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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Oscar's tragic life, October 6, 2009
This review is from: Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde (Hardcover)
When still in school Thomas Wright resolved to read all the books Oscar Wilde had read, and although he admits at the end of this book that he didn't succeed, he did read enough of them to write this fascinating account of Oscar Wilde's life through Wilde's abiding passion, books.
Wright's book opens with the tragic sale of Wilde's library to pay his debts following his imprisonment in 1895 and then moves on to give an account of his upbringing in Dublin with the Celtic folk tales his mother loved. In Dublin's Trinity College Wilde met his mentor in Greek studies, Professor Mahaffy, and in Trinity and Oxford's Magdalen College, Wilde expanded his reading into the classics of the Latin and Greek civilizations, such as Livy, Euripides and Homer. From there Wright takes us through Wilde settling in London, his marriage in 1883, home life, and fine library in Tite Street, laid out and decorated to Wilde's exacting aesthetic requirements.
In 1891 Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas and their mutual searches for rentboys on the streets near London's House of Commons began. Their relationship revolted Bosie's father, the volatile and unstable Lord Queensbury, and when Queensbury publicly accused Wilde of sodomy Wilde, at Bosie's prompting, prosecuted Queensbury for criminal libel. It was a fatal mistake. Queensbury's counsel, Wilde's fellow Dubliner and future leader of Ulster Unionism, Edward Carson, cleverly trapped Wilde in his own eloquence and allowed him incriminate himself. Not only did Wilde's prosecution collapse but Wilde found himself being prosecuted for his homosexuality. He was convicted and Wright recounts Wilde's terrible imprisonment and concludes his story with Wilde's final years, the collapse of his creative drive and lonely death in Paris surrounded by his last few hundred books, including works by Balzac, Huysmans, and Flaubert's 'The Temptation of Saint Anthony.'
The story is entertainingly told through the books Wilde was reading and writing about, from his favourites, such as Pater's `Studies in the History of the Renaissance', to the books he scornfully derided such as the now forgotten Harry Quilter's `Sententiae Artis' a book of bourgeois art criticism. Wright includes in his tale interesting accounts of Wilde's library, reading habits - Wilde's was a prodigious intelligence and his ability to read in Latin, Greek and numerous European languages impresses no less than his ability to read a book in detail in a matter of minutes - book designs, favourite book shops and numerous other details of his bookish life which will rivet the attention of any bibliophile and give him many hours of entertaining reading and many ideas for further reading.
There's little to criticize in this book but at times the author's obvious enthusiasm gets the better of him and he offers conjectures on Wilde's life with little basis in fact, even going so far as to speculate, incredibly, that Wilde may have intended his downfall as a form of Greek tragedy.
In addition to Wright's own easy writing style, the book is laced with great lines from Wilde himself. What reader who has waded through the sickly sentimentality of Dickens will not erupt in laughter when he reads Wilde's comment `One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.' And, appropriately, the best line in the book is Wilde's, when he said, in reference to the Bible `When I think of all the harm that book has done, I despair of ever writing anything equal to it.'
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How Oscar Wilde was Shaped by Books, June 3, 2011
Oscar Wilde is best known for his literary works, especially the Importance of Being Earnest, and, for his trouble with the law for his homosexual activities. In this book, we get to see how Wilde's life was shaped by books. The shaping started at home where his mother was a poet of high regard and his father was an accomplished surgeon and archeologist. This domestic makeup proved to be fruitful for Wilde as both parents exposed him to the classics, important contemporary works and, critically, Irish folk literature, which would come to heavily influence Wilde's work.
Wilde was precocious and was not afraid to flaunt it. He took first place in exams in college and loved to engage in circles where literary themes and the arts were a focus. He was what was known as an aesthete or someone who valued the meaning that art gives to life more than the detailed descriptions of reality, which were found to deprive life of its transcendent meanings. Wilde was also very much into playing the roles for which he wanted to be perceived. The author refers to him as a "dandy", apparently someone who dresses, speaks and engages the world from an artistic perspective.
Built of Books takes us through the various works and authors who influenced not only Wilde's literary output but also the way he actually lived his life. Author Wright contends that Wilde's affinity for younger men was engendered by the works of Plato and other early Greek authors whose culture idealized and encouraged relationships between older and younger men. There are other examples of books direct influence throughout: characters in Wilde's storied read books that influenced Wilde, for example.
As with other works of this nature, the book is filled with references to both books and authors that any book lover is sure to hunt down: Walter Pater and J.A. Symonds, for example, are but two authors whose works I would now like to read.
The one disappointment in this otherwise excellent book was the author's final chapter. In it he recounts his journey in putting the book together. His writing suddenly seems forced, almost as if he is trying to copy the eloquence and brilliance of his subject; the attempt fails, and rather annoyingly. This aside, the book provides a different perspective on a life that is otherwise known for other matter, but which was ultimately a life "built of books".
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6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Wilde Speculations, May 24, 2009
This review is from: Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde (Hardcover)
There have been many books on Wilde since his death, some by his friends Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions (Wordsworth Literary Lives), some by enemies Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas, some by writers focusing on his trial Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, his sexuality The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde and his legacy Talk on the Wilde Side. The best and standard work is by Richard Ellmann Oscar Wildewho strove to keep the writing and the outsized life in some sort of balance. But as Wilde himself said, most authors prefer to focus on the place he used his "genius" rather than his "talent".
Professional writers are now at a loss for a new angle to approach such a well documented and discussed life. And so comes this new work, a biography of Wilde as seen through the books he read or owned. While often fascinating for those Wilde completists among us, it would hardly be the first book to introduce Wilde to a new audience.
Part of the problem here is despite all that is known about Wilde, with his vast collected letters, contemporary articles and memoirs by seemingly everyone he knew, there is an overwhelming amount of speculation every step of the way. Scattered among sentence after sentence are the words "perhaps", "doubtless" (which does a better job sowing seeds of doubt), "no doubt" (for the author perhaps), "it is indeed tempting to think", "it is quite possible", etc. littering the text. And then firm conclusions follow this sandy bedrock of facts leaving a wobbly argument attempting to stand up.
Also the text is hopelessly padded with plot summaries of the books Wilde did or may have read; do we need a detailed synopsis of THE RED AND THE BLACK and LOST ILLUSIONS? A good editor could have tightened this book into a lengthy article but probably a very good one.
Because Wright is a good writer. His style is clear and engaging and he has assembled some of the more interesting facts of Wilde's life into short breezy and entertaining chapters. Many of his speculations are thoughtful and intriguing. It is apparent that much work went into the reassembling and examining of Wilde's library. It's just that not every act of hard labor need be made into a book.
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