Status Updates From Oscar's Books

In my first blush of finishing this book, I must not give into immediately awarding it five stars; I am still annoyed about those missing plates. I am touched by the author’s mission, though, and really think he did an amazing job. He certainly gave me a lot to look for.

Thank you, archived.org. You have proved that I am not crazy. I swear this author keeps referring to various plates, but the book includes no plates. That said, if I check the UK edition, “Oscar’s Books,” on archive.org, the plates are between page 226 and 227.

A little surprised at Thomas Wright’s comments on Le Morte D’Arthur, which I remember being a rather lovely experience. Not that it wasn’t a challenge when I read it, I just don’t see why it should necessarily be more challenging than the other stuff Wilde read or that it should have given him a particularly hard time.

“Streaky bacon!” That’s what “Vathek” was, streaky bacon! In other news, everything I read always ends up relating to something else that I just read.

The first third covers the Irish myths that Wilde imbibed at 1 Merrion Square, as well as his early encounters with poetry (Whitman, Swinburne, Wordsworth, Keats) and precocious love for French novels. Then moves to his time at Oxford, looking at both formal classical scholarship (Mahaffy et al.) as well as informal aesthetic readings (Plato’s Symposium sticks out, as well as contemporaneous works by his tutors).

I have to read this for grad class and the only part that is getting me through this boring ass book is the ascertation (with proper sources) that Oscar Wilde munched and crunched on little corners of book pages.