Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Dorian : [An Imitation] by Will Self ISBN: 0-8021-4047-5 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 09 February, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.33 (9 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Wilde would not approve
Comment: Wilde was a silver-tongued philosopher if there ever was one: his incisive witticisms weren't disembodied pretticisms, but a glittering facade for dark, multilayered meaning. In other words, he was a man of brilliant ideas and impeccable style, in many senses of the word. Will Self seems to be a man of mildly intriguing ideas and loathsome taste.
The punchline of the book offers some insights on the purpose, function, and effect of art. Besides that, the book is a tedious, torturous read (besides being gory to the point of swift apathy and desensitization.)
Self's voice is not only grating, but Self-congratulatory and Self-indulgent: he amuses himself with pointless, witless alliteration as often as his characters smoke, snort and shoot all kinds of hideous drug combinations. His treatment of his own characters is sadistic and completely lacking in affection.
The book is built around several mildly interesting comparisons with Wilde's original; the last, revealed in the epilogue, being the strongest. And yes, it's sort of interesting to compare 'moral corruption' with the transmission of a virus for which there is no cure. But his ideas lose all appeal thanks to the voices of the narrator and his aggravating flock of junkies (I speak French and I found the constant turd-like dropping of 'bons mots' infuriating; I can't imagine what it would be like for someone who can't understand them at all....)
Read the original and let your own imagination fit it to the context of the '80s and '90s.
Rating: 5
Summary: Brilliant
Comment: Other reviewers' complaints about this novel typically focus on what is graphically unpleasant about Self's depictions of his characters. Well, wake up. It isn't 1959 anymore, when this complaint was raised about William Burroughs's novel Naked Lunch. Will Self has created an extraordinarily inventive, imaginative rewriting of Wilde's novel, set in the 1980s and '90s. Only a writer as talented as Will Self could have achieved this re-vision so successfully. The novel is filled with brilliant one-liners, and the plot and characters have also been brilliantly re-imagined. Anyone who is bored by the tiresome "cleverness" of contemporary gay American fiction, with its endless pseudo-dilemmas (how is the protagonist supposed to choose between the cute do-gooder and the devilishly handsome studster who keeps tempting him?) will be grateful to be able to read a novel in which plot, character, and style actually conspire together to create something truly thoughtful and lasting.
Rating: 4
Summary: Confusing
Comment: This novel is at best confusing but still intriguing. Most of the time you aren't quite sure what is happening, since the book has a tendency to jump around a bit. But what I had loved it for was that it had captured the decandency of the original. Also was quite surprised too that Lord Henry Wotton was a bigger villain in this piece than the original. I loved the surprise ending.
 |
Title: Cock & Bull by Will Self ISBN: 0679750924 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 29 March, 1994 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
 |
Title: The Quantity Theory of Insanity by Will Self ISBN: 0679750940 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 19 March, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
 |
Title: Who Was That Man?: A Present for Mr. Oscar Wilde (The Masks Series) by Neil Bartlett ISBN: 1852421231 Publisher: Serpent's Tail Pub. Date: September, 1989 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
 |
Title: How the Dead Live by Will Self ISBN: 0802138489 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 02 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
 |
Title: Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys by Will Self ISBN: 0802137024 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: July, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
