#liveblogging the uncesnored picture of dorian gray

Summary:

An archive of my tumblr read-actions to "The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition" by Oscar Wilde with Annotations & Prefaces by Nicholas Frankel.
Posts are mostly literary analysis, sometimes with application to modern fandom. While I wrestle sometimes with what the text is saying, I more often am engaging with the text more in terms of what I actually think about the points being made.
Each chapter will be titled with as much time stamp information as tumblr preserved, with the body of the post copied into the chapter.

Notes:

The typo in the title is an intentional preservation; this was the typo I made initially when tagging these posts on tumblr, and I didn't catch it in time to fix it.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

So, I went to the library Tuesday and in addition to the volume of Full Metal Alchemist that I had on hold I picked up a copy of the Uncesnsored Picture of Dorian Gray. (Technically 2 copies, an annotated, illustrated one and one that is just the manuscript.) It’s the book as it was submitted to the publisher, with the content the publisher decided was too scandalous for society at the time.

As I walked into the library they had a big thing about censorship, what books people have tried to censor, where “challenges” get made and what reasons are given for these challenges. The wall had a bunch of challenged books, like Farenheit 911 and 1984 to check out.

Right away the front jacket on the annotated edition has me thinking. I CAN make a pun on the name Dorian Gray with the name I’ve chosen for myself irl. One of my debates this year has been whether to do that for Halloween or to be something easier like Marco the Phoenix.

Anyway this is the sentences that have me thinking:

The Picture of Dorian Gray altered the way Victorians understood the world they inhabited. It heralded the end of a repressive Victorianism, and after its publication, literature had–in the words of biographer Richard Ellman–“a different look.”

…

Wilde famously said that Dorian Gray “contains much of me”: Basil Hallward is “what I think I am,” Lord Henry “what the world thinks of me,” and “Dorian what I would like to be–in other ages perhaps.”

I thought about online spaces and fan culture, transformative works, the pro/anti debate, and my Halloween costume concept. Were I to create Dorian Gray as myself, what would change? What would shock the modern senses as much as Wilde shocked Victorian England? Could I write a modern day transformation with all my feelings of depravity? (Don’t worry, I probably won’t be doing this.)

I listened to Masterpiece by Motionless in White on repeat for nearly a day in response.

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