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grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><div class="GenericCalloutWrapper-tojWn iHBnEl llout--has-top-borr set-embedd-le" data-ttid="GenericCallout"><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO KhjZz AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset rponsive-image rponsive-image--expandable"><noscript><img alt="Cariture of a man a su and top hat ont of the Brish Ho of Parliament" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w, 1920w, 2240w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></span></div><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn AssetEmbedCaptn-fNQBPI fmQnYP asset-embed__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo iXWezO ptn__text">Even before Wil sent the mancript of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” to the typist, he was hatg over s homoerotic ntent.</span><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT jbIJNS ptn__cred">Illtratn by Edward Sorel</span></div></figure></div><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg">Osr Wil was not a man who lived fear, but early reviews of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” mt have given him pse. The story, tellg of a man who never ag while his portra turns crep, appeared the July, 1890, issue of <em>Lipptt’s,</em> a Philalphia magaze wh English distributn. The <em>Daily Chronicle</em> of London lled the tale “unclean,” “poisono,” and “heavy wh the mephic odours of moral and spirual putrefactn.” The <em>St. Jam Gazette</em> emed “nasty” and “nseo,” and suggted that the Treasury or the Vigilance Society might wish to prosecute the thor. Most omo was a short notice the <em>Sts Observer</em> statg that although “Dorian Gray” was a work of lerary qualy, alt “matters only fted for the Crimal Invtigatn Department or a hearg mera” and would be of tert maly to “outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph-boys”—an alln to the recent Cleveland Street sndal, which had exposed the workgs of a male brothel London. Wh five years, Wil found himself nvicted of “mtg acts of gross cency wh certa male persons.”</p><p class="paywall">The furor was unsurprisg: no work of mastream English-language fictn had e so close to spellg out homosexual sire. The openg pag leave ltle doubt that Basil Hallward, the pater of Dorian’s portra, is love wh his subject. Once Dorian disvers his godlike powers, he rri out var heo acts, cludg murr; but to the Victorian sensibily his most unspeakable ed would have been his rptn of a seri of young men. (Basil tells Dorian, “There was that wretched boy the Guards who mted suici. You were his great iend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave England, wh a tarnished name. You and he were separable.”) At the Wil trials of 1895, the opposg attorneys read aloud om “Dorian Gray,” llg a “sodomil book.” Wil went to prison not bee he loved young men but bee he flnted that love, and “Dorian Gray” beme the chief exhib of his shamelsns.</p><p class="paywall">Wil died 1900, a n-down Paris hotel, at the age of forty-six. Almost overnight, a legend was born: Wil the homosexual martyr, Wil the moral rebel. A nascent gay-rights movement embraced him as a hero of fiance. When, 1967, Craig Rodwell opened a gay-and-lbian bookstore New York, he named the Osr Wil Memorial Bookshop, and after the Stonewall rts of 1969 Rodwell ed the bookstore’s mailg list to help anize the first gay-pri para. As recently as the late eighti, you uld still fd bookish young people g to terms wh their sexualy by way of readg Wil. (You uld at least fd me.) Whether or not Wil saw himself as part of a e, he did not lack urage. The multiple versns of “Dorian Gray”—the earlit survivg mancript, which is at the Man Library; the typcript sent to <em>Lipptt’s</em>, which Harvard Universy Prs has jt ma available an “uncensored” edn; the published <em>Lipptt’s</em> text; and the expand book publitn of 1891—show Wil cidg, sentence by sentence, jt how far he would go.</p><p class="paywall">The Wil Bookshop closed 2009, a sualty not only of the cle of the booksellg bs but also of the partial triumph of Rodwell’s missn. In many major ci, at least, gays and lbians no longer seem to need a safe place the form of a store. And they no longer seem to need the tragiic Osr; the young gays of today n revel the w and wisdom of Neil Patrick Harris. All of which leav Wil an tertg limbo. What will he mean a perhaps not too distant time when homosexualy has ceased to be a nversatn stopper?</p><p class="paywall">“To the world I seem, by tentn on my part, a dilettante and dandy merely— is not wise to show one’s heart to the world,” Wil once wrote. We should not assume that his heart was revealed to when he beme a gay in, or when he was nonized wir bohemian circl as the patron sat of “Be yourself.” (The phrase appears the 1891 say “The Soul of Man Unr Socialism.”) Wil’s atheticism, his fanatil cult of bety, was the ept and most lastg of his passns, and is now the most radil thg about him. Perhaps only the threat of persecutn prevented Wil om eely exprsg his sexualy his wrg; yet he also may have been ught the morn stggle to hab an inty whout beg fed by . The ghastly endg of “Dorian Gray”—Dorian stabbg his portra a enzy—shows a man losg a battle wh his public image.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">The two most recent major bgraphi of Wil are Thomas Wright’s “Built of Books: How Readg Defed the Life of Osr Wil,” which appeared 2008, and Neil McKenna’s “The Secret Life of Osr Wil: An Intimate Bgraphy,” which me out 2005. They prent almost illy ntradictory portras. Wright’s Wil is an tellectual dreamer who rarely steps outsi the lerary realm. We are told that his parents—the eye-and-ear surgeon William Wil and the poet Jane Franc Wil, who wrote unr the name Speranza—accumulated mountas of books at their home, Dubl, and that young Osr habually read bed, his md ravished by Irish folktal, ancient-Greek texts, Romantic poems, and gothic novels. Wright even suggts that Wil disvered his sexualy the pag of Plato. “Was a se of lerary nurture over blogil nature?” Wright asks, as if Wil might have found boys unattractive had the philosopher not put the ia his head. In this tellg, Wil’s ultimate huiatn me not on the day of his arrt, on April 5, 1895, but a few weeks later, when his library was ctned off.</p><p class="paywall">McKenna’s Wil, by ntrast, is a largely sexual beg who reads orr to fd a language for his sire and wr orr to speak that sire aloud. He is hailed as “a martyr an epic stggle for the eedom of men to love men.” McKenna rejects the ia, set forth prev bgraphi, that Wil had no gay life until his early thirti, when he met Robert Ross, a precly self-aware Canadian teen-ager, Oxford. In fact, certa of Wil’s youthful poems drip wh homoeroticism—“And he looked on me wh sire / And I know that his name was Love”—and his early iendship wh the pater Frank Mil, among others, had a sexual tge. Yet McKenna reads too much to meagre evince. He is a wrer of the “almost certaly” school, and he whholds material that beli his this. (He do not mentn that Mil was notorly attracted to very young girls.) Later chapters rely on the dub memoirs of Edmund Trelawny Backhoe, a fer and a fantasist, who claimed rnal knowledge not only of the prcipals the Wil se but also of Pl Verlae and the Dowager Emprs of Cha. McKenna, by fixatg on Wil’s sexual life, arriv at an oddly unflatterg portra. Preyg on young lerary fans, payg off rent boys, pickg up lads as young as fifteen—Wil is stripped of his charm.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-1 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">To read Wright and McKenna succsn is like seeg a picture alter before one’s ey: a bookish fellow be a sex addict. There is, however, no real ntradictn; untls lerary liv have veered om monkish labor to mdls pleasure. Wil himself first felt this spl when he was studyg at Oxford, the eighteen-seventi. In the poem “Hélas!,” published 1881, he wistfully imag a life of “stere ntrol,” which he “might have trod / The sunl heights, and om life’s dissonance / Stck one clear chord to reach the ears of God.” But he tast “the honey of romance” and los his footg. Sixteen years later, Wil traced the same downward arc “De Profundis,” the annihilatg book-length letter that he wrote prison to Aled Douglas, his former lover: “Tired of beg on the heights I liberately went to the pths the search for new sensatns.” He never found the middle ground between those extrem, although he glimpsed . “All excs, as well as all renunciatn, brgs s own punishment,” he said, summg up “Dorian Gray.”</p><p class="paywall">Such epigrams were the foundatn of Wil’s fame, and rema so. He is often seen as the godfather of celebry culture, that om the outset he was noted chiefly for beg Osr Wil. Even his Oxford days, his wticisms were makg their way beyond the universy walls. (His first h: “I fd harr and harr every day to live up to my blue cha.”) On settlg London, 1879, he assumed the gdy neo-Renaissance pos that spired dozens of <em>Punch</em> rtoons and two characters Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Patience.” He mataed exquise attus durg his Amerin lecture tour of 1882, endurg jeers om llege stunts and enjoyg the unexpected admiratn of Colorado mers. Back England, he ed further chatter wh a turn toward domticy, marryg Constance Lloyd and producg two sons. Only when he published “The Happy Prce and Other Tal,” 1888, did his lerary output tch up to his fame. Wh that publitn, the most tense phase of Wil’s reer began. His w acquired a sharper edge: celebry beme a vehicle for subversn.</p><div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--article-mid-ntent" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--article-mid-ntent nsumer-marketg-un__slot---ntent"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><p class="paywall">The fairy tal are well stocked wh lightful paradox, yet they are encircled by strangens and sadns. “The Star-Child” ends wh the sentence “And he who me after him led evilly.” They are tal of impossible love: a fisherman’s for a mermaid, a statue’s for a swallow. Victorian parents who read the stori to their children may have stumbled over the iskier moments, as when the tle character of “The Young Kg” prs his lips to a statue of Anto, Hadrian’s male slave. Wil reveals the human plexy and sufferg behd the luxur surfac that he summoned so easily rollg Irish prose. The Young Kg is dismayed to disver that his subjects have toiled severely—and even died— orr to manufacture his goln raiments, yet when he tri to assume a humbler guise the kgdom revolts agast him.</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoon__image rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="“In the kchen Im more of an aggregator than a ntent creator.”" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE gdZTpI ptn RponsiveCartoonCaptn-dokfdF hJgaLQ rponsive-rtoon__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo bsWloa ptn__text">“In the kchen, I’m more of an aggregator than a ntent creator.”</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Copy lk to rtoon</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-pylk" width="24" 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pied</p></div></div></div><button aria-label="Shop" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Shop</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-rt" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Shop</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178638)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M4 3H2V4H4.23828L6.99617 15.2631C7.11483 15.6982 7.50998 16 7.96094 16H18.0365C18.4875 16 18.8826 15.6982 19.0013 15.2631L20.9648 7.26312C21.1383 6.62698 20.6594 6 20 6H10V7H20L18.0365 15H7.96094L5.03652 3H4.58055H4ZM10.0365 19C10.0365 19.5523 9.58881 20 9.03652 20C8.48424 20 8.03652 19.5523 8.03652 19C8.03652 18.4477 8.48424 18 9.03652 18C9.58881 18 10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">Wil was never an open radil the manner of Gee Bernard Shaw, but the imper says he published between 1889 and 1891—“The Tth of Masks,” “Pen, Pencil, and Poison,” “The Dey of Lyg,” “The Cric as Artist,” and “The Soul of Man Unr Socialism”—dug tunnels unr the moral foundatns of Victorian England. Artists are st as outlaws (“There is no sential ngy between crime and culture”), purveyors of dangero ias (the better to rist “that splendid system that elevat [men] to the digny of mach”), tellers of geo li that supplant dull tths, and habual antomians, rejectg “the shallow shibboleths of any sect or school.” In “The Soul of Man,” Wil imag a revolutn that will sweep asi all middle-class Philistism. Technologil advanc, he predicts, will liberate even the workg class, grantg them liv of athetic reverie. The vague enomic logic of the argument is a pretext for Wil to vent his rage on an dience that treated him as an amg sishow:</p><blockquote class="BlockquoteEmbedWrapper-sc-SdiGL jPeLne paywall blockquote-embed"><div class="BlockquoteEmbedContent-RbGs gmbtPx blockquote-embed__ntent"><p>The public make e of the classics of a untry as a means of checkg the progrs of Art. They gra the classics to thori. They e them as bludgeons for preventg the ee exprsn of Bety new forms. They are always askg a wrer why he do not wre like somebody else, or a pater why he do not pat like somebody else, que obliv of the fact that if eher of them did anythg of the kd he would cease to be an artist. A h mo of Bety is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever appears they get so angry and bewilred that they always e two stupid exprsns—one is that the work of art is grossly untelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by the words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly untelligible, they mean that the artist has said or ma a betiful thg that is new; when they scribe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or ma a betiful thg that is te.</p></div></blockquote></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><asi class="PersistentAsiWrapper-VGrR daRVRt persistent-asi" style="posn:absolute;top:to;height:to" data-ttid="PersistentAsiWrapper"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="ifn3b9"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></asi></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="jl7ksb"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">This fulmatn anticipat the rhetoric of mornism. Yeats and Joyce, particular, felt a strong nnectn to their Irish forenner. Yeats, who believed that Wil would have ma a great soldier or polician, praised him for lnchg “an extravagant Celtic csa agast Anglo-Saxon stupidy.” Joyce evintly drew on the trials of 1895 creatg the hallucogenic persecutn of Leopold Bloom the “Circe” chapter of “Ulyss.”</p><div class="Contaer-bkChBi byNLHx"></div><p class="paywall">The gay stra Wil’s work is part of a larger war on nventn. In the 1889 story “The Portra of Mr. W. H.,” a psdo-scholarly, metafictnal vtigatn of Shakpeare’s sons to a boy, Wil slyly suggts that the pillar of Brish lerature was somethg other than an ordary fay man. In the 1891 play “Salomé,” Wil expands a Biblil anecdote to a sumptuo panorama of nce. Anarchists of the f siècle, pecially Germany, nsired Wil one of their own: Gtav Lander hailed Wil as the English Nietzsche. Thomas Mann expand on the analogy, observg that var l of Wil might have e om Nietzsche (“There is no realy thgs apart om their experienc”) and that var l of Nietzsche might have e om Wil (“We are basilly cled to mata that the falst judgments are the most dispensable to ”). Nietzsche and Wil were, Mann’s view, “rebels the name of bety.”</p><p class="paywall">In early 1892, Wil enjoyed a huge theatril succs wh “Lady Wrmere’s Fan,” and until he went to prison he nfed himself to social edy. The subversive agenda remaed: Richard Le Gallienne plsibly proposed that Wil “ma dyg Victorianism lgh at self, and may be said to have died of the lghter.” But the creasg virtuosy of Wil’s dramatic technique masked a weakeng of his creative impulse; the plays were wrten amid long perds of activy and relied termtently on old l. “The Importance of Beg Earnt,” brilliant as is, threatens to bee a greatt-hs pilatn. Wil later blamed the dissipatns of Aled Douglas for the slowg of his productivy after 1892; their affair began that year, after Wil paid off a blackmailer on Douglas’s behalf.</p><p class="paywall">After readg the newer books on Wil, I returned to Richard Ellmann’s 1988 bgraphy, which, spe some errors and eccentrici, still mands the field. Ellmann performs the supreme service of takg Wil serly, as a wrer first and a personaly send. He tch Wil’s lawls moralism, his outst-preacher tone. “His creative works almost always end unmaskg,” Ellmann wr. “The hand that adjts the green rnatn sudnly shak an admonory fger.” Ellmann explas better than any other chronicler why, 1895, Wil chose to face his accers stead of fleeg to the Content. It was not an act of martyrdom, or of arrogance or self-ln, but, rather, an exercise tellectual nsistency. Ellmann wr, “He submted to the society he had cricized, and so earned the right to cricize further.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Dorian Gray emerged om the same dner that sured the immortaly of Sherlock Holm. Wil and Arthur Conan Doyle ded together London Augt, 1889, as guts of Joseph Marshall Stoddart, the edor of <em>Lipptt’s</em>. Doyle, like so many others, me away dazzled by Wil. “He towered above all, and yet had the art of seemg to be terted all that we uld say,” Doyle relled. Later that year, Doyle sent <em>Lipptt’s</em> his send Holm tale, “The Sign of Four,” assigng a few Wilan tras to the great tective. (You n image Wil sayg, “I abhor the dull route of existence. I crave for mental exaltatn.”) Wil, for his part, may have picked up some tricks om Holm’s creator: parts of “Dorian Gray” are as gome as a police procral.</p><p class="paywall">Last sprg, I spent a few hours lookg at the tograph mancript of “Dorian Gray,” at the Man Library. When Dorian attempts to stroy his portra, the mancript has him “rippg the thg right up”; Wil then adds the phrase “om top to bottom.” Nicholas Frankel, the edor of the new Harvard edn of “Dorian Gray,” not that the evisceratg gture evok Jack the Ripper, whose crim had filled the papers two years earlier.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-2 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">The origal magaze story, at fifty thoand words, has all the faiar elements of the book versn, which is the one most people know. Lord Henry, a Mephistophelian athete who seems to be Wil’s mouthpiece, viss the stud of his iend Basil Hallward and be fascated by a picture displayed there. Basil nfs his attractn to s subject. When Dorian enters, Lord Henry tellectually sc him wh a philosophy of hedonism. (“The only way to get rid of a temptatn is to yield to .”) Dorian, sadned by the ia that he mt grow old while his portra stays the same, wish the oppose were te. An elf magic tak hold. Dorian falls for a gifted young actrs named Sibyl Vane and then sts her asi when he term that the joy of love has renred her art banal. She kills herself. The face the picture acquir a cel look. As Dorian wallows bchery, Basil pri to his secret life and wonrs about the state of his soul. Dorian, who has hidn the picture his attic, shows Basil the now hio face, and kills him. Thoughts of repentance cross Dorian’s md, but he cis that he mt wipe out the only remag rerd of his crim: the portra. When he stabs , he falls ad, his face misshapen beyond regnn. In the same stant, the picture’s bety is rtored.</p><p class="paywall">In the Man mancript, Wil’s hand flows nfintly, as if takg dictatn, but the appearance of fluency may be ceptive: the tograph is probably a py of an earlier draft that has disappeared. Although Wil is celebrated as the greatt natural talker of morn tim, he eded his prose meticuloly. The openg paragraphs, scribg Basil’s stud, are a masterpiece of precise evotn, and Wil’s handwrten chang sharpen the imagery yet more. In a passage that par the “dim roar of London” to the “bourdon note of an an,” Wil serts the word “distant” before “an,” addg a twge of far-off relig dread.</p><p class="paywall">At the same time, Wil’s revisns to the openg dialogue between Basil and Lord Henry betray a risg anxiety, an urge to lower the emotnal temperature. Exclamatns over Dorian’s bety give way to more rerved remarks about his “good looks” and “personaly.” “Passn” be “feelg,” “pa” be “perplexy.” Wil’s pen stops Basil om mentng the time Dorian bshed agast his cheek and om announcg that “the world be young to me when I hold his hand.” And when Basil explas why he is whholdg the patg om London gallery-goers he is prevented om sayg that “where there is really love, they would see somethg evil, and where there is spirual passn they would suggt somethg vile.” Tellgly, Wil remov timatns of a prr attachment between Basil and Lord Henry. He let a scriptn of Basil “takg hold of [Lord Henry’s] hand.” One passage is so heavily scratched out as to be almost illegible, but Lord Henry seems to berate Basil for havg bee Dorian’s “slave,” and then blurts out, “I hate Dorian Gray.” In the end, Wil ncels any ht of jealoy and giv Lord Henry the mask of an amed athete: “Basil, this is que wonrful! I mt see Dorian Gray.”</p><p class="paywall">Even before Wil sent his mancript to the typist, then, he was hatg over s homoerotic ntent, and pecially over the pag voted to Basil’s sire. The foc on Basil is not surprisg, given that Wil later clared, “Basil Hallward is what I thk I am: Lord Henry what the world thks me: Dorian what I would like to be— other ag, perhaps.”</p><p class="paywall">When the typcript arrived the Philalphia offic of <em>Lipptt</em>’<em>s</em>, was Joseph Marshall Stoddart’s turn to have send thoughts. His chang are noted the new Harvard edn. Stoddart was no p, and moved unnventnal circl; when Wil me to Ameri, Stoddart troduced him to Walt Whman. But the edor knew his public’s lims. He, or an associate, cut another of Basil’s nfsnal remarks about the portra—“There was love every le, and every touch there was passn”—and several scriptns of Dorian’s nighttime wanrgs, cludg a sentence that might pict the ancient rual of cisg: “A man wh cur ey had sudnly peered to his face, and then dogged him wh stealthy footsteps, passg and repassg him many tim.” In good Amerin style, Stoddart had no problem wh the vlence.</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="ahpryd"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">“Dorian Gray” failed to sndalize Ameri. England was, of urse, another matter. Although Wil was already planng to expand the story to a novel, he certaly reacted to the suatns the prs. More referenc to physil ntact between the male characters were dropped. Jt as signifint as the expurgatns are the addns: six chapters, totallg some twenty-eight thoand words. They supply further episos of society edy, h adventur for Dorian the opium ns, a fuller sketch of the unlucky Sibyl Vane, and a baroque subplot volvg Jam Vane, Sibyl’s brother, who seeks to avenge her. The new material giv “Dorian Gray” a novelistic heft, even a polil edge. The chapter about the Van, for example, sets Dorian’s velvety life style stark relief. Yet the excursns high and low society feel a b like staged distractns. There are too many tidy formulatns—“It was his bety that had ed him, his bety and the youth that he had prayed for”—posned to reassure the middle class.</p><p class="paywall">The versn that Wil submted to <em>Lipptt</em>’<em>s</em> is the better fictn. It has the swift and unnny rhythm of a morn fairy tale—and “Dorian” is the greatt of Wil’s fairy tal. Wil ma clear om the outset that he wished to show not only the thrills and pleasur of a thlsly athetic life but also s lims and dangers. The hions of Dorian’s mise is as tegral to the work’s nceptn as any bloodcurdlg twist Poe, and lookg at the fal pag of the mancript you n almost see Wil’s lips curlg celly as he wrote. Beneath the btal fal paragraph, he signs his name slashg strok, as if wieldg a knife. Ellmann sums up th: “Drift betifully on the surface, and you will die unbetifully the pths.” Wil steps outsi his practiced persona to st a ld eye on the sensatn-seekg life style popularly ascribed to him.</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoon__image rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="“No A.C. but who needs when youve got this kd of crossventilatn”" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE gdZTpI ptn RponsiveCartoonCaptn-dokfdF hJgaLQ rponsive-rtoon__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo bsWloa ptn__text">“No A.C., but who needs when you’ve got this kd of cross-ventilatn?”</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Copy lk to rtoon</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in 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aria-hidn="te">Lk pied</p></div></div></div><button aria-label="Shop" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Shop</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-rt" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Shop</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178638)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M4 3H2V4H4.23828L6.99617 15.2631C7.11483 15.6982 7.50998 16 7.96094 16H18.0365C18.4875 16 18.8826 15.6982 19.0013 15.2631L20.9648 7.26312C21.1383 6.62698 20.6594 6 20 6H10V7H20L18.0365 15H7.96094L5.03652 3H4.58055H4ZM10.0365 19C10.0365 19.5523 9.58881 20 9.03652 20C8.48424 20 8.03652 19.5523 8.03652 19C8.03652 18.4477 8.48424 18 9.03652 18C9.58881 18 10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">The most problematic aspect of Wil’s revisn is the novel’s Preface, wh s famo val of epigrams: “To reveal art and nceal the artist is art’s aim”; “There is no such thg as a moral or an immoral book”; “All art is que els.” The l, together wh new quips for Lord Henry (“Art has no fluence upon actn. . . . It is superbly sterile”), are related to letters that Wil wrote to crics and rears after the <em>Lipptt</em>’<em>s</em> publitn. They amount to a formalist fense, posg the story as an tonomo object which diverse rears perceive diverse ias. But art <em>do</em> reveal the artist, and <em>do</em> fluence actn, however unpredictably. In Wil’s narrative, books are scribed as “poisono” agents that enter the bloodstream: an unnamed French book that Lord Henry giv to Dorian disclos new vistas of vice. In the typcript, we learn that the book is “Le Secret Raoul,” by Catulle Sarraz—probably a fictnal stand- for Huysmans’s 1884 novel, “Agast the Gra,” which scrib a gay enunter more explicly than Wil ever dared to do. (Wil read on his honeymoon.) Above all, there is Basil’s patg, which stroys both s creator and subject. When Mallarmé read the story, he sgled out for approval the le “It was the portra that had done everythg.” Art is not nocent, Wil impli. Vlence n be done s name. Ined, the twentieth century brought forth many Dorian Grays: fiendishly pure spirs so wrapped up athetics that they bee heedls of humany. Wil’s anatomy of the nfn between art and life remas pertent wh each new uproar over lurid films, songs, or vio gam.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-3 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Even the fal book versn, Wil ref to moralize, to tell the artist what to do or the rear what to thk. Each dividual mt vise his own ethil . When Wil wrote that all excs as well as all renunciatn brgs s punishment, he evintly had md the ntrast between Basil, who n nceive of his love for Dorian only abstract terms, and Dorian, who is so tent on embracg the physil that he los his md. Both men meet bad ends. Lord Henry, by ntrast, emerg unsthed, his talk nghtier than his walk. Ined, Basil acc him of beg secretly virtuo: “You never say a moral thg, and you never do a wrong thg.” Lord Henry po a peculiarly ntemporary kd of moratn, dulgg his bra but not his body, employg Dorian as a proxy hedonist. (Today, Lord Henry might spend a lot of time on the Inter.) There is somethg sad about him, for, unlike Basil and Dorian, he fails to m himself. His life is vir.</p><p class="paywall">What begs as an allurg fable ends as a full-on mornist nightmare. Only one character experienc anythg like spontaneo joy, and that is Sibyl Vane, when she cis to abandon the artistic life and vote herself to Dorian. “I am sick of shadows,” she tells him. “You are more to me than all art n ever be.” Tragilly, Sibyl do not realize that Dorian has exchanged his soul for that of the patg; like the others, she is trapped by the image’s spell.</p><p class="paywall">The eerie thg about Wil’s life is that he, too, uld not pe the fernal logic of the “Picture.” His own book exhibed “poisono” properti. Aled Douglas read at Oxford and, by his own ttimony, reread thirteen tim. He beme termed to meet the thor. He was Wil’s fantasy e to life—Dorian steppg om the nvas. But he had an ugly soul; as Wil regnized “De Profundis,” hate exced him more than love. Wil, Basil to the end, adored the young man all the same.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">On Febary 18, 1895, the Marqus of Queensberry, Douglas’s hate-enged father, scribed a visg rd wh the words “For Osr Wil, posg Somdome,” and left at Wil’s club. Urged on by Douglas, Wil ma the mistake of sug the Marqus for libel—a cisn tastrophic not only for his reer but also for his sense of digny, sce, as he later wrote, he was forced to prent himself as a “champn of rpectabily nduct, of puranism life, and of moraly art.”</p><p class="paywall">At the libel trial, Queensberry’s chief attorney, Edward Carson, need to monstrate that the words on the rd were jtified. So he set about tablishg that Wil had already advertised his proclivi prt. “Dorian Gray” beme Carson’s ma rource, and he elected to treat as Wil’s life story—an ironic move, bee s pag Basil plas that “men treat art as if were meant to be a form of tobgraphy.” The barrister pounced on a passage that had appeared the <em>Lipptt’s</em> versn and was later cut: “It is que te that I have worshipped you wh far more romance of feelg than a man ually giv to a iend. . . . I que adm that I adored you madly, extravagantly, absurdly.” The followg terrogatn ensued:</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="tmikgb"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="9np69"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><blockquote class="BlockquoteEmbedWrapper-sc-SdiGL jPeLne paywall blockquote-embed"><div class="BlockquoteEmbedContent-RbGs gmbtPx blockquote-embed__ntent"><p><em class="small">CARSON</em>: Have you ever extravagantly adored?</p><p><em class="small">WILDE</em>: Do you mean fancially or emotnally?</p><p><em class="small">CARSON</em>: Fancially? Do you thk we are talkg here of fanc?</p><p><em class="small">WILDE</em>: I don’t know what you are talkg about.</p><p><em class="small">CARSON</em>: Don’t you?</p><p><em class="small">WILDE</em>: You mt ask me a pla qutn.</p><p><em class="small">CARSON</em>: I hope I will make myself very pla before I am done.</p></div></blockquote><p class="paywall">Wil was obvly perturbed by the exchange. It was like talkg to an eight-year-old who uldn’t tell the difference between an actor and his role. He fend himself ably, but Carson was softeng him up for the blow. Private tectiv hired by Queensberry had round up rent boys and starstck youths who had served Wil’s needs, and there were no clever answers to the next round of qutns: “Did you bee timate wh a young man named Conway? . . . He sold newspapers on the pier at Worthg? . . . Did you put your hands si his troers? . . . Did you give him sums om time to time amountg to fifteen pounds?” The roll ll of Wil’s associat hntgly echo the list of young men whom Dorian is said to have ed.</p><p class="paywall">Durg the two dismal crimal trials that followed, Wil had one magnificent moment, and , too, volved “Dorian Gray.” While beg qutned on the subject of Aled Douglas’s poem about “the Love that dare not speak s name,” Wil was sudnly moved to fend that love stead of nyg . Wh emotn, he announced that such love was “as pure as was perfect,” that “pervas great works of art like those of Shakpeare and Michelangelo.” Acrdg to one transcript, he said, “It is betiful, is fe, is the noblt form of affectn.” He was quotg almost directly om “Dorian Gray”: “The love that [Basil] bore him . . . had nothg that was not noble and tellectual. It was not that mere physil admiratn of bety that is born of the sens and that di when the sens tire. It was such love as Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and Wckelmann, and Shakpeare himself.”</p><p class="paywall">Wil’s speech aroed hiss the urtroom and also a brave burst of applse. At least one member of the jury voted agast a guilty verdict, forcg a retrial. A polil panic epted: the men around Lord Rosebery, the Prime Mister, feared that if Wil were not nvicted they would be acced of shelterg a generate. (Rosebery had a personal motive; was mored that he had been the lover of the olr brother of Aled Douglas, Francis, who had died 1894, probably a suici.) A send prosecutn began, wh the Solicor General charge, and was succsful. Jtice Wills, the pridg judge, bombastilly scribed the se as “the worst . . . I have ever tried.”</p><p class="paywall">Over time, though, the shamg of Wil generated as much sympathy as disgt, particularly among those who were disenchanted by the stttg pos of the Brish Empire. “When the verdict was announced the harlots the street outsi danced upon the pavement,” Yeats wrote. And the gay unrworld Wil’s fiance cracked open the door of hope. Havelock Ellis, the 1906 edn of his book “Sexual Inversn,” noted that the Wil trials “generally ntributed to give fens and self-nscns to the maniftatns of homosexualy,” and quoted a rrponnt sayg that Wil’s suffergs ma him feel “ready to strike a blow, when the time , for what we em to be right, honorable, and clean.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-4 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Wil foraw his posthumo triumph. “I have no doubt we shall w, but the road is long, and red wh monstro martyrdoms,” he wrote to the early gay-rights mpaigner Gee Iv. Even so, the clean-cut tegori of ntemporary sexualy might have puzzled him. He was attracted to women as well as to men, if not nearly as strongly, and the llapse of his marriage may have had as much to do wh temperamental differenc as wh sexual on. (You uld see him as one more self-entled Victorian male exercisg his right to extramaral recreatn.) Furthermore, he might have risted the tenncy toward normalizatn gay circl—the drive of an opposnal culture to abolish self. When he spoke of wng the battle, he probably did not have md gag the right to jo the ary and marry church.</p><p class="paywall">“The world sps only forward,” Prr Walter says at the end of Tony Khner’s “Angels Ameri,” a “gay fantasia” that opened 1991, a century after the publitn of “Dorian Gray.” Prr go on to say, “We will be cizens. The time has e.” Seeg the Signature Theatre productn of Khner’s masterpiece last sprg, I thought of how much had changed twenty years, never md a hundred. When I was llege, <em class="small">AIDS</em> st a pall of fear over gay life, and I stggled to summon the urage to tell my clost iends who I was. I uldn’t have imaged that gay marriage would bee legal half a dozen stat, or that I would be married myself.</p><p class="paywall">The transformatn is almost dreamlike. Yet I doubt that Wil would regnize our world the utopia that he dreamed aloud “The Soul of Man Unr Socialism.” A man who steeped himself the lerature of the ancient Greeks, who molled his beg on the wrg of Balzac and Stendhal and Pater, who read Dante every day prison, might have seen a new kd of hell the global triumph of Amerin-style pop culture. Medice prolongs life and slows agg, but personal satisfactn is as elive a mody as was for Dorian Gray. Prejudice wan, ignorance grows, the world sps forward and backward. Few of would wish for the return of Wil’s London, wh s opulent surfac and savage heart. But Wil might have been ntent to stay there, savorg his joys and sorrows. No one liv happily ever after. ♦</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="q48l"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 PaywallInleBarrierWhWrapperGrid-fyrGfS kLQIUk grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="body body__le-barrier article__body"><div class="ntaer ntaer--body"><div class="ntaer--body-ner"><asi class="PaywallInleBarrierWrapper-iBnuqk lfXXa-D" data-ttid="PaywallInleBarrierWrapper"><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--paywall-le-barrier" role="prentatn" aria-live="pole" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--paywall-le-barrier"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></asi></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ContentWrapperGrid-fvkmBv brYtrA grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="body body__ntaer"><div class="ntaer ntaer--body"><div class="ntaer--body-ner"></div></div></div></div></div></div></article><div class="ContentFooterWrapper-jVNdRG dTJkpP ArticlePageContentFooterGrid-ccsXYy eMZRHU article-body__footer"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><footer class="ContentFooterMagazeDisclaimer-gzKAqo iZIuUU" data-ttid="MagazeDisclaimerWrapper">Published the prt edn of the <a href="/magaze/2011/08/08" data-reactroot="">Augt 8, 2011</a>, issue, wh the headle “Deceptive Picture.”</footer></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="ContributorsWrapper-eNpWFu GWFsc ntributors" data-ttid="Contributors"><div class="ContributorBWrapper-bnVHbt gMon"><div class="ContributorBAvatar-bIGTqf eMWbvj"><a href="/ntributors/alex-ross"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW jvZaPI rponsive-asset"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa rponsive-image"><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></picture></span></a></div><div class="ContributorBContent-ubQdr jZTSSi"><div class="ContributorBHear-ledood XOIEx"></div><div class="ContributorBB-fBolsO giFhKz"><a href="/ntributors/alex-ross">Alex Ross</a> has been the magaze’s mic cric sce 1996. His latt book is “<a href=">Wagnerism: Art and Polics the Shadow of Mic</a>.”</div><div class="ContributorBFooter-brqDlv ezUmSv"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div data-ttid="TagCloudWrapper" class="TagCloudWrapper-gGgndx ctyZyK ContentFooterTagCloud-krQmRG ZLGh"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ TagCloudSectnHear-cOforY iUEiRd bPyAoD kQQRmu">More:</span><a href="/tag/angels--ameri" class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BaseLk-eNWuiM TagCloudLk-kvjZFu iUEiRd ggMZaT gFob hIhJOI"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ TagCloudName-eAUnLd iUEiRd gwIVBQ bUkXwu">Angels In Ameri</span></a><a href="/tag/arthur-nan-doyle" class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BaseLk-eNWuiM TagCloudLk-kvjZFu iUEiRd ggMZaT gFob hIhJOI"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd 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data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href=" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ fzzTdh summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">Aristotle’s Rul for Livg Well</div></a><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd kxnNhB jDyfzW summary-em__k">The Niachean Ethics is an unexampled work by a paragon of classil thought. 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grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><div class="GenericCalloutWrapper-tojWn iHBnEl llout--has-top-borr set-embedd-le" data-ttid="GenericCallout"><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO KhjZz AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset rponsive-image rponsive-image--expandable"><noscript><img alt="Cariture of a man a su and top hat ont of the Brish Ho of Parliament" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w, 1920w, 2240w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></span></div><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn AssetEmbedCaptn-fNQBPI fmQnYP asset-embed__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo iXWezO ptn__text">Even before Wil sent the mancript of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” to the typist, he was hatg over s homoerotic ntent.</span><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT jbIJNS ptn__cred">Illtratn by Edward Sorel</span></div></figure></div><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg">Osr Wil was not a man who lived fear, but early reviews of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” mt have given him pse. The story, tellg of a man who never ag while his portra turns crep, appeared the July, 1890, issue of <em>Lipptt’s,</em> a Philalphia magaze wh English distributn. The <em>Daily Chronicle</em> of London lled the tale “unclean,” “poisono,” and “heavy wh the mephic odours of moral and spirual putrefactn.” The <em>St. Jam Gazette</em> emed “nasty” and “nseo,” and suggted that the Treasury or the Vigilance Society might wish to prosecute the thor. Most omo was a short notice the <em>Sts Observer</em> statg that although “Dorian Gray” was a work of lerary qualy, alt “matters only fted for the Crimal Invtigatn Department or a hearg mera” and would be of tert maly to “outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph-boys”—an alln to the recent Cleveland Street sndal, which had exposed the workgs of a male brothel London. Wh five years, Wil found himself nvicted of “mtg acts of gross cency wh certa male persons.”</p><p class="paywall">The furor was unsurprisg: no work of mastream English-language fictn had e so close to spellg out homosexual sire. The openg pag leave ltle doubt that Basil Hallward, the pater of Dorian’s portra, is love wh his subject. Once Dorian disvers his godlike powers, he rri out var heo acts, cludg murr; but to the Victorian sensibily his most unspeakable ed would have been his rptn of a seri of young men. (Basil tells Dorian, “There was that wretched boy the Guards who mted suici. You were his great iend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave England, wh a tarnished name. You and he were separable.”) At the Wil trials of 1895, the opposg attorneys read aloud om “Dorian Gray,” llg a “sodomil book.” Wil went to prison not bee he loved young men but bee he flnted that love, and “Dorian Gray” beme the chief exhib of his shamelsns.</p><p class="paywall">Wil died 1900, a n-down Paris hotel, at the age of forty-six. Almost overnight, a legend was born: Wil the homosexual martyr, Wil the moral rebel. A nascent gay-rights movement embraced him as a hero of fiance. When, 1967, Craig Rodwell opened a gay-and-lbian bookstore New York, he named the Osr Wil Memorial Bookshop, and after the Stonewall rts of 1969 Rodwell ed the bookstore’s mailg list to help anize the first gay-pri para. As recently as the late eighti, you uld still fd bookish young people g to terms wh their sexualy by way of readg Wil. (You uld at least fd me.) Whether or not Wil saw himself as part of a e, he did not lack urage. The multiple versns of “Dorian Gray”—the earlit survivg mancript, which is at the Man Library; the typcript sent to <em>Lipptt’s</em>, which Harvard Universy Prs has jt ma available an “uncensored” edn; the published <em>Lipptt’s</em> text; and the expand book publitn of 1891—show Wil cidg, sentence by sentence, jt how far he would go.</p><p class="paywall">The Wil Bookshop closed 2009, a sualty not only of the cle of the booksellg bs but also of the partial triumph of Rodwell’s missn. In many major ci, at least, gays and lbians no longer seem to need a safe place the form of a store. And they no longer seem to need the tragiic Osr; the young gays of today n revel the w and wisdom of Neil Patrick Harris. All of which leav Wil an tertg limbo. What will he mean a perhaps not too distant time when homosexualy has ceased to be a nversatn stopper?</p><p class="paywall">“To the world I seem, by tentn on my part, a dilettante and dandy merely— is not wise to show one’s heart to the world,” Wil once wrote. We should not assume that his heart was revealed to when he beme a gay in, or when he was nonized wir bohemian circl as the patron sat of “Be yourself.” (The phrase appears the 1891 say “The Soul of Man Unr Socialism.”) Wil’s atheticism, his fanatil cult of bety, was the ept and most lastg of his passns, and is now the most radil thg about him. Perhaps only the threat of persecutn prevented Wil om eely exprsg his sexualy his wrg; yet he also may have been ught the morn stggle to hab an inty whout beg fed by . The ghastly endg of “Dorian Gray”—Dorian stabbg his portra a enzy—shows a man losg a battle wh his public image.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">The two most recent major bgraphi of Wil are Thomas Wright’s “Built of Books: How Readg Defed the Life of Osr Wil,” which appeared 2008, and Neil McKenna’s “The Secret Life of Osr Wil: An Intimate Bgraphy,” which me out 2005. They prent almost illy ntradictory portras. Wright’s Wil is an tellectual dreamer who rarely steps outsi the lerary realm. We are told that his parents—the eye-and-ear surgeon William Wil and the poet Jane Franc Wil, who wrote unr the name Speranza—accumulated mountas of books at their home, Dubl, and that young Osr habually read bed, his md ravished by Irish folktal, ancient-Greek texts, Romantic poems, and gothic novels. Wright even suggts that Wil disvered his sexualy the pag of Plato. “Was a se of lerary nurture over blogil nature?” Wright asks, as if Wil might have found boys unattractive had the philosopher not put the ia his head. In this tellg, Wil’s ultimate huiatn me not on the day of his arrt, on April 5, 1895, but a few weeks later, when his library was ctned off.</p><p class="paywall">McKenna’s Wil, by ntrast, is a largely sexual beg who reads orr to fd a language for his sire and wr orr to speak that sire aloud. He is hailed as “a martyr an epic stggle for the eedom of men to love men.” McKenna rejects the ia, set forth prev bgraphi, that Wil had no gay life until his early thirti, when he met Robert Ross, a precly self-aware Canadian teen-ager, Oxford. In fact, certa of Wil’s youthful poems drip wh homoeroticism—“And he looked on me wh sire / And I know that his name was Love”—and his early iendship wh the pater Frank Mil, among others, had a sexual tge. Yet McKenna reads too much to meagre evince. He is a wrer of the “almost certaly” school, and he whholds material that beli his this. (He do not mentn that Mil was notorly attracted to very young girls.) Later chapters rely on the dub memoirs of Edmund Trelawny Backhoe, a fer and a fantasist, who claimed rnal knowledge not only of the prcipals the Wil se but also of Pl Verlae and the Dowager Emprs of Cha. McKenna, by fixatg on Wil’s sexual life, arriv at an oddly unflatterg portra. Preyg on young lerary fans, payg off rent boys, pickg up lads as young as fifteen—Wil is stripped of his charm.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-1 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">To read Wright and McKenna succsn is like seeg a picture alter before one’s ey: a bookish fellow be a sex addict. There is, however, no real ntradictn; untls lerary liv have veered om monkish labor to mdls pleasure. Wil himself first felt this spl when he was studyg at Oxford, the eighteen-seventi. In the poem “Hélas!,” published 1881, he wistfully imag a life of “stere ntrol,” which he “might have trod / The sunl heights, and om life’s dissonance / Stck one clear chord to reach the ears of God.” But he tast “the honey of romance” and los his footg. Sixteen years later, Wil traced the same downward arc “De Profundis,” the annihilatg book-length letter that he wrote prison to Aled Douglas, his former lover: “Tired of beg on the heights I liberately went to the pths the search for new sensatns.” He never found the middle ground between those extrem, although he glimpsed . “All excs, as well as all renunciatn, brgs s own punishment,” he said, summg up “Dorian Gray.”</p><p class="paywall">Such epigrams were the foundatn of Wil’s fame, and rema so. He is often seen as the godfather of celebry culture, that om the outset he was noted chiefly for beg Osr Wil. Even his Oxford days, his wticisms were makg their way beyond the universy walls. (His first h: “I fd harr and harr every day to live up to my blue cha.”) On settlg London, 1879, he assumed the gdy neo-Renaissance pos that spired dozens of <em>Punch</em> rtoons and two characters Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Patience.” He mataed exquise attus durg his Amerin lecture tour of 1882, endurg jeers om llege stunts and enjoyg the unexpected admiratn of Colorado mers. Back England, he ed further chatter wh a turn toward domticy, marryg Constance Lloyd and producg two sons. Only when he published “The Happy Prce and Other Tal,” 1888, did his lerary output tch up to his fame. Wh that publitn, the most tense phase of Wil’s reer began. His w acquired a sharper edge: celebry beme a vehicle for subversn.</p><div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--article-mid-ntent" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--article-mid-ntent nsumer-marketg-un__slot---ntent"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><p class="paywall">The fairy tal are well stocked wh lightful paradox, yet they are encircled by strangens and sadns. “The Star-Child” ends wh the sentence “And he who me after him led evilly.” They are tal of impossible love: a fisherman’s for a mermaid, a statue’s for a swallow. Victorian parents who read the stori to their children may have stumbled over the iskier moments, as when the tle character of “The Young Kg” prs his lips to a statue of Anto, Hadrian’s male slave. Wil reveals the human plexy and sufferg behd the luxur surfac that he summoned so easily rollg Irish prose. The Young Kg is dismayed to disver that his subjects have toiled severely—and even died— orr to manufacture his goln raiments, yet when he tri to assume a humbler guise the kgdom revolts agast him.</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoon__image rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="“In the kchen Im more of an aggregator than a ntent creator.”" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE gdZTpI ptn RponsiveCartoonCaptn-dokfdF hJgaLQ rponsive-rtoon__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo bsWloa ptn__text">“In the kchen, I’m more of an aggregator than a ntent creator.”</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Copy lk to rtoon</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-pylk" width="24" 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pied</p></div></div></div><button aria-label="Shop" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Shop</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-rt" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Shop</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178638)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M4 3H2V4H4.23828L6.99617 15.2631C7.11483 15.6982 7.50998 16 7.96094 16H18.0365C18.4875 16 18.8826 15.6982 19.0013 15.2631L20.9648 7.26312C21.1383 6.62698 20.6594 6 20 6H10V7H20L18.0365 15H7.96094L5.03652 3H4.58055H4ZM10.0365 19C10.0365 19.5523 9.58881 20 9.03652 20C8.48424 20 8.03652 19.5523 8.03652 19C8.03652 18.4477 8.48424 18 9.03652 18C9.58881 18 10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">Wil was never an open radil the manner of Gee Bernard Shaw, but the imper says he published between 1889 and 1891—“The Tth of Masks,” “Pen, Pencil, and Poison,” “The Dey of Lyg,” “The Cric as Artist,” and “The Soul of Man Unr Socialism”—dug tunnels unr the moral foundatns of Victorian England. Artists are st as outlaws (“There is no sential ngy between crime and culture”), purveyors of dangero ias (the better to rist “that splendid system that elevat [men] to the digny of mach”), tellers of geo li that supplant dull tths, and habual antomians, rejectg “the shallow shibboleths of any sect or school.” In “The Soul of Man,” Wil imag a revolutn that will sweep asi all middle-class Philistism. Technologil advanc, he predicts, will liberate even the workg class, grantg them liv of athetic reverie. The vague enomic logic of the argument is a pretext for Wil to vent his rage on an dience that treated him as an amg sishow:</p><blockquote class="BlockquoteEmbedWrapper-sc-SdiGL jPeLne paywall blockquote-embed"><div class="BlockquoteEmbedContent-RbGs gmbtPx blockquote-embed__ntent"><p>The public make e of the classics of a untry as a means of checkg the progrs of Art. They gra the classics to thori. They e them as bludgeons for preventg the ee exprsn of Bety new forms. They are always askg a wrer why he do not wre like somebody else, or a pater why he do not pat like somebody else, que obliv of the fact that if eher of them did anythg of the kd he would cease to be an artist. A h mo of Bety is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever appears they get so angry and bewilred that they always e two stupid exprsns—one is that the work of art is grossly untelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by the words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly untelligible, they mean that the artist has said or ma a betiful thg that is new; when they scribe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or ma a betiful thg that is te.</p></div></blockquote></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><asi class="PersistentAsiWrapper-VGrR daRVRt persistent-asi" style="posn:absolute;top:to;height:to" data-ttid="PersistentAsiWrapper"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="ifn3b9"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></asi></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="jl7ksb"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">This fulmatn anticipat the rhetoric of mornism. Yeats and Joyce, particular, felt a strong nnectn to their Irish forenner. Yeats, who believed that Wil would have ma a great soldier or polician, praised him for lnchg “an extravagant Celtic csa agast Anglo-Saxon stupidy.” Joyce evintly drew on the trials of 1895 creatg the hallucogenic persecutn of Leopold Bloom the “Circe” chapter of “Ulyss.”</p><div class="Contaer-bkChBi byNLHx"></div><p class="paywall">The gay stra Wil’s work is part of a larger war on nventn. In the 1889 story “The Portra of Mr. W. H.,” a psdo-scholarly, metafictnal vtigatn of Shakpeare’s sons to a boy, Wil slyly suggts that the pillar of Brish lerature was somethg other than an ordary fay man. In the 1891 play “Salomé,” Wil expands a Biblil anecdote to a sumptuo panorama of nce. Anarchists of the f siècle, pecially Germany, nsired Wil one of their own: Gtav Lander hailed Wil as the English Nietzsche. Thomas Mann expand on the analogy, observg that var l of Wil might have e om Nietzsche (“There is no realy thgs apart om their experienc”) and that var l of Nietzsche might have e om Wil (“We are basilly cled to mata that the falst judgments are the most dispensable to ”). Nietzsche and Wil were, Mann’s view, “rebels the name of bety.”</p><p class="paywall">In early 1892, Wil enjoyed a huge theatril succs wh “Lady Wrmere’s Fan,” and until he went to prison he nfed himself to social edy. The subversive agenda remaed: Richard Le Gallienne plsibly proposed that Wil “ma dyg Victorianism lgh at self, and may be said to have died of the lghter.” But the creasg virtuosy of Wil’s dramatic technique masked a weakeng of his creative impulse; the plays were wrten amid long perds of activy and relied termtently on old l. “The Importance of Beg Earnt,” brilliant as is, threatens to bee a greatt-hs pilatn. Wil later blamed the dissipatns of Aled Douglas for the slowg of his productivy after 1892; their affair began that year, after Wil paid off a blackmailer on Douglas’s behalf.</p><p class="paywall">After readg the newer books on Wil, I returned to Richard Ellmann’s 1988 bgraphy, which, spe some errors and eccentrici, still mands the field. Ellmann performs the supreme service of takg Wil serly, as a wrer first and a personaly send. He tch Wil’s lawls moralism, his outst-preacher tone. “His creative works almost always end unmaskg,” Ellmann wr. “The hand that adjts the green rnatn sudnly shak an admonory fger.” Ellmann explas better than any other chronicler why, 1895, Wil chose to face his accers stead of fleeg to the Content. It was not an act of martyrdom, or of arrogance or self-ln, but, rather, an exercise tellectual nsistency. Ellmann wr, “He submted to the society he had cricized, and so earned the right to cricize further.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Dorian Gray emerged om the same dner that sured the immortaly of Sherlock Holm. Wil and Arthur Conan Doyle ded together London Augt, 1889, as guts of Joseph Marshall Stoddart, the edor of <em>Lipptt’s</em>. Doyle, like so many others, me away dazzled by Wil. “He towered above all, and yet had the art of seemg to be terted all that we uld say,” Doyle relled. Later that year, Doyle sent <em>Lipptt’s</em> his send Holm tale, “The Sign of Four,” assigng a few Wilan tras to the great tective. (You n image Wil sayg, “I abhor the dull route of existence. I crave for mental exaltatn.”) Wil, for his part, may have picked up some tricks om Holm’s creator: parts of “Dorian Gray” are as gome as a police procral.</p><p class="paywall">Last sprg, I spent a few hours lookg at the tograph mancript of “Dorian Gray,” at the Man Library. When Dorian attempts to stroy his portra, the mancript has him “rippg the thg right up”; Wil then adds the phrase “om top to bottom.” Nicholas Frankel, the edor of the new Harvard edn of “Dorian Gray,” not that the evisceratg gture evok Jack the Ripper, whose crim had filled the papers two years earlier.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-2 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">The origal magaze story, at fifty thoand words, has all the faiar elements of the book versn, which is the one most people know. Lord Henry, a Mephistophelian athete who seems to be Wil’s mouthpiece, viss the stud of his iend Basil Hallward and be fascated by a picture displayed there. Basil nfs his attractn to s subject. When Dorian enters, Lord Henry tellectually sc him wh a philosophy of hedonism. (“The only way to get rid of a temptatn is to yield to .”) Dorian, sadned by the ia that he mt grow old while his portra stays the same, wish the oppose were te. An elf magic tak hold. Dorian falls for a gifted young actrs named Sibyl Vane and then sts her asi when he term that the joy of love has renred her art banal. She kills herself. The face the picture acquir a cel look. As Dorian wallows bchery, Basil pri to his secret life and wonrs about the state of his soul. Dorian, who has hidn the picture his attic, shows Basil the now hio face, and kills him. Thoughts of repentance cross Dorian’s md, but he cis that he mt wipe out the only remag rerd of his crim: the portra. When he stabs , he falls ad, his face misshapen beyond regnn. In the same stant, the picture’s bety is rtored.</p><p class="paywall">In the Man mancript, Wil’s hand flows nfintly, as if takg dictatn, but the appearance of fluency may be ceptive: the tograph is probably a py of an earlier draft that has disappeared. Although Wil is celebrated as the greatt natural talker of morn tim, he eded his prose meticuloly. The openg paragraphs, scribg Basil’s stud, are a masterpiece of precise evotn, and Wil’s handwrten chang sharpen the imagery yet more. In a passage that par the “dim roar of London” to the “bourdon note of an an,” Wil serts the word “distant” before “an,” addg a twge of far-off relig dread.</p><p class="paywall">At the same time, Wil’s revisns to the openg dialogue between Basil and Lord Henry betray a risg anxiety, an urge to lower the emotnal temperature. Exclamatns over Dorian’s bety give way to more rerved remarks about his “good looks” and “personaly.” “Passn” be “feelg,” “pa” be “perplexy.” Wil’s pen stops Basil om mentng the time Dorian bshed agast his cheek and om announcg that “the world be young to me when I hold his hand.” And when Basil explas why he is whholdg the patg om London gallery-goers he is prevented om sayg that “where there is really love, they would see somethg evil, and where there is spirual passn they would suggt somethg vile.” Tellgly, Wil remov timatns of a prr attachment between Basil and Lord Henry. He let a scriptn of Basil “takg hold of [Lord Henry’s] hand.” One passage is so heavily scratched out as to be almost illegible, but Lord Henry seems to berate Basil for havg bee Dorian’s “slave,” and then blurts out, “I hate Dorian Gray.” In the end, Wil ncels any ht of jealoy and giv Lord Henry the mask of an amed athete: “Basil, this is que wonrful! I mt see Dorian Gray.”</p><p class="paywall">Even before Wil sent his mancript to the typist, then, he was hatg over s homoerotic ntent, and pecially over the pag voted to Basil’s sire. The foc on Basil is not surprisg, given that Wil later clared, “Basil Hallward is what I thk I am: Lord Henry what the world thks me: Dorian what I would like to be— other ag, perhaps.”</p><p class="paywall">When the typcript arrived the Philalphia offic of <em>Lipptt</em>’<em>s</em>, was Joseph Marshall Stoddart’s turn to have send thoughts. His chang are noted the new Harvard edn. Stoddart was no p, and moved unnventnal circl; when Wil me to Ameri, Stoddart troduced him to Walt Whman. But the edor knew his public’s lims. He, or an associate, cut another of Basil’s nfsnal remarks about the portra—“There was love every le, and every touch there was passn”—and several scriptns of Dorian’s nighttime wanrgs, cludg a sentence that might pict the ancient rual of cisg: “A man wh cur ey had sudnly peered to his face, and then dogged him wh stealthy footsteps, passg and repassg him many tim.” In good Amerin style, Stoddart had no problem wh the vlence.</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="ahpryd"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">“Dorian Gray” failed to sndalize Ameri. England was, of urse, another matter. Although Wil was already planng to expand the story to a novel, he certaly reacted to the suatns the prs. More referenc to physil ntact between the male characters were dropped. Jt as signifint as the expurgatns are the addns: six chapters, totallg some twenty-eight thoand words. They supply further episos of society edy, h adventur for Dorian the opium ns, a fuller sketch of the unlucky Sibyl Vane, and a baroque subplot volvg Jam Vane, Sibyl’s brother, who seeks to avenge her. The new material giv “Dorian Gray” a novelistic heft, even a polil edge. The chapter about the Van, for example, sets Dorian’s velvety life style stark relief. Yet the excursns high and low society feel a b like staged distractns. There are too many tidy formulatns—“It was his bety that had ed him, his bety and the youth that he had prayed for”—posned to reassure the middle class.</p><p class="paywall">The versn that Wil submted to <em>Lipptt</em>’<em>s</em> is the better fictn. It has the swift and unnny rhythm of a morn fairy tale—and “Dorian” is the greatt of Wil’s fairy tal. Wil ma clear om the outset that he wished to show not only the thrills and pleasur of a thlsly athetic life but also s lims and dangers. The hions of Dorian’s mise is as tegral to the work’s nceptn as any bloodcurdlg twist Poe, and lookg at the fal pag of the mancript you n almost see Wil’s lips curlg celly as he wrote. Beneath the btal fal paragraph, he signs his name slashg strok, as if wieldg a knife. Ellmann sums up th: “Drift betifully on the surface, and you will die unbetifully the pths.” Wil steps outsi his practiced persona to st a ld eye on the sensatn-seekg life style popularly ascribed to him.</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoon__image rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="“No A.C. but who needs when youve got this kd of crossventilatn”" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE gdZTpI ptn RponsiveCartoonCaptn-dokfdF hJgaLQ rponsive-rtoon__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo bsWloa ptn__text">“No A.C., but who needs when you’ve got this kd of cross-ventilatn?”</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Copy lk to rtoon</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in 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aria-hidn="te">Lk pied</p></div></div></div><button aria-label="Shop" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Shop</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-rt" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Shop</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178638)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M4 3H2V4H4.23828L6.99617 15.2631C7.11483 15.6982 7.50998 16 7.96094 16H18.0365C18.4875 16 18.8826 15.6982 19.0013 15.2631L20.9648 7.26312C21.1383 6.62698 20.6594 6 20 6H10V7H20L18.0365 15H7.96094L5.03652 3H4.58055H4ZM10.0365 19C10.0365 19.5523 9.58881 20 9.03652 20C8.48424 20 8.03652 19.5523 8.03652 19C8.03652 18.4477 8.48424 18 9.03652 18C9.58881 18 10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">The most problematic aspect of Wil’s revisn is the novel’s Preface, wh s famo val of epigrams: “To reveal art and nceal the artist is art’s aim”; “There is no such thg as a moral or an immoral book”; “All art is que els.” The l, together wh new quips for Lord Henry (“Art has no fluence upon actn. . . . It is superbly sterile”), are related to letters that Wil wrote to crics and rears after the <em>Lipptt</em>’<em>s</em> publitn. They amount to a formalist fense, posg the story as an tonomo object which diverse rears perceive diverse ias. But art <em>do</em> reveal the artist, and <em>do</em> fluence actn, however unpredictably. In Wil’s narrative, books are scribed as “poisono” agents that enter the bloodstream: an unnamed French book that Lord Henry giv to Dorian disclos new vistas of vice. In the typcript, we learn that the book is “Le Secret Raoul,” by Catulle Sarraz—probably a fictnal stand- for Huysmans’s 1884 novel, “Agast the Gra,” which scrib a gay enunter more explicly than Wil ever dared to do. (Wil read on his honeymoon.) Above all, there is Basil’s patg, which stroys both s creator and subject. When Mallarmé read the story, he sgled out for approval the le “It was the portra that had done everythg.” Art is not nocent, Wil impli. Vlence n be done s name. Ined, the twentieth century brought forth many Dorian Grays: fiendishly pure spirs so wrapped up athetics that they bee heedls of humany. Wil’s anatomy of the nfn between art and life remas pertent wh each new uproar over lurid films, songs, or vio gam.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-3 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Even the fal book versn, Wil ref to moralize, to tell the artist what to do or the rear what to thk. Each dividual mt vise his own ethil . When Wil wrote that all excs as well as all renunciatn brgs s punishment, he evintly had md the ntrast between Basil, who n nceive of his love for Dorian only abstract terms, and Dorian, who is so tent on embracg the physil that he los his md. Both men meet bad ends. Lord Henry, by ntrast, emerg unsthed, his talk nghtier than his walk. Ined, Basil acc him of beg secretly virtuo: “You never say a moral thg, and you never do a wrong thg.” Lord Henry po a peculiarly ntemporary kd of moratn, dulgg his bra but not his body, employg Dorian as a proxy hedonist. (Today, Lord Henry might spend a lot of time on the Inter.) There is somethg sad about him, for, unlike Basil and Dorian, he fails to m himself. His life is vir.</p><p class="paywall">What begs as an allurg fable ends as a full-on mornist nightmare. Only one character experienc anythg like spontaneo joy, and that is Sibyl Vane, when she cis to abandon the artistic life and vote herself to Dorian. “I am sick of shadows,” she tells him. “You are more to me than all art n ever be.” Tragilly, Sibyl do not realize that Dorian has exchanged his soul for that of the patg; like the others, she is trapped by the image’s spell.</p><p class="paywall">The eerie thg about Wil’s life is that he, too, uld not pe the fernal logic of the “Picture.” His own book exhibed “poisono” properti. Aled Douglas read at Oxford and, by his own ttimony, reread thirteen tim. He beme termed to meet the thor. He was Wil’s fantasy e to life—Dorian steppg om the nvas. But he had an ugly soul; as Wil regnized “De Profundis,” hate exced him more than love. Wil, Basil to the end, adored the young man all the same.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">On Febary 18, 1895, the Marqus of Queensberry, Douglas’s hate-enged father, scribed a visg rd wh the words “For Osr Wil, posg Somdome,” and left at Wil’s club. Urged on by Douglas, Wil ma the mistake of sug the Marqus for libel—a cisn tastrophic not only for his reer but also for his sense of digny, sce, as he later wrote, he was forced to prent himself as a “champn of rpectabily nduct, of puranism life, and of moraly art.”</p><p class="paywall">At the libel trial, Queensberry’s chief attorney, Edward Carson, need to monstrate that the words on the rd were jtified. So he set about tablishg that Wil had already advertised his proclivi prt. “Dorian Gray” beme Carson’s ma rource, and he elected to treat as Wil’s life story—an ironic move, bee s pag Basil plas that “men treat art as if were meant to be a form of tobgraphy.” The barrister pounced on a passage that had appeared the <em>Lipptt’s</em> versn and was later cut: “It is que te that I have worshipped you wh far more romance of feelg than a man ually giv to a iend. . . . I que adm that I adored you madly, extravagantly, absurdly.” The followg terrogatn ensued:</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="tmikgb"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="9np69"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><blockquote class="BlockquoteEmbedWrapper-sc-SdiGL jPeLne paywall blockquote-embed"><div class="BlockquoteEmbedContent-RbGs gmbtPx blockquote-embed__ntent"><p><em class="small">CARSON</em>: Have you ever extravagantly adored?</p><p><em class="small">WILDE</em>: Do you mean fancially or emotnally?</p><p><em class="small">CARSON</em>: Fancially? Do you thk we are talkg here of fanc?</p><p><em class="small">WILDE</em>: I don’t know what you are talkg about.</p><p><em class="small">CARSON</em>: Don’t you?</p><p><em class="small">WILDE</em>: You mt ask me a pla qutn.</p><p><em class="small">CARSON</em>: I hope I will make myself very pla before I am done.</p></div></blockquote><p class="paywall">Wil was obvly perturbed by the exchange. It was like talkg to an eight-year-old who uldn’t tell the difference between an actor and his role. He fend himself ably, but Carson was softeng him up for the blow. Private tectiv hired by Queensberry had round up rent boys and starstck youths who had served Wil’s needs, and there were no clever answers to the next round of qutns: “Did you bee timate wh a young man named Conway? . . . He sold newspapers on the pier at Worthg? . . . Did you put your hands si his troers? . . . Did you give him sums om time to time amountg to fifteen pounds?” The roll ll of Wil’s associat hntgly echo the list of young men whom Dorian is said to have ed.</p><p class="paywall">Durg the two dismal crimal trials that followed, Wil had one magnificent moment, and , too, volved “Dorian Gray.” While beg qutned on the subject of Aled Douglas’s poem about “the Love that dare not speak s name,” Wil was sudnly moved to fend that love stead of nyg . Wh emotn, he announced that such love was “as pure as was perfect,” that “pervas great works of art like those of Shakpeare and Michelangelo.” Acrdg to one transcript, he said, “It is betiful, is fe, is the noblt form of affectn.” He was quotg almost directly om “Dorian Gray”: “The love that [Basil] bore him . . . had nothg that was not noble and tellectual. It was not that mere physil admiratn of bety that is born of the sens and that di when the sens tire. It was such love as Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and Wckelmann, and Shakpeare himself.”</p><p class="paywall">Wil’s speech aroed hiss the urtroom and also a brave burst of applse. At least one member of the jury voted agast a guilty verdict, forcg a retrial. A polil panic epted: the men around Lord Rosebery, the Prime Mister, feared that if Wil were not nvicted they would be acced of shelterg a generate. (Rosebery had a personal motive; was mored that he had been the lover of the olr brother of Aled Douglas, Francis, who had died 1894, probably a suici.) A send prosecutn began, wh the Solicor General charge, and was succsful. Jtice Wills, the pridg judge, bombastilly scribed the se as “the worst . . . I have ever tried.”</p><p class="paywall">Over time, though, the shamg of Wil generated as much sympathy as disgt, particularly among those who were disenchanted by the stttg pos of the Brish Empire. “When the verdict was announced the harlots the street outsi danced upon the pavement,” Yeats wrote. And the gay unrworld Wil’s fiance cracked open the door of hope. Havelock Ellis, the 1906 edn of his book “Sexual Inversn,” noted that the Wil trials “generally ntributed to give fens and self-nscns to the maniftatns of homosexualy,” and quoted a rrponnt sayg that Wil’s suffergs ma him feel “ready to strike a blow, when the time , for what we em to be right, honorable, and clean.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-4 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Wil foraw his posthumo triumph. “I have no doubt we shall w, but the road is long, and red wh monstro martyrdoms,” he wrote to the early gay-rights mpaigner Gee Iv. Even so, the clean-cut tegori of ntemporary sexualy might have puzzled him. He was attracted to women as well as to men, if not nearly as strongly, and the llapse of his marriage may have had as much to do wh temperamental differenc as wh sexual on. (You uld see him as one more self-entled Victorian male exercisg his right to extramaral recreatn.) Furthermore, he might have risted the tenncy toward normalizatn gay circl—the drive of an opposnal culture to abolish self. When he spoke of wng the battle, he probably did not have md gag the right to jo the ary and marry church.</p><p class="paywall">“The world sps only forward,” Prr Walter says at the end of Tony Khner’s “Angels Ameri,” a “gay fantasia” that opened 1991, a century after the publitn of “Dorian Gray.” Prr go on to say, “We will be cizens. The time has e.” Seeg the Signature Theatre productn of Khner’s masterpiece last sprg, I thought of how much had changed twenty years, never md a hundred. When I was llege, <em class="small">AIDS</em> st a pall of fear over gay life, and I stggled to summon the urage to tell my clost iends who I was. I uldn’t have imaged that gay marriage would bee legal half a dozen stat, or that I would be married myself.</p><p class="paywall">The transformatn is almost dreamlike. Yet I doubt that Wil would regnize our world the utopia that he dreamed aloud “The Soul of Man Unr Socialism.” A man who steeped himself the lerature of the ancient Greeks, who molled his beg on the wrg of Balzac and Stendhal and Pater, who read Dante every day prison, might have seen a new kd of hell the global triumph of Amerin-style pop culture. Medice prolongs life and slows agg, but personal satisfactn is as elive a mody as was for Dorian Gray. Prejudice wan, ignorance grows, the world sps forward and backward. Few of would wish for the return of Wil’s London, wh s opulent surfac and savage heart. But Wil might have been ntent to stay there, savorg his joys and sorrows. No one liv happily ever after. ♦</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="q48l"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 PaywallInleBarrierWhWrapperGrid-fyrGfS kLQIUk grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="body body__le-barrier article__body"><div class="ntaer ntaer--body"><div class="ntaer--body-ner"><asi class="PaywallInleBarrierWrapper-iBnuqk lfXXa-D" data-ttid="PaywallInleBarrierWrapper"><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--paywall-le-barrier" role="prentatn" aria-live="pole" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--paywall-le-barrier"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></asi></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ContentWrapperGrid-fvkmBv brYtrA grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="body body__ntaer"><div class="ntaer ntaer--body"><div class="ntaer--body-ner"></div></div></div></div></div></div></article><div class="ContentFooterWrapper-jVNdRG dTJkpP ArticlePageContentFooterGrid-ccsXYy eMZRHU article-body__footer"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><footer class="ContentFooterMagazeDisclaimer-gzKAqo iZIuUU" data-ttid="MagazeDisclaimerWrapper">Published the prt edn of the <a href="/magaze/2011/08/08" data-reactroot="">Augt 8, 2011</a>, issue, wh the headle “Deceptive Picture.”</footer></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="ContributorsWrapper-eNpWFu GWFsc ntributors" data-ttid="Contributors"><div class="ContributorBWrapper-bnVHbt gMon"><div class="ContributorBAvatar-bIGTqf eMWbvj"><a href="/ntributors/alex-ross"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW jvZaPI rponsive-asset"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa rponsive-image"><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></picture></span></a></div><div class="ContributorBContent-ubQdr jZTSSi"><div class="ContributorBHear-ledood XOIEx"></div><div class="ContributorBB-fBolsO giFhKz"><a href="/ntributors/alex-ross">Alex Ross</a> has been the magaze’s mic cric sce 1996. His latt book is “<a href=">Wagnerism: Art and Polics the Shadow of Mic</a>.”</div><div class="ContributorBFooter-brqDlv ezUmSv"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div data-ttid="TagCloudWrapper" class="TagCloudWrapper-gGgndx ctyZyK ContentFooterTagCloud-krQmRG ZLGh"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ TagCloudSectnHear-cOforY iUEiRd bPyAoD kQQRmu">More:</span><a href="/tag/angels--ameri" class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BaseLk-eNWuiM TagCloudLk-kvjZFu iUEiRd ggMZaT gFob hIhJOI"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ TagCloudName-eAUnLd iUEiRd gwIVBQ bUkXwu">Angels In Ameri</span></a><a href="/tag/arthur-nan-doyle" class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BaseLk-eNWuiM TagCloudLk-kvjZFu iUEiRd ggMZaT gFob hIhJOI"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd 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data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href=" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ fzzTdh summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">Aristotle’s Rul for Livg Well</div></a><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd kxnNhB jDyfzW summary-em__k">The Niachean Ethics is an unexampled work by a paragon of classil thought. How do hold up as a self-help manual?</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi cuRXdL summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY cgDBtc summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH dSEWiO byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Nikhil Krishnan</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff hNpSyX summary-em summary-em--ARTICLE summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below summary-em--layout-posn-image-left summary-em--layout-proportns-50-50 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm hKqhyj" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb cPpCwE summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg bDvSkO summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz ktcjQn"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg bDvSkO summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Briefly Noted" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl XMZX summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX kImuKS bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN lapGFj summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">Books</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM dVrbhU summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href=" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ fzzTdh summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">Briefly Noted</div></a><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd kxnNhB jDyfzW summary-em__k">“Fir the Dark,” “A Madman’s Will,” “Elsewhere,” and “Snow Road Statn.”</div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff hNpSyX summary-em summary-em--ARTICLE summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below summary-em--layout-posn-image-left summary-em--layout-proportns-50-50 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm hKqhyj" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb cPpCwE summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-4" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg bDvSkO summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz ktcjQn"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg bDvSkO summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="On Killg Charl Dickens" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl XMZX summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX kImuKS bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN lapGFj summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">Life and Letters</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM dVrbhU summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-4" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href=" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ fzzTdh summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">On Killg Charl Dickens</div></a><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd kxnNhB jDyfzW summary-em__k">I did everythg I uld to avoid wrg my historil novel. 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