Real Wilde Child

"Leave my book, I beg you, to the immortality it deserves."

Thus spoke Oscar Wilde, chiding a newspaper hostile to The Picture of Dorian Gray, the novel that ripped off the skirt - and pulled down the pants - of Victorian prudence. 'Twas a characteristic swipe of immoderate chutzpah, nervy enough to be prescient. As we all now well know, the book - and, in turn, the man - has more than endured through scandal and outrage, hard labor and exile, destruction and death, not to mention over a million other (mostly smaller) fictions.

But as confident as was the Wilde one, even a genius such as he couldn't foretell his tale retold, a century and change later, by another London wordslinger of equally bad reputation. Then again, poor, dear Oscar never had the pleasure of the company of one Will Self, a mad cat with whom the young lion would've famously gotten along.

DorianIllegitimate son of a very holy Father, Will Self's Dorian (Grove $24) is the kinda incubi only a succubus could luv. And one that only the co-mingling of the two could produce.

A real Wilde child.

You (should) know the story: midlist artist (Baz Hallward) meets pretty boy ponce (Dorian Gray, natch), takes him home and - lovingly, obsessively - renders his portrait. Pretty boy, new on the scene and in desperate need of guidance falls under both the spell and tutelage of an (en)titled bold soul (Lord Henry Wotton) whose massive transgressions are dwarfed only by his marvelous, hyper literate cynicisms. The Lordly influence gives the fair-haired young charge an angle as well as an edge (one-upping the depths demands a certain acuity); the portrait, however, gives him something even better - immortality. More, the magical rendering becomes something "to bear the burden of his shame."

And his cruelties.

Such beautiful cruelties.

From the get-go, though, it's apparent that this is not your closeted father's Dorian. In an age where everything comes and goes, there's no need to write - nor read - between the lines. The book's been opened-up, so to speak - and laid bare(-backed). Self calls his Dorian "a shameless imitation" (of Christ?); I call it a reverent rewrite penned with a freedom of which the persecuted precursor could only dream.

Let freedom reign, baby.

'Cause we're all bound in the end.

Flashback - and leap forward - to swingin' London circa 1981. The century-old Wotton mini-manse is in a state of suitable dishabille, while Lord Henry, ever "swaddled in class," still "spends his days saying what's incredible, and his evenings doing what is improbable." And, of course, he won't - no, can't - shut up. The difference between this new now and the original then is that Henry's bloody well frank epigrams and aphorisms are punctuated not by a wink and a nod (though he still nods), but by a spike in his arm and a tubed bank note up his nose. To make matters curse (rather than worse), the Lord's shadow Lady has emerged triumphant as Batface, the blessedly-foibled daughter of the Duke of This or That. The result: an odd couple worthy of a scene by Joel Peter Witkin as painted by Lucien Freud.

Pivotal outcast as the tableau is dulling Baz Hallward, an almost-was mixed-(up)-mediaist with a dubious Warhol past who may or may not be doomed to become third in line behind Nauman and Viola. (Too bad for him.) First, though, he's gotta get into Dorian's pants. Then he's gotta snap outta his sulk and put the Adonis to portrait, which, this being the '80s, comes as a video-driven, nine monitor monstrosity christened Cathode Ray. Woe the Artiste.

Nine naked Dorians staring out at the cruel world is almost too much for bumbling Baz to handle. That said stare is obviously his best work ever only adds to the weight of his middle age. Wotton snidely concurs, pooh-poohing his pal's penultimate triumph while overtly making a play for its subject. Dorian, though, is too taken with his itty, pretty self to notice.

Transfixed, the boob gets jealous of his boob tube multitudes, and Dorian bemoans the fact that the work'll stay forever young while he - alas - will - horror of horrors! - grow old. Yech. 'If only the portrait would age instead of me,' wishes the forlorn fancy pants.

Careful what you wish for, fella.

Free from the gravitational pull of both time and consequence, Self sends Dorian on a non-stop bop of buggery, druggery, gentleman thuggery and - at last - serial infection. High rise daisy chains beget low-rent shooting galleries, arty-farty parties spill into drop-top debaucheries. Then the Wilde world really gets kinkier - froppy, sloppy London gives way to a heavily leathered New York ("so extreme so totally unconstrained, that it almost has an innocence about it"), while sidetracks veer to a Hockney-pocked L.A., a mourning muscle beach (is that Bruce Mailman they mourn?), and the surreal shallows of the South of France. The wind-up a meltdown back in Merry ol' Blighty.

A Hi-Lo traditionalist, Self - like Wilde - wraps and taps and saps his sordid display in language befitting a Huysmans. Both cue their crawl with the mighty A Rebours, the purportedly "poison book" that launched a thousand night flights of fevered rococo sinew. And both riddle the perennial Naturalist corpse with enough unnatural talent to take the world for granted. But it's Self alone who turns the handy guidebook into a veritable Bible.

The belief in the unbelievable.

As a set piece, Dorian, like its predecessor, is a morality play on beauty and beastliness, scripted by an accusedly immoral Aesthete astute enough to gouge below the surface of things. There's a difference in surfaces of course, hence a difference of veneer; but it remains the same old rotten core of questions. Good or Evil? Right or Wrong? This or That? Who knows? Who Cares? The trick is diggin' (into) the scene.

Devour Dorian, as he would devour you. Slip into Self's remake-remodel, then lie with the Wilde original. When you're finished, catch your breath and go back - that is, forward - to where it all ends, that is, to Self. Then tell that mirror on your wall that you wanna live forever.

Note: This article was first published online in the now defunct Bully Magazine. Supplied with immense thanks to Ken Wohlrob.

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