamorization of drugs and sex in the age of television to Dorian's portrait by having the portrait in this version be a video installation. Very fitting, albeit a little bit clunky in practice (in a literal sense, there's something just inherently clunky about the idea of nine tvs stacked on top of each other).
I really liked the video installation angle, both for this aforementioned reason, and also because film lends itself better to the idea of the 'portrait' being alive than an actual portrait does. Here, as the ravages of drugs and disease and immorality take their toll on the installation, the increasingly horrific Dorians on screen cavort about rather than just sitting there getting more repellent looking. The grotesqueness of these moving figures was so much more horrific and disgusting, and allowed the 'portrait' to feel sentient in a way I never got in the original.
Loved that.
Now, to the elephant: the AIDS crisis.
Eep.
This is where we start to get into the territory of 'things that make you go hmmm...'.
I don't think it was a bad choice to set this novel during the AIDS crisis, nor do I even think that Self's decision to turn Dorian into this angel of death figure who spread AIDS on purpose to his sexual partners was bad (it certainly gives us a clear example of what it was that made Dorian such a menace), but combined with the fact that every character we follow (Henry, Basil, The Ferret, Dorian) is a gay man who is a drug addict and engages in what Self goes out of his way to describe as debaucherous sex there are...implications.
I hadn't even been born yet when all of this was going on, but it's still a sore point in the queer community of today. The mismanagement of the crisis at the time, and the flagrant demonization of the (mostly) men suffering from the virus as merely reaping what they'd sown, of recipients of 'god's punishment' for sinful behavior-- something joked about by then press secretary to Ronald Reagan during a press conference where AIDS was referred to as the 'gay plague'-- did a lot to re-enforce already negative attitudes towards the gay community. Attitudes that were still incredibly prevalent when this novel was published in 2002.
But Self is British, writing a story that primarily takes place in London (with a few forays into the NYC art scene of the 80s). Maybe the Brits had a different, more measured, compassionate take?
Well. I think this quote from the then constable of Greater Manchester about covers it. According to
an article published on the BBC History Magazine website, he said of people with AIDS: "[they're] swirling around in a human cesspit of their own making."
Ok, so, comparable.
And Self, having been a heroin addict at the time this was all happening, definitely knew this.
Yet, in 'Dorian' while we get a perfect caricature of the 'human cesspit' (gay men and drug users--or both) that so many people believed spawned a disease that killed thousands and thousands of people, there is pithy little nuance, if any at all.
Henry Wotton is, by all accounts, not a nice guy, so doesn't he... deserve to be punished for that? And what of our 'angel of death', Dorian. Surely he, who knowingly transmits HIV to two innocent women (that we know of), and murders a few of his friends and allies, surely he deserves to be punished, right?
Even if I were a believer in punitive justice, I just can't imagine reading this without wincing a little, not least because Dorian Gray is well known as a cautionary tale, a parable about vice, with a very clear message: even if you could 'get away with it', you can never really get away with it, because the only way to 'get away with it' is to be damned. And staying young forever isn't worth that now, is it?
But Self didn't create a story weighing the pleasures of vice against eternal damnation; certain choices made in the epilogue make that clear by stripping back the 'magic.' So, what are we talking about? If this isn't a quasi-religious parable, then what exactly makes drug use and (gay) sex 'vices' worthy of punishment?
Something in that just feels a little off to me. At the very least it's a nuance that's missing, and it makes the novel weaker for its absence. Because all it leaves us with are: drug addicts and sexual degenerates (*source missing) are icky for...reasons.
Similarly, Self's employment of non-white characters as shorthand for 'slumming it' felt at best, thoughtless, and at worst, well...racist. Again, with a bit of nuance, it could have been fine. It's true that a lot of people of color get and got caught up in the worlds of drug abuse and prostitution, but Self doesn't explore that at all; these characters are just props. And even that could have been a fine choice if it had felt intentional, like that was how the Henry Wottons and Dorian Grays viewed these people--because they were titillated by the idea of 'slumming it', because they came from privileged backgrounds and saw no issue with using people from these marginalized groups as props. But we don't get that.
It's hilarious to me that one reviewer compared this novel to Hollinghurst's 'Line of Beauty' which also deals with the AIDs crisis and its impact on the gay community because while that may well be true, it reminded me of Hollinghurst for a totally different reason: Hollinghurst did this exact same thing in 'The Swimming-Pool Library': he used black and brown characters as props to demonstrate that many of his rich white characters liked to 'slum it.' Now, to be fair to Hollinghurst, I did note in my review of that novel that attempts were made at some kind of commentary, but here in 'Dorian', not even a whisper. And by saying nothing at all...he says a lot.
Well, geez, Ren, if you thought this was so reckless and possibly racist, what the hell are the 3 stars for: lambast it!
The truth is that despite these pretty fatal (at least to me) flaws, I did like a lot of it. As I said, I think some of the ideas are good ones. But we don't have to label heavy drug abuse and addiction as a 'vice' to recognize that it ruins lives, and that the dangers of it are oft at odds with the casual and often glamorized depiction of drug use in a lot of media. And we don't have to label people who enjoy casual sex as degenerates to recognize that that lifestyle comes with risks that a lot of people aren't educated to protect against. Especially queer people, who often aren't included in the already lacking sex education we get in school (if we do at all).
And it's not untrue that gay culture, or at least parts of it, do worship youth and beauty in unhealthy ways (but let's not pretend that the AIDS crisis had zero impact on that when for a lot of people there was an entanglement of youth and beauty equating being healthy). Self goes into this through the mouthpieces of two of his few straight characters, but his analysis lacks empathy, and again, the narrative is weaker for this.
But the writing, ooh, the writing. Self has some writing chops on him when we just look at the language and kind of ignore what it's saying. Apparently, it's typical of Self to juxtapose clever, satirical, and sometimes very beautiful writing with grotesque or otherwise dark subject matter. And boy is 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' the perfect story for that. Indeed, while Wilde used pretty, witty prose to skate over much of the debauchery and grime, Self uses pretty, witty prose to revel in it.
On the windowsill the con-air unit gurgled and spat out tuberculosis air, while the roaches looked up quizzically from their lunch. They always do that, New York City roaches--look up quizzically from their lunch. It's as if they're constantly being reminded by each human arrival of the injustice of their position, caught with their mandibles rasping the cardboard trash instead of ordering their own fucking pizza on the phone." (p.85)
And we do get the witticisms, most of them (true to type) from Henry Wotton, and a lot of them are pretty good.
"Basil: don't they object to you smoking in here?
Henry: they object to just about everything I do in here, Baz. It's peculiar how terminal illness is so constrained; it explains what martyrs mean when they describe death as "liberation", hmm?" (p.92)
"It was amazing that he believed himself enough of a pussycat to affect a purr." (p.123)
"Neither death nor vulgarity is likely to be cured by modern medicine." (p.126)
"It's true that you're the spirit of the age, but it's drunk so much of you it's become cirrhotic." (p.243)
None of this touches on the cynical commentary on art that twines its way through 'Dorian', and which is probably worth a second read. And yes, I do think it's worth a second read, questionable though its intentional or unintentional politics might be, because the bones of a truly great 'Picture of Dorian Gray' redux are right there. If I do come back to this at a later point, I'll follow Henry's advice:
"You tell me how it was, Baz-- I'll listen to how it should have been." (p.92)
July 28, 2016
This was longlisted for the Booker back in 2002, so in some respects I read it as preparation for this year's Booker marathon. Also, it seemed an interesting premise - it reminded me that back in 1970 there was a filmic 'modern' update on the Dorian Gray story that also didn't quite come off, starring German slab of beef Helmut Berger in his prime. Anyway, I am of two minds with this, my first (and possibly last) Will Self tome. The lapidary prose is incredible, although perhaps not QUITE up to the standard set by Wilde himself in the original. And the transposition of the Victorian 'hedonism' to the gay & drug-addled demi-monde of the late 20th Century works, for the most part, even if Self seems much more at home with the drug world than he does the gay one. But he tries way too hard to effect some sort of 'American Psycho' style that just comes off as desperate, and his odd fixation on Warhol and Princess Di is just bizarre in retrospect. Plus, there is somewhat of a cruel streak in his equating the ravages of AIDS with debauchery that reeks of sophistry.
November 12, 2025
I thought this novel was brilliant when I read it years ago - I missed the controversy about a non gay person writing a novel about gays - should he have? of course he should have? Are we not supposed to read Anna Karenina because Tolstoy isn't a woman? let us be sensible - if Will Self had claimed he was gay that would be completely different - but to claim that some experiences only 'belong' to one group or another is just stupid - go back to literature's infancy - what did blind Homer know of battlefields?
I thought the novel clever, by the end far to clever but you can't expect a writer like Will Self to simply produce ersatz Wilde, but it is a far better novel then Wilde's original, a marvellous book, but not a great novel.
If you want to know about the novel I suggest reading the following reviews:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...
and
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
I thought the novel clever, by the end far to clever but you can't expect a writer like Will Self to simply produce ersatz Wilde, but it is a far better novel then Wilde's original, a marvellous book, but not a great novel.
If you want to know about the novel I suggest reading the following reviews:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...
and
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
December 22, 2016
Dorian is a good-looking, immoral young man who takes quite a lot of drugs, has unprotected sex with men and women and takes risks. He is one of a group of similarly decadent people, but as they get older and sicker, he seems untouched by his lifestyle. He is also the subject of a video installation.
Will Self has retold Oscar Wilde's story The Picture of Dorian Gray in a more modern setting, with Aids as a constant threat and he has done so brilliantly.
Will Self has retold Oscar Wilde's story The Picture of Dorian Gray in a more modern setting, with Aids as a constant threat and he has done so brilliantly.
September 27, 2009
I Liked this Better Than the Original
A literary re-write is a difficult thing to do well, but Will Self does it. I think Self works better within the restraints of this form,(versus his bloated books The Butt or The Book of Dave) and the new twists Self adds to the tale work wonders.
There is no one picture - there is a modern art installation of multiple videos of Dorian - and he has to track down and hide each and every one - adding to the drama which was missing in the original. The debauched, druggy Lords and Ladies work brilliantly in a mid-80s setting, as does the masterstroke of using the HIV epidemic to hasten the ageing process for all other characters. This also adds to the suspicion around Dorian's miraculous escape from such a fate.
In retrospect - I realise a little more about what was implied in the original The Picture of Dorian Gray - why Dorian's implied sleeping about was just so dangerous and evil (syphilis epidemic, anyone?) but, through no fault of Wilde's, he couldn't state those things emphatically, and I think the original is weaker for not being able to really get down and nitty gritty with those themes.
This modern retelling is slightly lighter on the quotable quips, but I think the novel is stronger for it. Quips are great fun, but with Wilde's original they can completely dominate scenes, whereas in this they merely give an impression of the characters. Henry is funny, acidic and mean, yes - but he doesn't set the tone for every single scene. He remains a character who narrator Self pulls the strings on - not vice versa.
A literary re-write is a difficult thing to do well, but Will Self does it. I think Self works better within the restraints of this form,(versus his bloated books The Butt or The Book of Dave) and the new twists Self adds to the tale work wonders.
There is no one picture - there is a modern art installation of multiple videos of Dorian - and he has to track down and hide each and every one - adding to the drama which was missing in the original. The debauched, druggy Lords and Ladies work brilliantly in a mid-80s setting, as does the masterstroke of using the HIV epidemic to hasten the ageing process for all other characters. This also adds to the suspicion around Dorian's miraculous escape from such a fate.
In retrospect - I realise a little more about what was implied in the original The Picture of Dorian Gray - why Dorian's implied sleeping about was just so dangerous and evil (syphilis epidemic, anyone?) but, through no fault of Wilde's, he couldn't state those things emphatically, and I think the original is weaker for not being able to really get down and nitty gritty with those themes.
This modern retelling is slightly lighter on the quotable quips, but I think the novel is stronger for it. Quips are great fun, but with Wilde's original they can completely dominate scenes, whereas in this they merely give an impression of the characters. Henry is funny, acidic and mean, yes - but he doesn't set the tone for every single scene. He remains a character who narrator Self pulls the strings on - not vice versa.
April 16, 2023
It's been a couple of days since I've finished this book and honestly, I'm still confused. I really can't say whether I liked it or not. I don't think that's a good sign, though... I admire Self's attention to detail and his descriptions are very vivid. I just can't tell what I was supposed to take away from this at all. 2.5 stars, rounded down due to the general confusion, I guess?
Read
December 11, 2022(I want to wait with my final judgement until after class in a few days because I need some discussions and different input to process this)
April 1, 2021
What an absolutely delightful surprise this book turned out to be. I've attempted reading this three times before, but never got beyond the first chapter. It wasn't surprising - I've read Will Self before and would have preferred to have not read those books. It was also a general reluctance - I remember, vaguely, reading Wilde's Dorian Gray and not being keen on his version of the debauchery either. But I really wanted to get done with this book today and grit my teeth until maybe chapter 3, after which I tore through the book. I knew what was going to happen, of course, but updating it to the pre-AIDS gay scene really did make sense, so did using Dorian to do what he did. I also liked the epilogue, which sort of turns the story on its head. It's cool.
It's not that I'm suddenly going to start reading all the Will Self books I took off my reading list after disliking the couple that I read. But if he decided to update another classic, I probably will give it a go.
It's not that I'm suddenly going to start reading all the Will Self books I took off my reading list after disliking the couple that I read. But if he decided to update another classic, I probably will give it a go.
July 5, 2020
Filthy and ruthless, yet a chewily delicious regurgitation of Oscar Wilde's trailblazing story of Dorian Gray. Set in 80's with the AIDS threat thrown into the chaos of an outrageous artistic milieu; Self pays a grand homage to the evergreen wicked and twisted tale.
.
The picture is updated to a video installation here, triggering the parallel downward spiral into world of hedonism. The story follows a circle of amoral decadent men between London and NY, sticking together as years age them by, sarcastically mirroring the world of the original prose, aptly supplemented by a thoroughly documented neon-lighted cynic world of those decades. Self has lavishly placed his characters with envisioned rottenness, that would make you chuckle and swear at the exploits of the events turning on your face. A genuine audacious take on the dysfunctional human tendency to "imitate" and adapt to the coursability of squalid realism. Though much of the story mirrors Wilde's arc with tongue-in-cheek linguistic upheavals sprinkled with dark humour mired in offensive yet exciting scenes including voyeurism, the suckerpunch of the story is revealed in the last chapter, crisply appended with a super-whack at the epilogue. Bordering with inceptional metafictional parody, the tale hangs you over a fitting grisly closure to revel at. A must read if you are a fan of the treacherous Dorian Gray!
.
The picture is updated to a video installation here, triggering the parallel downward spiral into world of hedonism. The story follows a circle of amoral decadent men between London and NY, sticking together as years age them by, sarcastically mirroring the world of the original prose, aptly supplemented by a thoroughly documented neon-lighted cynic world of those decades. Self has lavishly placed his characters with envisioned rottenness, that would make you chuckle and swear at the exploits of the events turning on your face. A genuine audacious take on the dysfunctional human tendency to "imitate" and adapt to the coursability of squalid realism. Though much of the story mirrors Wilde's arc with tongue-in-cheek linguistic upheavals sprinkled with dark humour mired in offensive yet exciting scenes including voyeurism, the suckerpunch of the story is revealed in the last chapter, crisply appended with a super-whack at the epilogue. Bordering with inceptional metafictional parody, the tale hangs you over a fitting grisly closure to revel at. A must read if you are a fan of the treacherous Dorian Gray!
April 19, 2007
Wonderful re-inventing of Oscar Wilde's classic 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' Set in hedonistic 1980/90's London and New York, this is the tale Wilde would have told if he'd been born in 1969. Dorian is the subject of a video installation by artist Baz Hallward, and as with the portrait in Wilde's original, the video image ages instead of arrogant, beautiful Dorian. Set against the AIDS epidemic as it is, a large proportion of the characters have contracted the diesese towards the close of the tale. However, although Dorian should have the diesese, and has in fact infected many others with it, he himself is as healthy and beautiful as he was when the video installation was made.
Wonderful book, but I would recommend reading 'The Picture of....' before you read this.
Wonderful book, but I would recommend reading 'The Picture of....' before you read this.
March 9, 2025
This startling re-working of Oscar Wilde’s wonderful story is longer than the original and even darker.
Dorian is set in the 1980s and 1990s opening at a time when gay culture was flowering in England, before those terrible days when Aids wreaked so much death. It coincides with the sanctification of Princess Diana and the triumph of Tony Blair and New Labour.
In this new version the portrait is a video installation rather than a painting and Wilde’s elegant prose is replaced by Self’s unashamed revelling in debauchery explicitly described, and appetite for hallucinatory highs brought on by serious quantities of Class A drugs.
The effect is unsettling. The story-line is genuinely horrific. This is brilliant writing but makes for an extremely unpleasant read.
Dorian is set in the 1980s and 1990s opening at a time when gay culture was flowering in England, before those terrible days when Aids wreaked so much death. It coincides with the sanctification of Princess Diana and the triumph of Tony Blair and New Labour.
In this new version the portrait is a video installation rather than a painting and Wilde’s elegant prose is replaced by Self’s unashamed revelling in debauchery explicitly described, and appetite for hallucinatory highs brought on by serious quantities of Class A drugs.
The effect is unsettling. The story-line is genuinely horrific. This is brilliant writing but makes for an extremely unpleasant read.
September 7, 2007
I learned that I should probably read the original as well. This one is interesting because it is written with accents and isn't apologetic ....at all my first instinct is todefinetly not like it but that is only because it is hard to find a character to sympathize with when all the guys (gay) in the book hate women but I think I need to look deeper
June 28, 2010
This book was going to get four stars from me, actually, until the epilogue which really kind of ruined the book for me. Stylistically really quite good, theoretically well thought out...I really like the comment on video being the replacement to painting in our era (and share Wotton's befazzlement as well as his bewilderment at that fact). Quite a good novel until the last forty pages or so.
September 5, 2014
Dorian Gray meets 80's gay London, complete with the arrival of HIV. Clever premise, brutal interpersonal dealings--but Allan Hollinghurst captures users of other people in 80's gay London so much better in The Line of Beauty--Hollinghurst is the one to read.
December 30, 2024
Self has carried out a literary task that he is arguably supremely qualified for on every level. As an infamous debauch, thrown off the Tory gravy plane for snorting heroin in the toilet, he can reinterpret and intensify Wilde's shocking scenes, scenes that were pored over as evidence of his moral bankruptcy in his libel trial, so they dismay the modern reader in equal measure to their century earlier counterpart. The contrast between Wilde's relatively tame misdemeanours and the horrors of smack and crack addiction spiced up with the gory details of Wotton's slow demise from AIDS adds to the neo-gothic horror show. Self certainly is a very clever writer, both as an observer of modern manners and technically. He swerves between styles, plays with motifs and trots out literary devices like McDonald's dishes out cheeseburgers. The end result is repulsive and captures in the reader the same sickening sense that everything has gone to the dogs that the not-so-chaste Victorians would have shuddered through back in 1890. It's fair to say that nothing of love or beauty shines from the pages of Dorian and that's just what Self set out to achieve.
November 7, 2023
The Epilogue is very interesting, just like the ending of A Pale View of Hills, deliberate breachs showed how tricky the narrative was. It is enough to turn "Dorian Gray" into "De Profundis", but a disgusting, lewd Love Letter.
"Look at me, Baz, look at me! I’m thirty-one years old. I’ve fucked hundreds of men and women – thousands, even. I’ve never used a condom in my life. Some nights I’ve taken it in the arse from twenty heavy-hitters. I’ve never stinted myself on booze or drugs, never. I take what I want when I want it. Yet I bear no marks; I look exactly the same as I did a decade ago when I came down from Oxford."
"—No need for those biologists to bother with genetic engineering, eh Dorian.
—Why’s that, Henry?
—Because you boys have beaten them to it. You’re all completely interchangeable: cocks, arseholes, jeans, brains."
"Look at me, Baz, look at me! I’m thirty-one years old. I’ve fucked hundreds of men and women – thousands, even. I’ve never used a condom in my life. Some nights I’ve taken it in the arse from twenty heavy-hitters. I’ve never stinted myself on booze or drugs, never. I take what I want when I want it. Yet I bear no marks; I look exactly the same as I did a decade ago when I came down from Oxford."
"—No need for those biologists to bother with genetic engineering, eh Dorian.
—Why’s that, Henry?
—Because you boys have beaten them to it. You’re all completely interchangeable: cocks, arseholes, jeans, brains."
June 2, 2021
This was a rather harsh retelling of the Dorian Gray story updated so that it takes place in the 1980s and 90s during the Aids epidemic and boldly going where Victorian convention prevented Oscar Wilde. Sex and drugs and debauchery.
August 12, 2024
Enjoyed myself!! Thanks to my freakish coworker for lending me this
January 21, 2026
This book is very clever. I suppose the same could be said of Wilde but the style here is too self-satisfied to get past. Escandalo-style writing only gets me so far.
June 23, 2023
yeah this bangs, and somehow more pretentious than the original
December 28, 2025
雖然能在些許內容裡感受到美和一絲詭異的神聖，但我閱讀過程中是非常不習慣的，無論情節還是表現手法都一樣……或許我對文學的理解/欣賞面向還是太粗淺，也很難暫時拋卻自己的道德觀等等，所以對書中劇情有些牴觸。
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April 2, 2023I wish Deportationgate could have gotten me out of reading this book altogether but i guess that was too much to ask
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