The Picture of Dorian Gray
By: Oscar Wilde / Narrated By: Michael Page
Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
So here I am, 30 some odd years outta High School, finally getting around to this book…
Really, I’m not quite sure what all we did in high school, but we sure didn’t do Macbeth, and we sure didn’t do The Picture of Dorian Gray. Fortunately, that’s where the joy of audiobooks comes in! And if you happen to, oh I dunno, say: Review audiobooks for a website for, oh I dunno, say: Audiobook Accomplice? Well, one has a great reason right there to give all those skipped works of literature a shot!
And what better way to wind down Pride Month than to honor Oscar Wilde and his contribution to literature? So here we have The Picture of Dorian Gray because I really, really want to listen to it. EsPECially because, out of the many, many versions out there, I definitely choose Michael Page (He really knocked it out of the park with Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes)!
Page does an awesome job here, even if he does falter a tad with female voices. He takes the mild-mannered and earnest Dorian Gray and sees him through his step-by-step devolvement into a totally depraved human being. He brings the gentle artist, Basil, to life with all his infatuation for the young Dorian as muse extraordinaire; he brings the hedonistic Lord Henry to life with all his sneering dismissals of every humane feeling that is shown around him, whether those feelings are from Society or are from a struggling Dorian.
Because even though Dorian’s soul gets very black indeed, as shown by how disgusting that portrait Basil painted of him becomes, Dorian does struggle every now and again. He sees the portrait, and it becomes the snippet of an idea: Maybe he can change things, his ways; maybe if he does so, the portrait will reflect those changes.
But Dorian is faaaaaar too much under the sway of Lord Henry—the man talks Dorian out of every single doubt. Lord Henry, as a matter of fact, is the one who sets up the tragedy to come: Dorian is smitten with a young actress, who is good and pure, and Henry is the one who shows Dorian that she is not a golden goddess but is really trash. This is in no way true, but Dorian stomps on the poor girl’s heart, and the first of the horrors is shown in the portrait. Plus, the first of people who wish the young man harm, Sibyl’s brother, is spurred to rage.
There is debauchery in this book; there’s mayhem and even murder. But every now and again, there’s just the itty bit of a doubt where Dorian thinks that maaaaybe he can stop it all and start doing right. That’s what makes the book interesting as opposed to just going along and loathing the man the whole way through. I’m very glad I FINALLY got around to listening to this, and it was all a fine and (with Michael Page) very dramatic way to spend just under 8 hours.
And somewhere, way over in west Texas, my old English teachers are cheering.
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