Dorian - Will Self

FilmClub: 23 de gener a les 19 h a la Biblioteca Mestra Maria Antònia.

BookClub: 24 de gener a les 19 h a la Biblioteca Mestra Maria Antònia.

Excerpt of a review in The Observer:

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde set the gold standard for chroniclers of decadence. The story of a man who remains eternally young while his portrait ages provided the framework for Wilde's whimsical but vicious depiction of the fin de siècle. For more than a decade, Will Self has been writing Wildean narratives of corruption and metamorphosis, and now he confronts the master head-on in an 'imitation' of Dorian Gray which does for the Diana generation what Wilde did for the late Victorians.

He brings events forward to June 1981, the summer of the Royal Wedding and the Brixton riots, a time when, according to Self, 'Britain was in the process of burning most of its remaining illusions'. In this world of style and insubstantiality, Basil Hallward's oil painting has become an installation called Cathode Narcissus, in which Dorian's divine form revolves endlessly across a bank of video monitors. Where The Picture of Dorian Gray both defined and mocked the decadent movement, Self aspires to do the same for postmodernism. Where Wilde had Huysmans, Self has Warhol. Where Wilde epitomised aestheticism, Dorian: An Imitation is riddled with reflexivity. And where the original novel was compelling but only incidentally amusing, Self's adaptation is brutal and sometimes hysterical.

Read the rest here.

You can find Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray at the library or online at Project Gutenber (both 13 and 20 chapter versions), as well as other e-book sites and devices.

The club, though, will focus on Will Self’s work.

Visit the author's site.

The Film

Director

• Oliver Parker

Cast

• Ben Barnes as Dorian Gray
• Colin Firth as Lord Henry Wotton
• Rebecca Hall as Emily Wotton
• Ben Chaplin as Basil Hallward
• Emilia Fox as Victoria, Lady Henry Wotton
• Rachel Hurd-Wood as Sibyl Vane
• Fiona Shaw as Agatha
• Maryam d'Abo as Gladys
• Pip Torrens as Victor
• Douglas Henshall as Alan Campbell
• Caroline Goodall as Lady Radley
• Michael Culkin as Lord Radley
• Johnny Harris as James Vane

There aren't any other books by Will Self in English at the libraries of Catalonia, but you can find Oscar Wilde's books here.