Alas, time flies... The last few weeks were quite busy for me, which is the reason for breaking my initial resolution to blog at least once a week...
So here I am, finally back again. The weather has changed considerably, the mild days are gone and today it's quite misty and chilly again. The nice pic, which isn't from my personal archive but from
this lovely website, has probably been taken some days ago - I very much doubt that the trees are still this much covered with leaves...
I've finally finished
Dorian Gray - what can I say? I loved it, it was just the right thing I needed. I have to confess, though, that at first it was slightly irritating to have that much dialogues in prose - dialogues that just don't seem natural at all, considering that most of them consist of bonmots (=> Oscar Wilde!), but then, the whole narration is a mockery of the concept of naturalness (which is IMO a rather interesting approach to the [modern] juxtaposition of art vs. nature and all the stupid hypocrisy that goes along with it). I'm smitten by Lord Henry, who has become one of my favourite all-time villains... There are various parallels between him and the traditional role of Mephisto, the seducer: he initiates the moral corruption of a blameless young person. It's fascinating to notice that he always appears in the right moment, always has the right words to persuade and wipe away a guilty conscience. And, above all, he's always suave and relaxed, as if knowing nothing could happen to him, and if it does eventually, it's but a welcome distraction of everday life.
One of the nice things about
Dorian Gray is that it isn't moralising. At least not too much. Of course, Oscar Wilde had to add a few critical comments to distance himself from the moral transgressions depicted in the novel and to alter or delete some slightly homoerotic passages. Nevertheless it was considered as "contaminating" and was a scandal. Same years later it was even used as evidence against Wilde in his trial.
Also the last chapter of the book is quite interesting concerning the editing process: it was added a few years after the first publication and renders a whole new perspective to the whole story - it brings forth the Gothic twist in the novel. In my edition, it merely consists of five pages, but without them, it would have been a completely different text... I won't go into further details now, maybe you might want to pick up the book one day and find out by yourself...
My current read, however, is something entirely different -
Extremely Lound and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. The title has always caught my eyes in the bookstore and now there's even
a movie adaptation coming out soon (with quite an interesting cast, btw: Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, John Goodman, Max von Sydow and James Gandolfini!!!), so I've thought it's high time to finally read it...
What are you reading at the moment?
