Some years ago I read, and became enamored of, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. The story became glued in my mind, somehow cemented by the entirely different story of Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York which I had previously watched, stunned. The decadent and depraved lives of the former's aesthetes were juxtaposed* with the grandiose ambitions of the latter's miserable artists. Where Wilde's hedonists self-indulged and contented themselves with shallow quasi-philosophical rhetoric in unending dinner parties, Kaufman's obsessive playwright self-flagellated and devoted themselves to an overzealous masterpiece. Yet they all sought great emotions and dramas, and aspired to romantic, idealised cadences of life. I convinced myself these were in some way the same characters, and the same cautionary tale about self-affirmation and intellectual masturbation.
It was once my intention to compare these works in a sprawling, insufferable essay, enumerating the values from each which I have incorporated into my own life; of course reappropriated and perverted to enhance my nihilism. (It will be clear that consuming these media so soon of one another has damaged my person, as have no doubt the many relevant ruminations with the likes of Anna Moloney and Luke Luttmann.) Mercifully, I have since lost all energy and wit (if ever I had it) necessary for such an undertaking. Some excerpts from the novel are already curated, so to recuperate my wasted efforts, I present them below in vague groups which merely hint at the abandoned thesis. Some will be hilarious and offensive. They hopefully still serve to evidence Wilde's brilliance, and the novel's genius.
* who could use such a term without embarrassment?