About this product: Amazon Best of the Month, September 2007: It's been 11 years since Junot Díaz's critically acclaimed story collection, Drown, landed on bookshelves and from page one of his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, any worries of a sophomore jinx disappear. The titular Oscar is a 300-pound-plus "lovesick ghetto nerd" with zero game (except for Dungeons & Dragons) who cranks out pages of fantasy fiction with the hopes of becoming a Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien. The book is also the story of a multi-generational family curse that courses through the book, leaving troubles and tragedy in its wake. This was the most dynamic, entertaining, and achingly heartfelt novel I've read in a long time. My head is still buzzing with the memory of dozens of killer passages that I dog-eared throughout the book. The rope-a-dope narrative is funny, hip, tragic, soulful, and bursting with desire. Make some room for Oscar Wao on your bookshelf--you won't be disappointed. --Brad Thomas Parsons
About this product: Continuously in print since 1948, Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde has long been established as the most comprehensive and authoritative single–volume collection of Wilde’s works available, containing his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as his plays, stories, poems, essays, and letters—all in their most authoritative texts. Edited and introduced by Merlin Holland, Wilde’s grandson, this handsome volume also includes a comprehensive bibliography and a chronology of Oscar Wilde’s life and work. With an Introduction by the editor.
About this product: Lord Arthur Savile, about to be married to a sweetly innocent maiden, learns to his horror that a fortune-teller can see a crime of violence in his palm.
About this product: First published in 1891, Intentions contains four groundbreaking critical essays by the famous poet, playwright and raconteur. The Decay of Lying, Pen, Pencil and Poison, The Critic as Artist, and The Truth of Masks delineate Wilde's aesthetic philosophy, and mark the beginning of a Modernist manifesto in literature and art. Entertaining and very readable, Intentions casts a bright light on Wilde's own work and life.
Published here alongside their evocative original illustrations, these fairy tales, as Oscar Wilde himself explained, were written “partly for children, and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy.”
About this product: Epigrams, aphorisms, and other bon mots gathered from the celebrated wit’s plays, essays, and conversation offer an entertaining selection of observations both comic and profound. Organized by category, the nearly 400 quotes range in subject from human nature, morals, and society to art, politics, history, and more. A superb compilation, ideal as both an introduction to Wilde and as a treat for devotees.
About this product: A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."
As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment."
About this product: For the film industry, the Academy Awards is the most celebrated and most significant night of the year: everyone longs for the recognition of being nominated to win a little golden statuette. For most of us, however, even a walk down the red carpet is just a dream. 80 Years of the Oscar puts readers into those iconic plush seats for the thrill of the Academy Awards, from the first show in 1928, shortly after the introduction of the talking picture, to this year's eightieth anniversary. With hundreds of photographs and an informative text by Hollywood insider Robert Osborne, 80 Years of the Oscar is the official history of the Academy Awards. Organized by year, 80 Years of the Oscar chronicles the ceremonies themselves, as well as the accomplishments, trends, developments, and events that occurred, both within the Academy and for the film industry as a whole. Osborne comments on each year's most important films and shares the stories behind them. He also transports readers into the awards show, quoting from notable acceptance speeches and celebrity reactions, as well as regaling readers with anecdotes from each year. All award nominees and winners are included, with a special listing of Oscar record-holders. An indispensable and encyclopedic reference for the amateur and expert alike, from the struggling actor to the film critic, this book has been a popular favorite since its first edition was published twenty years ago, just after the sixtieth awards ceremony. The authoritative 80 Years of the Oscar provides a depth of coverage found nowhere else, and it is sure to please movie-goers around the world.
About this product: This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader appreciate Wilde's wry wit and elaborate plot twists.
Oscar Wilde's madcap farce about mistaken identities, secret engagements, and lovers' entanglements still delights readers more than a century after its 1895 publication and premiere performance. The rapid-fire wit and eccentric characters of The Importance of Being Earnest have made it a mainstay of the high school curriculum for decades.
Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax are both in love with the same mythical suitor. Jack Worthing has wooed Gewndolen as Ernest while Algernon has also posed as Ernest to win the heart of Jack's ward, Cecily. When all four arrive at Jack's country home on the same weekend, the rivals to fight for Ernest's undivided attention and the Ernests to claim their beloved's pandemonium breaks loose.
Only a senile nursemaid and an old, discarded hand-bag can save the day!
About this product: "I have put my genius into my life but only my talent into my work." So said Oscar Wilde of his remarkable life-a life more complex, more troubled, and more triumphant than any of his contemporaries ever knew. In The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, Neil McKenna provides stunning new insight into the tumultuous sexual and psychological worlds of this brilliant and tormented figure.
McKenna charts Wilde's astonishing odyssey through London's sexual underworld, and provides explosive new evidence of the political machinations behind Wilde's trials for sodomy. Dazzlingly written and meticulously researched, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde offers a vividly original portrait of a troubled genius who chose to martyr himself for the cause of love between men.
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