Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Second Coming - William Butler Yeats

Things Fall Apart is one of those classics that you know you should read, but somehow never did. It is considered the archetypal modern African novel - it was the first truly popular work to break through the monopoly of white voices talking about Africa - and give Africans themselves a voice. Since the arrival of European colonialism, novels about Africa tended to be rather in the vein of H. Rider Haggard: native Africans were “uncivilized savages,” needing to be governed by the (occasionally) benevolent white saviors. In this book, Achebe pushes back against that paternalism and condescension to portray traditional African culture as a fully realized, civilized social system. True, it had its flaws - and Achebe doesn’t sugar coat them - but so do ALL cultures, our own as much as any. (And seriously, we still have a hell of a lot of “white savior complex” in our beliefs.) 

The book follows the life of Okonkwo, a leader in his tribe. Okonkwo’s life and style are a reaction against his own father, who was a lazy no-goodnik sort, who got into debt, neglected his family, and showed cowardice. In contrast, Okonkwo is determined to be hard working and wealthy. And he does achieve wealth and status as a result of his hard work. In that sense, he is admirable. However, he has a dark side as well. He feels his father was “feminine” rather than “masculine.” Weak rather than strong. And Okonkwo views strength and masculinity as connected with violence and anger. He hates his father’s idleness - but also his father’s gentleness. A passage from early in the book is illustrative:

Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father. 

In this, of course, is the seed of Okonkwo’s eventual destruction. (That shouldn’t be a spoiler - I mean, the book is called Things Fall Apart because things...fall apart.) His fear of appearing weak starts a sequence of bad luck or karma or whatever you want to call it. A young boy, who has been taken as payment for a murder committed by another tribe is given to Okonkwo to care for. Later, when the oracle decides that the boy should die, Okonkwo is warned by the eldest man in the tribe to avoid having anything to do with the killing. Unfortunately, Okonkwo fears being seen as weak (that is, womanly), and ends up striking the death blow. 

From there, things start to go to pieces. Okonkwo loses the respect of his eldest son, who was attached to the victim. His favorite daughter becomes gravely ill. And finally, at the funeral for the eldest man, his gun explodes during the salute, and kills the deceased’s son. By the law of the tribe, he is exiled for seven years to appease the gods. 

While Okonkwo is away, the white missionaries arrive, and proceed to set up British rule, a church, and attempt to dismantle elements of the tribal culture. The clash eventually becomes bloody, and things really go to hell from there. 

The novel is fairly short, and moves at a fast pace. Achebe does a great job of portraying the culture of a particular part of Nigeria in a way that explains things enough for an outsider to follow, while never getting bogged down in explanation. As I noted above, Achebe doesn’t use a soft focus, but strives for neutrality and accuracy. Thus, the culture is, like Okonkwo himself, complicated and nuanced. Like any culture, its best parts are admirable and serve to regulate human behavior in a way that benefits everyone. At its worst, though, it is misogynistic and obsessed with avenging insults. The missionaries are right in rescuing abandoned twins. (A practice that makes sense from a Darwinian point of view - in a situation of scarcity.) But they are all too often interested in imposing their culture rather than finding common ground. Even there, there is a contrast between the first missionary, who did a lot of listening, and the second, who was determined to win even if it took violence to “subdue the natives.” 

Similarly, though, in a clash of cultures, flexibility is needed on both sides. Okonkwo is as rigid as the British, and makes things worse rather than better. Since he cannot bend, he is broken. When he asserts his (toxic) masculinity, he alienates his family and his neighbors. As over 100 years of time has proven, the Europeans haven’t fared that much better in the long run. Colonialism has left immense damage, contributing to two world wars, enormous expenditures, and a legacy of failed states left behind and abandoned. 

I want to mention one more thing in the book that I thought was a really fantastic conversation. It takes place between Mr. Brown (the original, decent missionary) and Akunna, a leader in the tribe. Mr. Brown is trying to convert Akunna to monotheism, yet it turns out that they aren’t as far apart as Mr. Brown thinks. Akunna explains that he does indeed believe in a one god who is greater than all. However, just as Mr. Brown is a messenger from his religion, or the bureaucrats represent the queen, the lesser gods are the messengers and representatives of the high god Chukwa. In each case, the work is done through delegation. I was struck by how much this resembled the story of the centurion in the Gospel of Matthew:

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. ⁶ “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.”

Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?”

The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that moment.

Mr. Brown tries to argue with Akunna. But Jesus marveled at the centurion’s faith. It is a totally different response to a similar situation. I suspect Jesus would have been a heck of a lot different than the European missionaries. I also suspect that said missionaries never noticed the warning in this story: many are going to come from cultures all over the world and take their place at the great feast. But those who are so sure they alone have the truth are going to be tossed outside. 

In this way, Things Fall Apart is an excellent example of the beauty of stories that show a different point of view. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (one of my favorites) points out, our white, Euro-American view of Africa has been and continues to be dominated by one single story: a white European story. Achebe and his literary heirs have contributed a chorus of other voices, new stories, from new (and old) perspectives. It is a beautiful thing. 

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Source of book: I own this.

This review is dedicated to the memory of my cousin-in-law Jennifer, English teacher and all around great person. The world is a sadder place without her.

The Great Gatsby is one of those books I really should have read in high school, but never did. If I recall, we had to read an excerpt in 11th Grade, which is often the worst way to experience a novel. I mean, there are some books for which a single scene is enough, but for most, a scene out of context loses so much. In any event, I wasn’t impressed particularly, and never went back and read it.

In my 30s, I did read Fitzgerald’s first book, This Side of Paradise, and enjoyed it more than I expected. Since then, I kept saying I would read Gatsby, but never got around to it. In a way, I was a bit intimidated by it, because it was Jennifer’s favorite book to teach her high schoolers, and I worried I would disappoint her. (I have my insecurities, and have a bit of Imposter Syndrome. It doesn’t help that I was homeschooled and skipped undergrad college.) And then, now, I regret that I will never have a chance in this life to talk with her about it. Life sucks sometimes. So, Jen, see? I did get around to reading it eventually.

The Great Gatsby had an interesting history. Fitzgerald wrote it, and submitted it to a publisher, who suggested some revisions, which Fitzgerald made. The title was a problem for him, and many were suggested. Deadlines (and the fact that most of the titles, quite frankly, were lousy) meant one had to be picked. The publisher went with the title we know today, over Fitzgerald’s objections. I’m voting with the publisher on this one, as the title has turned out to be one of the most memorable and iconic in literature. It also is a reasonable introduction to the topics in the book.

The book wasn’t a total flop, but it wasn’t particularly successful. Critics didn’t like it much, and even the ones who did gave lukewarm reviews. It wasn’t until World War II that the book really caught on. The story behind that is fascinating, and I talked about it in my review of When Books Went to War. Without the Armed Services Edition of this book, it is possible it would still be languishing in obscurity.

These days, Gatsby is considered part of the American canon, even if many probably know the Leonardo Di Caprio movie better than the book. Opinions on the book are pretty polarized - a quick google search turns up both “Why I Despise The Great Gatsby” and “Why Gatsby Is So Great.” I’m more in the middle. It’s a good book. It’s not in my pantheon of greats. But you should definitely read it.

Since this book has been in print, it seems doubtful that anything I say could really be considered a “spoiler,” but consider yourself warned. Plot points are rather important to the book, and this review will contain spoilers.

The plot is thus: the narrator, Nick Carraway, moves from the Midwest to Long Island, and becomes the neighbor of a mysterious and fantastically wealthy man named Jay Gatsby. As it turns out, Gatsby - formerly Jimmy Gatz - was a poor young man who made his wealth by bootlegging, and has purchased this mansion and throws crazy parties for the sole purpose of winning his first love, Daisy. She got tired of waiting for him, and married Tom Buchanan, a scion of old money, and a real prick. Tom is having an affair with a married working-class woman behind Daisy’s back. Nick assists Gatsby in meeting Daisy (who is Nick’s distant cousin), and the two flirt with rekindling their romance. Tom and Gatsby confront each other in Manhattan, and Daisy is torn. She drives back with Gatsby, and hits and kills Tom’s mistress accidentally. She leaves the scene of the accident. The husband, thinking Gatsby is the killer, murders him and then kills himself. Nick is left to pick up the pieces Gatsby leaves behind.

The book is pretty heavy on symbolism, and can be read as a critique of both the Roaring 20s and American materialism in general.

The criticisms of the book are, for the most part, valid enough. The characters are loathsome, yet without the psychological depth that makes one like them as characters. Certain points - and motivations - are simply glossed over.

However, I do think that one objection misses an important point. It is true that Gatsby is morally vacuous in many ways. The title character is intended (I would guess) to be admired, despite his flaws. Sure, he may have made his fortune illegally, attempted to break up a marriage, throws orgiastic parties, encouraged a hit-and-run, and so on, but he is true to his first love. Whatever. And true, Nick, who kind of stands in for the reader and acts as the conscience of the book, is pretty morally questionable himself. After all, he basically stands by and watches Tom’s philandering, and much more. And then, after all is said and done, gets to go back to the Midwest full of self righteousness.

I think, though, that this is indeed missing the crucial truth: because we tend to be Nick, and be like Nick, Fitzgerald is actually implicating us in this vacuousness. To come away with a sense that we are supposed to feel good about ourselves, secure in our righteousness, having just gawked at wealth and moralized against it while admiring it, is wrong, in my view. It is taking the easy way out, one without self-examination. One objection to this view might be that Fitzgerald arguably didn’t intend to implicate Carraway - and by extension himself - in this. So what? Honestly, what my reading of Fitzgerald has revealed is that he very often lacked self awareness - and yet somehow managed to tell the unflattering truth about himself. (The last line in This Side of Paradise is fantastic - and there are plenty of moments like that in both books.) It may have been unintentional, but it is still there and meaningful.

It really is an indictment of many aspects of American character as well. The myth of the self-made man - and the idea that the only thing holding the poor back is their lack of character. In general, the conflation of wealth and privilege with morality. Our fascination with wealth and its trappings. Our alternative morality that we apply to our superstars. (See The Toupee Who Shall Not Be Named and Evangelicals…) It is easy to see why this book is a popular one for teachers. There is plenty to discuss, and fairly obvious metaphors. It is also short, which has to be an advantage.

Gatsby isn’t as full of zingers as some books, but it does have some delightful word pictures, and some of the most epic (and understatedly written) party scenes in literature. In particular, the line, “I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited - they went there.” was fantastic. It sounds almost like something Groucho Marx would say.

I mentioned the final line, which is worth quoting. It follows an extended section where Nick (who has basically had to handle the fun of notifying the few relatives and fewer friends of Gatsby’s demise) muses on the fallout of the whole thing, and life itself. Plenty of books tend to either ramble at the end, or come to a close all too abruptly. This one really feels like it is neither too long nor too short, but a perfect and beautiful conclusion.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter -- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….And one fine morning --

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

***

It isn’t too often that a book cover becomes iconic in and of itself. Artist Francis Cugat designed the cover before the novel was completed. Fitzgerald reportedly liked it so much, he claimed that he had written the cover art into the book. 

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

Every year since I started my series of book reviews, I have taken the time in February to observe Black History Month, and read a book by an African American author. Here are the past selections:

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (2014)

The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois (2013)

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (2012)

50 Years and Other Poems by James Weldon Johnson (2011)

This year, I am also reading a few other books related to the African American experience, although they were written by whites, so they don’t count toward my project. These books are:

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark Noll

Red Tails, Black Wings by John Holway

I have also read and reviewed a few related books in the past, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (by an African novelist), and The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (whose grandmother was a an Afro-Caribbean slave.)

***

Kindred was recommended to my by my cousin-in-law, who teaches high school English, and shares a love of poetry and the power of the story with me. She uses this book as part of her own curriculum, and felt that it was good for connecting younger readers with the realities of the past through a riveting story.

I must say, I agree. I enjoyed the book thoroughly (although enjoyed may be the wrong word for a book with a harrowing account of life as a slave), and had difficulty putting it down.

Technically, Kindred is a science fiction book. It managed to be placed in the general fiction section of our library, despite Butler’s reputation as a SciFi writer. She herself felt it was more of a “grim fantasy” because she did not resort to science to explain the time travel elements of the book. While Kindred remains her most popular novel, she won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards for her other fiction. SciFi tends to be dominated by white males, so her accomplishments are doubly impressive. 

The plot of the book is interesting. Dana, an African American woman, has recently moved with her white husband, Kevin to a new home, when she passes out and comes to in 1815 Maryland. As she later is able to determine, she is summoned by Rufus Weylin, the son of a slave owner - and one of Dana’s ancestors. It appears that when Rufus is about to die, Dana is summoned to save him. She returns to her own time whenever she fears for her own life. Like many a time travel plot before, she finds little time has passed in her own time.

While in Antebellum Maryland, Dana (and on one trip, her husband) experience the horrors of slavery. Because she is alone and out of her time, Dana cannot directly control her experiences, and must both suffer what comes and compromise with her modern beliefs in her own dignity and humanity in order to survive. Thus, she must submit to slavery and the groveling that goes along with it, suffer beatings, and do what she must in order that she keep Rufus (and thus her future self) alive.

This is particularly uncomfortable because Rufus has to take his slave Alice (formerly free, but enslaved after she helped her husband - a slave - escape) as his concubine. One of their children will be Dana’s ancestor, so it has to happen. But that really requires that Rufus rape Alice, and Dana kind of has to avoid preventing this. Real fun.

But of course, isn’t this the same dilemma faced by slave women? Should they submit? Or should they run or attempt to kill their master, knowing either would result in death? And this is just one of the issues faced. One must survive. And so, as slaves have always done, they adapt to stay alive.

On a related note, Butler portrays the slaves that go along with the system in a sympathetic light too. (Apparently, she did so in response to a young activist who couldn’t understand why the older generations went along with injustice.)

It was striking that both Rufus and his father Tom aren’t caricatures. Unlike, say, Simon Legree, they are not evil incarnate. They are not really worse than average, although they are perhaps a bit uncouth. Tom isn’t gratuitously brutal, but feels he must punish runaways or the whole of his wealth will crumble. It isn’t about about sadism, but about doing what was expected within an evil system. Thus, to a degree, Tom and Rufus are sympathetic, and this is a disturbing problem. They would have been normal, decent people in their time, but they still inflict great damage on their “property.”

I found it interesting the battle between the past and the “present” in both Dana and Kevin. Kindred was written in 1979, and Butler knew well that interracial marriage - even in the California of the late 1970s - was frowned on. Heck, it wasn’t even permitted in most northern states until the Loving Supreme Court case repealed laws forbidding it in 1967 - a mere 12 yeras before this book was written. Still, Dana and Kevin are both progressive sorts, believing in equality between the races - and the sexes. For both of them, it is a serious culture shock.

But what bothers them both is how easy it was for them to accept and acquiesce to the past reality. By necessity, Kevin and Dana pretend that they are master and slave, although everyone (rightly) assumes that they are also lovers. This bothers Kevin enough that after he is stranded without Dana for a five year period, he moves north to avoid having to completely compromise his beliefs. In some ways, he feels that he is at more risk than she is, because he is in a position of privilege.

Butler draws out another key issue by using this tension. Dana fully expects to be treated as a human being. But she is viewed as subhuman by those around her in her trip to the past. Both whites and blacks alike accuse her of “acting white” because she insists on being treated with some degree of dignity. For Rufus, this is maddeningly difficult, even though he knows Dana’s real nature, and Dana repeatedly finds herself in trouble because she cannot bring herself to lower herself at all times.

No one should think, though, that this was merely a problem in the past. As recent events around our nation have proven, it is still deadly dangerous for a young African American male to insist on being treated like a human being - like a man - by authority figures. “Bring it, you fucking animals!” was said proudly on live camera, betraying the still widespread view of blacks as subhuman and unworthy of the dignity accorded to whites. “Acting white” still has its consequences. (Seriously, it doesn’t take all that long to figure it out if you actually listen to the experiences of African American colleagues and friends.)

While Butler didn’t shy away from social commentary on her own, modern times, she also seemed optimistic about the future. Even though Dana’s relatives were unhappy with the possibility that her property could be inherited by and white man, and Kevin’s relatives refused to accept a black family member; despite even the obnoxious behavior of many around them after they became a couple; Dana and Kevin represent the future. A future that we continue to work toward. When my parents married, interracial marriage was barely legal, and for most, unthinkable. The few that did so often suffered rejection by their families. Now, one in twelve marriages is interracial, and the numbers are undoubtedly higher in my native state of California. I see more and more that the stigma is fading, and I believe it will continue to do so for my children, for whom mixed-race friends - and mixed race families - are the norm, not the exception.

Kindred is a compelling and unflinching look at the past. Most of us learn best through stories, and I think that is why this book was so moving. More than any textbook description, even more than the pictures of slaves scarred by beating, a story like this can and will bring out the reality in a way that feels real. Abraham Lincoln once greeted Harriet Beecher Stowe as “the little woman who started this great war.” There is little doubt that Uncle Tom’s Cabin did more than any academic argument to stir up opposition to slavery. For those of us seeking to understand the slave experience and its lingering effects today, stories like Kindred are a vital resource, and as necessary to us today as Stowe’s book was 160 years ago. Stories that give voice to the African American female, both the author and the narrator, are even more vital, given the domination of the discussion by white males in times past - and all too often our own.

Note on young readers:

I read a lot of crazy stuff when I was young. So did my wife. I would not consider myself particularly sheltered. That said, I would be hesitant to introduce this book to a younger reader. High school would be a great age. Maybe 8th grade for a mature reader who isn’t too prone to nightmares.

Many things have been called “adult” as a euphemism for smutty. I would label this book as dealing with adult themes, and thus best suited for those who can handle some degree of intensity. It is a real page turner, and yet it is also hard to bear for an extended period. I found myself having to take a turn about the yard to clear my head a few times, because it was overwhelming. Obviously, this is a sign of a well-written story. But it is also a testament to the power with which Butler brings her world alive.

I do intend to introduce my children to this book - but when they are a little older.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Source of book: Borrowed from the library. I haven’t found a good used hardback yet…

This book is the October selection for the Reading to Know Book Club, hosted by my friend Carrie at readingtoknow.com. This will be my final book club review for this year. Next month is Little Women, which I have read, but didn’t find all that interesting, so I’m skipping reading it again. December is A Tale of Two Cities, which I read just a few years back. I liked it, but decided to skip reading it again both because I did recently read it and because December is my most insane music month, so I seriously doubt I would have time to tackle a Dickens novel. I will note in advance that A Tale of Two Cities is only novel for which I can quote the beginning and the ending. No other novel has such memorable lines at both ends. So, if you haven’t already read it, this might be a good chance.

This book also fits into the category of “Books I Should Have Read in High School.”

Photograph by Napoleon Sarony, 1882

I should point out at the outset that I love Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest is, hands down, one of the wittiest and most quotable plays of all time. Any time one needs a pithy - or poisonous - quote, Wilde is always a good bet. So I rather expected to find some good lines in this book, and I was not disappointed.

The central idea of The Picture of Dorian Gray is so well known that it isn’t much of a spoiler to disclose it. Dorian Gray remains young and unspotted by his vice while a portrait of him suffers the consequences of his debauchery.

The plot is also a variation on the age-old story of Faust. The German legend is best known through the plays by Christopher Marlowe and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In the earliest versions, Faust sells his soul to the devil for early knowledge (contrasted with heavenly wisdom). In Marlowe’s version, Faust seeks power as much - perhaps more than - knowledge. Goethe makes Faust’s bargain to be the result of his quest for something that transcends the limits of human knowledge and experience - almost the flip side of the original. (I am currently reading part two of Goethe’s Faust, so I will have more thoughts on this soon.)

Wilde makes Dorian Gray rather more shallow than Faust. Where Faust seeks knowledge, power, or transcendence, Dorian wishes to look pretty. He is horrified initially at the thought that he will age and become ugly. At one point, he cannot decided which is worse: to show the signs of cruelty and debauchery, or to simply look old.

He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age.

This vanity, combined with the new-found temptation of the experiences of hedonism, leads him to wish that the portrait would age, rather than himself.

The part of Mephistopheles is played by Sir Henry, who resembles Algernon Moncrief (in The Importance of Being Earnest), except more jaded and worldly-wise. He tempts Dorian (and everyone who will listen) with a delightfully witty never-ending stream of paradoxes and repartees that contain a mixture of truth and poison. He is a living representation of the hedonistic philosophy. Pleasure is everything. Aesthetics is everything.

And he does have some pleasing lines.

I make a great difference between people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool.

Or this one, which has more than a grain of truth in it:

Each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. The rich would have spoken of the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour.

It’s hard to believe this wasn’t written yesterday. (Do a web search for McDonalds and how to live on minimum wage.) And there are many, many more. In most cases, there is a grain of truth, mixed with an utterly selfish and self absorbed view of life. At its core, however, it is an empty philosophy, as Wilde makes utterly clear by the end of the book. Henry, and eventually his acolyte Dorian, are incapable of love. Infatuation, yes. (Dorian’s passion for and eventual destruction of, Sybil parallels Faust’s relationship with Margaret.) True love in the sense of believing others exist beyond their capacity for giving one gratification, no. Sir Henry has disdain for his wife (who eventually leaves him for another man) and indeed women in general. One of many examples:

My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.

This inability to love results in one of the most disconcerting scenes in the book. Dorian tells Henry that he is reforming, and that he did a good deed. Henry (and the portrait) reveal that Dorian has merely done good out of vanity and a quest for sensation. Exactly the same reason he engaged in his life of pleasure and debauchery. Although he feels that true repentance would give him freedom, Dorian resists to the end, and eventually destroys himself as a result.

The Picture of Dorian Gray caused a huge scandal when it was published. Before it even made it there, it was revised in part to get past the censors. The revisions seem rather minor to us in retrospect. They were primarily the modification of certain homoerotic elements which might lead to the idea that the painter Basil and Dorian were sexually involved. Nothing even remotely explicit. Perhaps the strongest line was Basil’s remark, “It is quite true that I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man usually gives to a friend.” Actually, this isn’t any stronger than the words King David and his friend Jonathan say to each other in the Bible, but the interpretation of the words was undoubtedly colored by Wilde’s own homosexuality. Wilde was pretty widely suspected of homosexual relationships when he wrote Dorian Gray, but the real scandal came later. As a result of a public accusation (in a manner that would have led to a duel a few decades earlier), Wilde sued a man who accused him of sodomy. In the course of the trial, some of Wilde’s letters came to light, and he was eventually convicted and sent to prison for a couple of years. So yes, the censors seem to have overreacted a bit to some fairly mild elements.

While the reaction to the homoerotic undercurrent was understandable, the work was also condemned by many who felt it condoned hedonism.

One wonders if these critics actually read the book.

If anything, Dorian Gray is a compelling argument against hedonism. It is hard to think of a better vision of just how empty selfish pleasure really is. Sir Henry sounds great. One can see how the naive and vain Dorian would become attracted to his ideas. But the point isn’t that Dorian is punished by a cruel society that doesn’t understand him. Because society loves him, for the most part. He gets his way, and does what he wants. He even seems to escape conscience itself until he crosses over his own line and commits a murder.

And yet he becomes increasingly empty and unhappy. He escapes the physical consequences of his sin, but continues to pay the price in his soul - and indeed in his very essence. That which he believed would lead to happiness destroys him inside long before it leads to his final destruction. “"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, borrowing from Samuel Johnson’s Latin aphorism.) It is difficult to imagine a more unhappy man than Dorian. And this encourages debauchery?

Perhaps one like Miss Prism (also in Earnest) might interpret it that way. (Such people as my wife knew from her teen years - see the note at the bottom of this review - definitely fell in this category.) If one cannot abide the idea that anyone would ever do anything wrong, even in literature, then this book would be dangerous indeed. (And heaven forbid anyone of this opinion would actually read the Bible. Good lord, there is a lot of sex and violence in there!) But, if one looks beyond the presence of genuine evil in this book, one might note that Wilde’s point is the vanity of, well, vanity and hedonism. As Wilde himself puts it, "The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”

At his best, Wilde is perceptive in his criticisms of the hypocrisy of society, not because he comes out and says “society is bad and hypocritical” but because he strips away the pretty veneer. Sir Henry isn’t really saying things that we don’t all think. He just says them outright rather than coating them in a shell of respectability. Dorian isn’t doing anything we don’t do. He just does them to the extreme. We are all Dorian Gray - and Faust, which is why the legend endures. All of us have our moments of compromise when we think we will not be caught. If we are honest with ourselves, we would undoubtedly discover that Dorian’s bargain would be hard to resist. If our selfishness were truly hidden, and we would never pay the consequences, what would we do? The answer lies in the everyday actions we take to reduce others to means of our fulfilment. (This one thing alone keeps divorce lawyers in business.) And then we justify our selfish actions in ways that seem to leave our own souls unspotted. But what if someone could look at that magical portrait of our souls. What would they see? Would we really want anyone to know what we really look like? Do we really want all our motives laid bare? If one can answer “yes” to that question, one must be a thorough hypocrite indeed.

Note on the ennui of debauchery:

Another quote that I couldn’t figure out how to fit into the main body of my review:

There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them; strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.

Wilde is on to something here. Dante, for example, distinguished between the sins of passion and the sins of deliberate planning. Francesca da Rimini and her lover Paolo are in the outer circles because their adultery was a sensual affair, while the worst punishment (being stuck in Satan’s mouth) was reserved for infamous traitors such as Judas Iscariot. Somehow, the line between sins of a lack of self control and sins purely to gratify the ego are different in our minds. (Perhaps they are different in an absolute sense too.) This is a powerful description. The acts no longer bring pleasure to the senses, but they feed the pride. An interesting idea to ponder.

Note on the most famous quote from this book:

I had heard this numerous times before, but did not realise it came from Dorian Gray - and was one of Sir Henry’s fun lines:

When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.

Now, confirmation bias is a legitimate problem here. Still, my own practice indicates that Wilde (and Sir Henry) were speaking at least a partial truth. In my experience, one facet in particular does appear to be nearly universally true: A man who has had a long and happy marriage either dies soon after she does, or remarries quickly - and often unwisely.

The other parts of this are less universal. I do see a general tendency after the breakup of a bad marriage. Women tend to think that they just picked badly and will do better next time. And then, they seem to pick, as we lawyers say, “The same person, with a different face.” And men, while they may enter a new relationship after a bad breakup, are more resistant to marrying and having children with a new woman. Once bitten, twice shy. Finally, I do think that one finds more women who remain widows after the end of a good marriage. Although, this may also be due to the fact that men generally tend to die earlier - so there may not be much to choose from after a certain age.

Note on Wilde’s view of his own book:

I am hesitant to take anything Wilde said entirely at face value, because his tongue was pretty much grafted into his cheek. That said, this is Wilde’s statement about Dorian Gray, in a letter to an admirer of the book:

I am so glad that you like that strange coloured book of mine: it contains much of me in it. Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry is what the world thinks of me: Dorian what I would like to be - in other ages, perhaps.