The Fountainhead

by Ayn Rand (1943)
 

REACTION: ★★★★  (Loved)

I find Ayn Rand, as an author, endearing in her utter sense of rectitude about her strongly irreverent and entirely rational views. She objectifies people to personify her objectivism. Her characters and stories are more philosophical concepts than they are reflective of human experience, but such is the charm of her works. And you get the sense that she sees people as either belonging to her or dead to her, nothing in between. I agree with most everything she points out about humanity and society within this book, except I don't regard those who disagree or live/believe differently as evil or weak the way she does. No one is really qualified to judge how other people live their lives, and no single course works for everyone. But I do think she voices some very important and poignant truths about individualism vs. collectivism and self-sufficiency vs. altruism that needs to be voiced. No one ever speaks out against the dangers of imposed altruism and community, but to enforce that as an institution is just as oppressive to the human spirit as any sort of dictatorship/totalitarianism. So I'm glad she stated her case as viciously as she did, because otherwise it would never come across clearly enough. Freedom of choice, equal opportunity, self-respect, and independent thought are championed throughout this book, so I can imagine this being a hit with college students. Though I can see feminists being outraged by the incident of desired rape that happens between Dominique and Roark, but if understood correctly it does not justify nor condone the act of rape. These two characters are very much set apart as oddities and representative of no one else except themselves with their very specific attitudes and preferences in that specific situation which actually didn't victimize anyone. The writing and storytelling itself has such defined efficiency, every word used has exact purpose and intention, nothing goes to waste. Basically, the opposite of Charles Dickens, though just as lengthy. My favorite parts of the story involve Dominque, Roark, and Wynand, respectively. Both their individual characters alone and the shared understanding and kinship each recognizes in the other. They all see through the nonsense and posers that run the world and rebel against vacuous society in their own unique ways: Dominque by experimenting with and embodying contradictions, Wynand by destroying ideals and ruling the corruption, Roark by shunning publicity and staying true to himself. I have freakin' 25 pages of quotes from this book! I'll try to narrow it down to a few highlights here. 


QUOTES:

"Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic--and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don’t know. I’ve never known it. I’d like to understand."  (Roark to the Dean)

"I have, let’s say, 60 years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to 60 years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards--and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one."  (Roark to the Dean)

"I don’t propose to force or be forced. Those who want me will come to me."  (Roark to the Dean)

"Roark smiled, without resentment or interest."  (toward Peter)

"She said it quite correctly; there was nothing offensive in the quiet politeness of her voice; but following his high note of enthusiasm, her voice struck a tone that seemed flat and deadly in its indifference--as if the two sounds mingled into an audible counterpoint around the melodic thread of her contempt."  (Dominique)

"If I’m correct in gathering that you’re criticizing mankind in general."  (Scarret)
"You know, it’s such a peculiar thing--our idea of mankind in general. We all have a sort of vague, glowing picture when we say that, something solemn, big and important. But actually all we know of it is the people we meet in our lifetime."  (Dominique)

"What do you want? Perfection?"  (Scarret)
"--or nothing. So you see, I take the nothing."  (Dominique)
"That doesn’t make sense."  (Scarret)
"I take the only desire one can really permit oneself. Freedom."  (Dominique)
"You call that freedom?" (Scarret)
"To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing."  (Dominique)

"Dominique had spent so many summers and winters, surrounding herself with people in order to feel alone, that the experiment of actual solitude was an enchantment to her"

"Never place your punch at the beginning of a column nor at the end. Sneak it in where it’s least expected. Fill a whole column with drivel, just to get in that one important line."  (Dominique)
"Quite. That’s why I like to talk to you. It’s such a waste to be subtle and vicious with people who don’t even know that you’re being subtle and vicious. But the drivel is never accidental, Dominique."  (Toohey)

"This was some enormous negative--as if everything had been wiped out, leaving a senseless emptiness, faintly indecent because it seemed so ordinary, so unexciting, like murder wearing a homey smile. Nothing was gone--except desire; no, more than that--the root, the desire to desire. He thought that a man who loses his eyes still retains the concept of sight; but he had heard of a ghastlier blindness--if the brain centers controlling vision are destroyed, one loses even the memory of visual perception."  (Wynand)

"There was no order in his reading; but there was order in what remained of it in his mind."  (Wynand)

"He kept the details of his life secret by making it glaringly public as a whole."  (Wynand)

"Through the years the thought of suicide had occurred to him, not as an intention, but as one of the many possibilities among the chances of life. He examined it indifferently, with polite curiosity, as he examined any possibility--and then forgot it."  (Wynand)

"You never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn’t want me to show it. You wanted an act to help your act--a beautiful, complicated act, all twists, trimmings, and words. All words… You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage. Usually in the more vulgar kind of hotels. Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose. I gave you what you wanted. I became what you are, what your friends are, what most of humanity is so busy being--only without the trimmings. I didn’t go around spouting book reviews to hide my emptiness of judgment--I said I had no judgment."  (Dominique to Peter)

"I’ve probably destroyed you. If I could care, I’d say I’m sorry. That was not my purpose."  (Dominique to Peter)

"Most people go to very great length in order to convince themselves of their self-respect."  (Wynand)
"Yes."  (Dominique)
"And, of course, a quest for self-respect is proof of its lack"  (Wynand)
"Yes."  (Dominique)
"Do you see the meaning of a quest for self-contempt?"  (Wynand)
"That I lack it."  (Dominique)
"And that you’ll never achieve it."  (Wynand)

"You’re the most egotistical and the kindest man I know. And that doesn’t make sense."  (Peter)
"Maybe the concepts don’t make sense. Maybe they don’t mean what people have been taught to think they mean."  (Roark)

"Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing. But now we are taught to throw everything within us into public light and common pawing."  (Roark to Wynand)

"If this boat were sinking, I’d give my life to save you. Not because it’s any kind of duty. Only because I like you, for reasons and standards of my own. I could die for you. But I couldn’t and wouldn’t live for you."  (Roark to Wynand)

"Every system of ethics that preached sacrifice grew into a world power and ruled millions of men. Of course, you must dress it up. You must tell people that they will achieve a superior kind of happiness by giving up everything that makes them happy. You don’t have to be too clear about it. Use big vague words. 'Universal Harmony.' 'Eternal Spirit.' 'Divine Purpose.' 'Nirvana.' 'Paradise.' 'Racial Supremacy.' 'The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.'"  (Toohey to Peter)

"Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon."  (Roark, courtroom speech)

"An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act--the process of reasoning--must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred."  (Roark, courtroom speech)

"The egotist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not function through them. He is not concerned with them in any primary matter. Not in his aim, not in his motive, not in his thinking, not in his desires, not in the source of his energy. He does not exist for any other man--and he asks no other man to exist for him. This is the only form of brotherhood and mutual respect possible between men."  (Roark, courtroom speech)

"Men exchange their work by free, mutual consent to mutual advantage when their personal interests agree and they both desire the exchange. If they do not desire it, they are not forced to deal with each other. They seek further. This is the only possible form of relationship between equals. Anything else is a relation of slave to master, or victim to executioner."  (Roark, courtroom speech)

Flowers for Algernon

by Daniel Keyes (1966)

REACTION: ★★★★ (Loved)

One man's intellectual journey and its psychological ramifications. This story manages to be both smart and moving at the same time. The sci-fi experiment of incrementally raising Charlie's I.Q. from idiot to genius lends a great premise for dissecting humanity and society. My favorite kind of magical realism. The journal format works well for this as it captures Charlie's change in I.Q. more concretely when you can see it reflected in the change in how he writes. My only nitpick is having direct quotes of dialogue and play by play behavior descriptions in a journal. Effective narrative yes, but really who journals like that? But whatever I'll suspend disbelief for the sake of the otherwise awesome storytelling. Though the feminist in me can't help but wonder whether this would be the same kind of story had Charlie been a woman rather than a man. Would that story even be written? Anyway, I like the unfolding of Charlie's past and his memories of it becoming clearer as he becomes better able to make meaning out of it. Like picking up scattered puzzle pieces that were always on the floor before and just now trying to fit them together. But what I love most about this story is Charlie's evolving perception of life and the people around him and what it's all about. Cool use of psychological assessments even if slightly outdated (but then this was the 1960s). The whole meeting-in-the-middle love story between Charlie and Alice kind of reminds me of the one between Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" movie (which I watched before I started this book), but instead of age it's intelligence. Very bittersweet and entirely human despite the sci-fi element. 


QUOTES:

"If the operashun werks good Ill show that mouse I can be as smart as he is"  [Charlie, IQ=70]

"You're beginning to see what's behind the surface of things."  [Alice to Charlie]

"I’m not sure what I.Q. is anyway. Prof. Nemur said it was something that measured how intelligent you were—like a scale in the drugstore weighs pounds. But Dr. Strauss…said an I.Q. showed how much intelligence you could get, like the numbers on the outside of a measuring cup. You still had to fill the cup up with stuff. ...Burt Seldon…said that some people would say both of them were wrong and…the I.Q. measures a lot of different things including some of the things you learned already and it really isn’t a good measure of intelligence at all."  [Charlie, IQ=100]

"I had reached a new level, and anger and suspicion were my first reactions to the world around me."  [Charlie]

"Bernice, the pretty blonde with empty eyes, looked up and smiled dully."

"I realize now that my feeling for Alice had been moving backward against the current of my learning, from worship, to love, to fondness, to a feeling of gratitude and responsibility. My confused feeling for her had been holding me back... But with the freedom came a sadness. I wanted to be in love with her… Now it’s impossible. I am just as far away from Alice with an I.Q. of 185 as I was when I had an I.Q. of 70. And this time we both know it."  [Charlie]

"I remember Him as a distant uncle with a long beard on a throne (like Santa Claus in the department store on his big chair, who picks you up on his knee and asks you if you’ve been good, and what would you like him to give you?)."  [Charlie, about the idea of God]

"He's just an ordinary man trying to do a great man's work, while the great men are all busy making bombs."  [Burt to Charlie, about Prof. Nemur]

"You’re lopsided. You know things. You see things. But you haven’t developed understanding, or…tolerance. You call them phonies, but when did either of them ever claim to be perfect, or superhuman? They’re ordinary people. You’re the genius."  [Burt to Charlie]

"I’m exceptional—a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of 'gifted' and 'deprived' (which used to mean 'bright' and 'retarded') and as soon as 'exceptional' begins to mean anything to anyone they’ll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression only as long as it doesn't mean anything to anybody. Exceptional refers to both ends of the spectrum, so all my life I've been exceptional."  [Charlie]

The Great Gatsby (2013 film)

directed by Baz Luhrmann
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, etc.
based on the book by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

REACTION: ★★★★  (Loved)

First thought as I left the theater: So much better than I remember the book being! I mean, I liked the book and all when I read it in high school, but the movie was impressive. Like I want to own it when it comes out on DVD, Blueray, illegal downloads, whatever. Yeah there were parts that were kind of cheesy (like the whole thing about Gatsby's smile, Nick's droning lead-in about Gatsby greatness/mystery, or the ridiculously windy white intro to Daisey). And I'm not too keen on using current pop music to soundtrack a movie set in the 1920s (I felt the same way about Shakespeare dialogue set in modern times with "Romeo and Juliet" but intentional mismatch on Luhrmann's part perhaps). And while Leo and Tobey were pretty perfect casting, the actress playing Daisey looks way younger than Leo to be a viable contemporary and really not exactly breathtaking enough for the role. But that's all petty nitpicks as the big picture here was something epic. The story arcs and cinematography alone kicked ass. Hit all the beats, plus quirky humor, and just perfect unfolding of events and characters. Takes you along for the ride with adorably awkward Nick as he witnesses the life, laughter, sorrow, wonder, illusions, and treachery of these people who at first captivated and later disgusted and inspired pity. Captured Fitzgerald's sentiment about the rich and their callous ways, leaving bodies in their wake and never having to bear responsibility for anything. Tom was obvious, we knew he was a jerk when we met him. But Daisey really sucks you in, especially that scene where she poignantly broke down after the shirt throwing on the bed. You could tell that she was genuinely moved by Gatsby's love (or obsession really), but just not quite enough it turns out. I'm glad this didn't play out as just some unrequited love story, because it's actually a story about devastatingly indestructible hope. Gatsby was a visionary (slightly delusional), and he made shit happen by whatever seedy means necessary to feed his legit and rather endearing motivations (Leo's always at his best when playing off balanced characters). Bittersweet how Nick was the only one who saw him for who he was and admired him for it. Such a beautiful ending, both visually and emotionally. I'm not sure how closely the movie really adhered to the details of the book since it's been awhile since I read it, but the whole discourse on East Egg vs. West Egg, Gatsby's "old sport" bit, and the billboard of the overlooking eyes were pretty much as I remembered. On a personal note, I loved the shots of the morning after one of Gatsby's bashes. Just the air of desolate abandonment you get when the party's over and everyone goes home and you see the messy remnants of what once was. That sense of melancholic calm and emptiness is so dear and magical to me, ever since I was a kid, I'm glad it was featured. Overall, awesome viewing experience that was artistically plucked out of pages from a book.


TRAILER:

A Clockwork Orange

by Anthony Burgess (1962)

REACTION: ★★★★ (Loved)

Some creative philosophical dialogue on the nature of goodness: choice vs. imposition. Not that I'm a believer of good or evil, but still fun topic of debate. What I love most is really just experiencing the world through the eyes of the young, remorseless, unsuspecting Alex, who embodies both the predator and prey elements of society. Choosing both violence and to be violated, all with the carefree disregard of youth. Plot-wise, I like the irony of the whole F. Alexander arc. Nice full circle poetic justice and predator-prey role reversal, "another Alex" indeed. The Introduction from the author talks about the British vs. American versions of the book, ending either with or without the final 21st chapter, respectively. I have to say I prefer it much better with. Sure it's more an epilogue and maybe de-intensifies the ending a bit, but it was necessary in a way and made the story fuller. Alex growing out of his phase of violence and destruction, not because of any crisis of conscience but because he got tired of it after awhile and wanted to move on to another stage in life. That's pretty realistic set against the course of adolescence, and at the same time not a cop-out to who the character was. It's believable that teenagers can do terrible, irresponsible things simply for the rush of both the doing and the getting away with it. But at some point after what I'm sure feels like a lifetime of this same thing, it's no longer interesting or worth the effort anymore. Clever how the invented teen-speak mimics actual language patterns so well it totally works as believable future colloquial. Some blends of Slavic here. The slangs take awhile to get used to but becomes like second nature after a few chapters. All the "horrorshow" and "heighth of fashion" being thrown around, maybe my favorite expressions along with "and all that cal" and calling cigarettes "cancers."


QUOTES:

"But, brothers, this biting of their toe-nails over what is the cause of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They don't go into what is the cause of goodness, so why of the other shop?" (Alex)

"More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies... But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big machines?" (Alex)

"It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good... Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? ...And yet, in a sense, in choosing to be deprived of the ability to make an ethical choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good. So I shall like to think." (Prison Chaplain to Alex)

"It was like a picture of one of these bolshy great birds called peacocks with all its tail spread out in all colours in a very boastful way... I would like to pull out like all those feathers in its tail and slooshy it creech blue murder. For being so like boastful." (Alex)

"...when he said that I thought of killing a fly and felt just that tiny bit sick, but I pushed the sickness and pain back by thinking of the fly being fed with bits of sugar and looked after like a bleeding pet and all that cal." (Alex)

"Those horrible grahzny bratchnies in that terrible white mesto had done that to me, making me need help and kindness now and forcing me to want to give help and kindness myself, if anybody would take it." (Alex)

"They have turned you into something other than a human being. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good." (F. Alexander to Alex)

Gulliver's Travels

by Jonathan Swift (1729)



REACTION: ★★★★ (Loved)

All the makings of a classic children's book lined with subtle but pointed stabs at conventional society that will take on such different undertones when read again later in life. Enough insight and bite to make you question your way of being in the world and imagine other ways and possibilities that could be. I really enjoyed the play on opposites the worlds that Gulliver journeys through represented compared to the world we're used to. You have: 1) the land of tiny people where Gulliver was the giant; 2) the land of giants where he was the tiny one; 3) the floating circular island that defied gravity and our laws of physics; 4) the land where horses were the dominate species who ruled over humans and treated them as brute animals to be dealt with. Gulliver trying to explain humans and our societies to those who are not from our world and trying to not be stumped by their perfectly logical questions about why we do the illogical and arbitrary things we do, so much fun. The book mocks everything: human nature, religion, language, funeral rituals, sexism, warfare, philosophy, science, fashion, government, law, lawyers, scholars, doctors, colonization, etc. I find this very fair because it levels the playing field. There's no favoritism or agenda, since all's fair game when it comes to mocking. I remember the word "prodigious" was used a lot in this book. And some toileting details I've never encountered in any other work of literature before or since, which is oddly refreshing.


QUOTES:

"These people thought it a prodigious defect of policy among us, when I told them that our laws were enforced only by penalties, without any mention of reward."  (Gulliver, in Lilliput)

"Nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison."  (Gulliver, in Brobdingnag)

"For he could not understand, why nature should teach us to conceal what nature had given; that neither himself nor family were ashamed of any parts of their bodies; but, however, I might do as I pleased."    (Gulliver, about nudity in Country of the Houyhnhnms)

"Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance. For these reasons, the trade of a soldier is held the most honourable of all others; because a soldier is a Yahoo hired to kill, in cold blood, as many of his species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can."   (Gulliver, in Country of the Houyhnhnms)

"He looked upon us as a sort of animals, to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use, than by its assistance, to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which nature had not given us; that we disarmed ourselves of the few abilities she had bestowed; had been very successful in multiplying our original wants, and seemed to spend our whole lives in vain endeavours to supply them by our own inventions"  (Gulliver's Houyhnhnm master's reaction to human society)

"Reason alone is sufficient to govern a rational creature"  (Gulliver's Houyhnhnm master)

"Temperance, industry, exercise, and cleanliness, are the lessons equally enjoined to the young ones of both sexes; and my master thought it monstrous in us, to give the females a different kind of education from the males"  (Gulliver, in Country of the Houyhnhnms)

"But as those countries which I have described do not appear to have any desire of being conquered and enslaved, murdered or driven out by colonies, nor abound either in gold, silver, sugar, or tobacco, I did humbly conceive, they were by no means proper objects of our zeal, our valour, or our interest."  (Gulliver, about English colonization)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

by Milan Kundera (1984)
~ original language: Czech




REACTION: ★★★★ (Loved)

Perfect rendering of the imperfections of life and people. I felt like the book delves into pretty heavy, philosophical topics in such quirky and endearing ways. I appreciated the overall theme about how the weight and burden we think we have is nothing compared to the lightness we bear when we have to face the impermanence and insignificance of our lives. We can't handle absolute freedom. It's unbearable because we invariably want permanence and the realness that comes from weight and being bound to something. I liked that the author breaks from narrative to comment on the ongoing story and his process as a writer. It's like the book version of breaking the fourth wall. I also enjoyed the nonlinear structure where the story follows each character's point of view around and jumps back and forth in time. It's told in a way that's not hard to take in all of what's happening to everyone and really works for the story. So much symbolism in this book I can't even keep track. Sabina is hands-down my favorite character, just everything she represents. She may be the only one who could handle the lightness of being. Her entire relationship with Franz is made of win with its inevitable fail and Dictionary of Misunderstood Words. Then the irony of Franz being wholly misunderstood by Marie Clove in the same way he had misunderstood Sabina. Fascinating all the stuff the book goes into about the undertones of meaning in different languages for the word "compassion," lyrical vs. epic womanizer, the concept and theme of "kitsch," dividing people into four categories based on how and who we wish to be looked at by, etc. There's virtually nothing I disagreed with about this book.


QUOTES:

"If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness."

"The absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air...and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant."

"And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always a sketch. No, 'sketch' is not quite the word, because sketch is an outline for something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture."

"Dreaming is not merely an act of communication (or coded communication, if you like); it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself."

"She yearned for the two of them to merge into a hermaphrodite. Then the other bodies would be their playthings."  [Tereza, about Tomas]

"On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth showing through."  [Sabina, about her paintings]

"It was a drunken carnival of hate... But no carnival can go on forever.  [Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia]

"A monument to time past... it was a recapitulation of time, a hymn to their common past, a sentimental summary of an unsentimental story that was disappearing in the distance."  [Sabina's bowler hat]

"Being a woman is a fate Sabina did not choose. What we have not chosen we cannot consider either our merit or our failure. Sabina believed that she had assume the correct attitude to her unchosen fate. To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it."

"Characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about."

"The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which my own “I” ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about. The novel is not the author’s confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become. But enough. Let us return to Tomas."

"What repelled her was not nearly so much the ugliness of the Communist world (ruined castles transformed into cow sheds) as the mask of beauty it tried to wear--in other words, Communist kitsch."  [Sabina]

"Man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse."

"Man is as much a parasite on the cow as the tapeworm is on man"  [Tereza]

"Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion."

"Mankind's true moral test...consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy" 


MOVIE (1988):


I actually saw the movie before I read the book. And I have to say it's probably the most effective adaptation of this book into film that could be made, capturing the essence of the story without following exact narrative structure since to do so would be too confusing to watch. Of course, nothing compares to the book and it's not like one of my favorite movies or anything. But it resonated enough to make me want to read the book in the first place. That scene where Franz walks into the empty room was my favorite part.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde (1890)




REACTION: ★★★★ (Loved)

Biting and cynical yes and oh so entertaining! Not to mention insightful and thought-provoking. The concept of one living for experience itself rather than the fruit of one's experience personified in Dorian Gray because he literally can't suffer the consequences of his actions. I find it interesting in terms of power play how Lord Henry knowingly seeks to dominate Dorian as Dorian unknowingly and effortlessly dominates Basil, both men of course objectifying Dorian as they dominate or are dominated by him. Dorian also hilariously refers to Basil as a "thing" too. The dichotomy of the "plain" and "painted" women Lord Henry went on about very much reflects society's madonna vs. whore tendency of viewing and depicting women rather than delving into the complexities of who they are. I heart Lord Henry, for his quotability alone. Amuses me to no end that he dismisses someone accidentally shooting a man as having no psychological value but would totally find the same person interesting if he had done it on purpose. I also appreciate the irony that the knife used to kill the painter was also the one used to kill the painting/subject of painting.


QUOTES:

"Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot." (Lord Henry)

"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic."

"Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes."

"There was pity in her eyes that became laughter on her lips." (Sibyl)

"The moment was lost in vulgar details"

"Unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality." (Lord Henry)

"We think that we are being generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us." (Lord Henry)

"Society--civilised society, at least--is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating."

"I like men who have a future, and women who have a past." (Lord Henry)

"When they make up their ledger, they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy." (Lord Henry)

"I believe in the race." (Duchess)
"It represents the survival of the pushing." (Lord Henry)
"It has development." (Duchess)
"Decay fascinates me more." (Lord Henry)
"What of art?" (Duchess)
"It is a malady." (Lord Henry)
"Love?" (Duchess)
"An illusion." (Lord Henry)
"Religion?" (Duchess)
"The fashionable substitute for belief." (Lord Henry)
"You are a sceptic." (Duchess)
"Never! Scepticism is the beginning of faith." (Lord Henry)
"What are you?" (Duchess)
"To define is to limit." (Lord Henry)

"To be popular one must be a mediocrity." (Lord Henry)

"Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plentitude."

"He had no curiosity. It was his chief defect." (Lord Henry, about Basil)

"It's absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder." (Lord Henry)