Summer, 1981. It is an age where appearances matter more and more. Only the shallowest people won't judge by them. Henry Wotton, gay, drug addicted...
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Dec 17, 2009
R.
rated it: 
My addiction to Self began here; an interlibrary loan that, afterwards, I foisted upon Melanie with a fever.
"Oh, man, unreliable narrators! You should...you gotta...oh, man...just...just read!"
It brings to mind the taste of tuna melts and fries at Swarthmore's (secondary) cafeteria, as I discussed my amazement with the sustained wordplay, the in-your-face use of big, eldritch words.
Melanie listened patiently, probably feeling a bit sad for me that I More...
"Oh, man, unreliable narrators! You should...you gotta...oh, man...just...just read!"
It brings to mind the taste of tuna melts and fries at Swarthmore's (secondary) cafeteria, as I discussed my amazement with the sustained wordplay, the in-your-face use of big, eldritch words.
Melanie listened patiently, probably feeling a bit sad for me that I More...
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Sep 24, 2008
Dusty
rated it: 
Self's title here works two ways. His Dorian is an imitation of Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, and Self's Dorian Gray, which is to say his hero, is an imitation of whatever he needs to be, given the situation at hand. Numerous times the narrator refers to this man as a chameleon, and indeed there's something far more sinister about this Dorian than Wilde's.
Self has updated the story to AIDS-era Britain. Instead of a picture, Dorian is reproduced as Cathode Narcissus, a nine-monitor More...
Self has updated the story to AIDS-era Britain. Instead of a picture, Dorian is reproduced as Cathode Narcissus, a nine-monitor More...
Sep 30, 2011
Hannah
rated it:
I Liked this Better Than the Original
A literary re-write is a difficult thing to do well, but Will Self does it. I think Self works better within the restraints of this form,(versus his bloated books The Butt or The Book of Dave) and the new twists Self adds to the tale work wonders.
There is no one picture - there is a modern art installation of multiple videos of Dorian - and he has to track down and hide each and every one - adding to the drama which was missing in the orig More...
A literary re-write is a difficult thing to do well, but Will Self does it. I think Self works better within the restraints of this form,(versus his bloated books The Butt or The Book of Dave) and the new twists Self adds to the tale work wonders.
There is no one picture - there is a modern art installation of multiple videos of Dorian - and he has to track down and hide each and every one - adding to the drama which was missing in the orig More...
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Apr 19, 2007
Cazzie
rated it:
Wonderful re-inventing of Oscar Wilde's classic 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' Set in hedonistic 1980/90's London and New York, this is the tale Wilde would have told if he'd been born in 1969. Dorian is the subject of a video installation by artist Baz Hallward, and as with the portrait in Wilde's original, the video image ages instead of arrogant, beautiful Dorian. Set against the AIDS epidemic as it is, a large proportion of the characters have contracted the diesese towards the close of the ta
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Jun 14, 2011
Jackie
rated it:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Mar 29, 2011
Nathan
rated it: 
Oscar Wilde: foppish aesthete. Limp-wristed intelligence with prepared wit, language so ethereal that it's like being smothered in a bed of marshmallow clouds. Famous book: Picture of Dorian Gray, about a man who sells his soul to stay forever young and debauch.
Will Self took that and has written a novel inspired by Picture of Dorian Gray, about drug use, gay sex, and ... well, actually, I never got to the point where the plot starts. By page 50, I was still struggling my way throug More...
Will Self took that and has written a novel inspired by Picture of Dorian Gray, about drug use, gay sex, and ... well, actually, I never got to the point where the plot starts. By page 50, I was still struggling my way throug More...
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Dec 17, 2009
Li
rated it: 
I learned that I should probably read the original as well. This one is interesting because it is written with accents and isn't apologetic ....at all my first instinct is todefinetly not like it but that is only because it is hard to find a character to sympathize with when all the guys (gay) in the book hate women but I think I need to look deeper
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Jun 05, 2011
Ben
rated it:
Really good, interesting working on a classic book. The contemporary setting and locations in this book make it really interesting. As a young, adopted londoner I found the book captivating not only for the main plot but also for the interesting history regarding the AIDS virus in London. At the time I read this I was actually working off Goodge Street and used to go past the hospital mentioned in the book everyday (though it has now been demolished). I came across this book after meeting Self a
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Aug 27, 2011
Nicole
rated it:
This is a modern version of Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Picture Of Dorian Gray.’ Will Self brings the story forward to the 1980s, The story follows the same format as it’s original but with a focus on snobbery, drugs and gay sex. In this version of the tale, ‘Baz’ Hallward creates a video installation of his beautiful friend Dorian (the tapes known as ‘cathode narcissus’.) As the tapes begin to age and Dorian stays young and beautiful, he descends into a world of debauchery and excess.
This may More...
This may More...
Jun 18, 2010
Amadei
rated it: 
I really don't think this book is for everyone--for example, I would never pass this one along to my father to read. The descriptions Self gives of drug use and homosexual acts are vivid and unapologetic. It doesn't matter if you feel uncomfortable reading them; in fact, that might be the point.
I don't know much of anything about the gay community of the 1980s and 90s, so my critique of those pieces would be shallow to say the least. I do think that Self made some interesting points More...
I don't know much of anything about the gay community of the 1980s and 90s, so my critique of those pieces would be shallow to say the least. I do think that Self made some interesting points More...
Oct 12, 2011
Michael
rated it:
It's like stuffing your face with literature. I can only summon myself once a year or so to a whole Will Self book. I don't really know how to review this without resorting to tepid adjectives like 'audacious'. It's not really that anyway, because the boldness is unsurprising. It seems, as I remember it, slightly more relevant now than it was upon publication ten years ago, not that there's any hint of foresight necessarily, more the direct recognition of dysfunctional human repetition. Cathode
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Sep 18, 2010
Tatiana
rated it:
terrific, fantastic, outrageous and exciting re-reading of WIlde's Portrait!! Up-to-date, Dorian-- is nowadays a proeminent figure of gay, AIDS-plagued, artistic milieu, and the novel turns out to portray sarcastically the world we live in. Such wit in delineating Henry Wotton, superb explorations of London in Wotton's jaguar!!! The pervading cynicism is matched with a style that conveys with lavishness the inner rottennes of the characters. We cannot but laugh and/or shrug when reading the "
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Aug 25, 2010
Thomas
rated it:
An imitation, perhaps, but more a modern adaptation of the Wilde classic. With Self's characteristic urban grit, here we have a rather accomplished homage. However, despite the modernization, there are still elements that feel dated (and here we are not criticizing the writing style, but the objects that come to represent the themes of narcissism, shamelessness, and portrayal).
Aug 11, 2010
Julie
rated it:
Dorian Gray, welcome to the present! I wasn't the biggest fan of the original, and while this version was intriguing, it's not the type of book I usually read. It captured the general foppishness of the original, while bringing in some modern elements, like Princess Diana and AIDs. Also a modern feature that you don't see in the classics is a trippy ending that I'm not looking too deeply into.
Jun 28, 2010
J.
rated it:
This book was going to get four stars from me, actually, until the epilogue which really kind of ruined the book for me. Stylistically really quite good, theoretically well thought out...I really like the comment on video being the replacement to painting in our era (and share Wotton's befazzlement as well as his bewilderment at that fact). Quite a good novel until the last forty pages or so.
Jan 04, 2012
Had to finish this, because I have to pass it on. And now I have to buy another copy...
Recommended to me by an HIV specialist, though I can't say it'd be terribly enlightening if I hadn't already researched the period. Smart, smarmy, vicious, amoral, dark and very clever. And did I mention it's technically fanfiction?
Recommended to me by an HIV specialist, though I can't say it'd be terribly enlightening if I hadn't already researched the period. Smart, smarmy, vicious, amoral, dark and very clever. And did I mention it's technically fanfiction?
Feb 28, 2008
Lucie
rated it:
I like books and films about gays. Not ones about self-hating gays that struggle with a coming out and find it hard to cope with the burden of life, people who think they will never be understood by their family etc. etc. Grow some balls. I like books about flamboyant gays who embrace it, whose idea of fun is sex, drugs and sex - and money. I like books about reckless people who know how to use, misuse and abuse others in any way and enjoy it immensely. And I like sarcasm, lots. This book is pac
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Jan 10, 2010
Joanne
rated it:
I never thought I'd read Dorian Gray saying things like "totally gnarly" and talking about cryonics, but it works.
Even if it is an egotistical abuse of a classic.
Even if it is an egotistical abuse of a classic.
May 31, 2011
Kathleen
rated it:
This book is hilarious, and all the jokes are SO dark and fiendish-- This book is drugs and sex and glamorous people in the world's hottest cities, and this book is a different look at all the themes that are in Oscar Wilde's "Picture of Dorian Grey", of Narcissism and questions of identity, youth and beauty and the immortalization of self through image. Also of the inner hideousness that can lurk behind outward displays of beauty, and how appeal can become abuse. But I was seriously l
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Oct 29, 2008
Eleanor
rated it:
I’ve read some reviews that compare Dorian unfavorably to the original, but I read The Picture of Dorian Gray as a teenager, and I remember thinking that the allegory or closeted homosexuality would have made a better short story. I found Self’s version hilarious, unforgivingly satirical and actually kind of touching. I saw Self read from Dorian at a book store in San Francisco, and I got the distinct impression that Henry, the narrator and nominal writer of most of the book, was a sort of Will
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Feb 13, 2009
Katie
rated it:
Hurrah for Will Self being alive. Bought this as soon as it came out, and devoured it in three sittings (stupid job got in the way). As with the classic, you can *smell* this book. Basil's garden, Dorian's hair, the stink of London alleyways. If anything, the 1980s Dorian is more seductive and repulsive than the canon. Perhaps because no other decade in the history of time was as revolting as the 1980s.
As graphic as Wilde would probably have like to have been - this is an exquisite More...
As graphic as Wilde would probably have like to have been - this is an exquisite More...
Nov 24, 2011
Stefan
rated it:
An interesting novel. The idea to modernise the Dorian Gray story is interesting, but let down by Self's (pardon the pun) self-indulgent use of language. Big words are sprayed around liberally, jarring the narrative and making it look clunky.
It's only towards the end when Self stops trying to look clever that it really gets going.
It's only towards the end when Self stops trying to look clever that it really gets going.
Nov 30, 2007
Greg
rated it:
Will self is one of my favorite authors... Like the main character of this book, Self is "a collector of bons mots and apercus and apophthegms, an alfresco rehearser of the next impassined, extempore rodomontade." Flamboyant, morbid, impassioned, sordid... this book's got it all.
Aug 09, 2008
Beau
rated it:
I give this book three stars because it was a convincing modern-day revisitation of Wilde's masterpiece... The theme and skeleton of the plot may be the same, but Will Self tells the story with ten times the edge. I've always really dug the tale.
Jan 16, 2008
Lanny
rated it:
I liked the settings and texture in this, and seeing Mr. Self
read from the text and do his characterizations added and aided
how I was able to read this. I had a similiar experience with Kathy Acker and her book Pussy King of the Pirates.
Aug 31, 2011
Megan-elise
rated it:
This book was really pretty horrid. I LOVE Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, but this book was just ridiculous. The author seemed to be trying too hard, and the book was more Wildean then original Wilde.
Jul 21, 2008
Chris
rated it:
England in the 80's. Pictures of Thatcher and AIDS. Scary and sad. Dorian meets The Picture of Dorian Gray and is it worse? More violent. Trick ending. I won't tell.
