The Picture of Dorian Gray!
Ahh, Dorian Gray. The eternal icon of breath-taking, captivating, but inevitably and tragically ephemeral beauty. If you skipped high school English, or "Gay Literature 101," then perhaps you don't know about Oscar Wilde's tale of beauty at a price.
Here's the deal: Painter Basil Hallward becomes enchanted by young, sylph-like Dorian Gray (as does everyone else who comes into contact with this Delilah-in-slacks) and produces his likeness in oils. Dorian pettishly wishes that all corruption--age-related and morality-related--would show up not on his own face, but on that of the portrait. And, like a bad episode of "The Twilight Zone," it happens. The novel is a meditation on the nature of beauty, passion, love, mortality, morality--all the biggies. But I won't spoil the ending for you . . .
Did you know . . .
. . . that Oscar Wilde wrote the character of Basil Hallward as a sort of alter ego for himself?
. . . that Dorian himself represented the power that Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, had over him?
. . . that Wilde later produced an essay entitled "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" that, in true Wildean fashion, has nothing to do with socialism?
. . . that one the Waylaid authors once produced a 25 page term paper on Wilde and his system of values?
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