Oscar Books

ThIs excellent collection of Irishman Mr. Wilde's most serious writings includes:

Soul of Man under Socialism - an interesting call for individualism of spirit under economic socialism, a resolution of his feelings for the Fabians

De Profundis- A letter to Bosie, a homnosexual young man whose father the powerful Marquess of Queensbury, had Wilde, previously a noted and dedicated family man who adored his children, imprisoned brutally on false charges. Reading Wilde's feelings of losing his children alone, for whom he wrote wonderful famous bedtime stories, wrenches the heart and gives a chance to grieve to half at least the fathers in America who have lost our children to unjust judicial action.

Letters from prison to newspapers

The Ballad of Reading Gaol- a great poem of life and death imprisoned, including how children are brutalized and all hope lost, a lesson for our current inhuman policy on Guantanamo where we imprison cruelly and torture innocent children not accused of any crime. Read tis peom aloud as you walk and you will see.

Not five years later Wilde died a broken man, the greatest of our Irish writers of his generation, in whose very popular plays exposed the profound corruption and petty cruelties of the English ruling class. He was through Bosie investigating for later dramatization the sexual perversity of the aristocracy, but was imprisoned lest he write his keen perceptions of those who brought so much suffering to the world and indulged their lives of hypocritical luxury

Fine reading. Food for thought. Healing for the heart under oppression.

It may seem wilful to lead a selection of Oscar Wilde's major critical prose with an essay on left-wing politics, but 'The Soul of Man under Socialism' is more concerned with aesthetics than ethics: Wilde found socialism 'beautiful' because it encouraged freedom and individualism, freeing man to develop his emotional and imaginative lives. Wilde's Utopian scheme, as he admits, is gloriously impractical and contrary to human nature, but that's the point - it's because reforms are based on what is considered practical, rather than what might be possible or even unthinkable, that inequality and suffering persist. His vision of a future in which men dream and absorb Art as vaguely-imagined machines do all the menial work, reads like a delightful lampoon of HG Wells. Favourite Quotation: 'the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist and becomes a dull or amusing craftsman, an honest or dishonest tradesman').

The selection begins with examples of Wilde the professional reviewer at work, attending art lectures by Whistler, reading books by Pater and Swinburne, drawing attention to poetry anthologies by labouring socialists, praising an actress's memoirs. Some of the pieces are more theoretical, arguing, for instance, the importance and legacy of actors as critics of great theatre. Each article presents difficult and often radical ideas in an accessible and witty manner. FQ: 'where there is no exagerration there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding'.

'The Portrait of Mr. W.H.' (printed here in its extended 1889 revision) is quite simply one of the greatest achievements in the world literature of short fiction. 'Short story' doesn't begin to describe this work about a young scholar who commits suicide after being caught forging evidence to 'prove' a theory claiming that Shakespeare dedicated his Sonnets to a young actor-lover. 'Portrait' is mostly a dazzling exercise in critical play, but it is also a touching gay fantasy, a Nabokovian study of mad academics, a defence of 'forgery' as an aesthetic mode, a literary detective story, a history of the Elizabethan stage, an anthology of Elizabethan gossip, a Borgesian metaphysical puzzle and so much more. FQ: 'he always set an absurdly high value on personal appearance, and once read a paper before our Debating Society to prove that it was better to be good-looking than to be good'.

'In Defence of Dorian Gray' collects letters written by Wilde to hostile newspapers that branded his only novel immoral, decadent and demanded its interdiction. While it's depressing to see our hero stoop to these tedious non-entities, we must remember the dangerous influence of the reactionary press, and at least the letters make galvanising reading, helping Wilde formulate ideas that would shape the novel's famous 'All art is quite useless' preface. FQ: 'Good people exasperate one's reason; bad people stir one's imagination'.

But the major achievement here is the four-part collection 'Intentions', a still explosive series of critical dialogues, memoirs and essays which are only 'safe' today because they are labelled 'classic' - if anyone actually absorbed these radical, liberating pieces, with their provocative, teasing, shifting, playful, ironic, contradictory, unsystematic, aphoristic, hilarious assertions on Art, Beauty, Life, Philosophy, Morality, Ethics, Crime etc., the whole world would implode, or at least irrevocably change. 'The Decay of Lying' demolishes the depressing modes of realism and naturalism and the tyranny of facts; 'Pen, Pencil and Poison' is a portrait of Wainewright the Poisoner, Wilde discussing his crimes with the same aesthetic detachment as he does his art and writing; ''The Critic as Artist' is his masterpiece, a credo and a gauntlet; 'The Truth of Masks' is an essay on the importance of costume and historical accuracy when staging Shakespeare, and seems to contradict eveything else in the volume, with Wilde winningly admitting, 'Not that I agree with everything I have said in this essay'. FQ: 'The truth of metaphysics are the truth of masks'.

There are (at least) two Wildes in this volume; one whose address is utterly contemporary and congenial, intellectually curious, blasting all that is deadening, hypocritical and humbug, an alien in his own time. The other is startlingly Victorian, passionately engaged with elitist subjects that have little importance or (ugh) 'relevance' today (Classical literature, Aesthetics, the importance of form etc.), couching his theories in language that is often ornate, oritund, exotic, even verbose, a lush challenge to his fusty, pedantic peers.

Linda Dowling's introduction rescues Wilde from his earnest post-modern apologists and returns him fruitfully to his original context, the Oxford debates about 'Art for Art's sake' and the function of poetry and criticism,. Her copious notes are a blessing and necessity, as well as recreating a strange, wonderful, intellectually audacious cultural world, one that shames our depleted, dead-end, theory-strangulated, accept-anything age. I know you've heard this before, but this time it's true: BUY THIS BOOK AND LET IT CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

This is a very good book. I suggest you buy it!

Frederick Nolan tells the story of Rodgers and Hammerstein both as a team and as separate people. Indeed there is a good deal of space allotted to their careers BEFORE they ever worked together. But after they team up the narrative becomes more lively and a real page turner, at least partly because Nolan's style is graceful and charming in itself. He seems to have read everything written about them, even going so far as to watch TV kinescopes of them from the 1950s, and he talked to many people who knew them, worked with them.

It's the backstage stories that make the book sing. Practically every page has a at least one fascinating anecdote. And he doesn't sugar-coat their personalities--Rodgers's curtness, even cruelty, and Hammerstein's insecurity, tendency to swallow his pride.

It's hard to read the book without singing to yourself. My God, what songs these two wrote! But more than that, what dramatists they were; they broke convention again and again and mostly successfully.

Pull out your recordings of Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific and start reading!

This audio drama contains four short stories by great authors such as Henry James and Oscar Wilde. In my opinion, Wilde's Canterville Ghost is the best of the four. The special sound effect are both scary and humourous. Wilde's weird sense of humor about a British old ghost meets his match of an American family is perfectly interpreted in audio form by the producer of this audiobook.

A charming, philosophical fairy tale by Oscar Wilde about a baby boy found by a poor woodcutter in a bright and beautiful star. The woodcutter adopts the boy, who grows up extremely beautiful but also arrogant and cruel. He blinds and maims the animals of the forest, and shows no pity to those who where weakly or ill-favoured.

One day he cruelly turns away a beggar-woman, who is his mother, and his beauty is turned into ugliness. He begins a quest to find his mother to beg her forgiveness. Written for older children and the young of heart , in the fine prose of Oscar Wilde.

This is a wonderful book for the musical State Fair. It includes songs from the 1945, 1962, and 1996 versions of the show, both film and broadway versions. It's a great book with histories, pictures, and wonderful music. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has a love for musicals!

Anyone who loves old New York should buy this book. It's chock full of vintage pictures of New York's elevated lines and subways. The photos are in great condition. I can't believe how sharp some of them are. A lot of the train lines that are shown don't exist anymore which makes this book all the more special. It's lots of fun to see the parts of town that you are well aquainted with now the way they looked back then. There are some stations that aren't used anymore but which still exist like the one at city hall (it's closed off to the public) which are so beautiful and then there are some that didn't look so hot then and look exactly the same now. They haven't been touched or upgraded at all. I guess the MTA will get to them someday. This book is so much fun it's hard to put down. Get it for your kids so they can see how old you really are! :)

What a wonderfully delightful book. It chronicles the history of synagogues in the 5 boroughs of New York with text, artwork, and photos. It is also an excellent and essential tool for the genealogist.

This book has excellent pictures and descriptions. If you enjoy Jewish architecture and history, this book is hard to find, but well worth it.