The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde

My first reaction to this book when I came across it in Waterstone's Piccadilly in May was to wonder how I had never come across it before. But when I looked at the publishing details, it wasn't as surprising. I did most of my Oscar Wilde reading in 2001 and what reading I did after the summer was going by the lists I had compiled then. In 2003-2004 I was busy with other reading and while I may have come across reviews of McKenna's book, there would always have been many more books at hand.

A quote from The Times on the front cover says "McKenna makes an impassioned case for re-gaying Wilde" and it was certainly refreshing to read something that challenged the views put forward in Richard Ellman's biography, which, as far as I know, have show more been more or less universally accepted as the probable truth - and Ellman's Oscar Wilde, if I remember correctly, did not have romantic friendships, did not do boys until Robbie Ross (it struck me at some point that I couldn't remember reading, in Ellman or elsewhere, how Wilde met Ross - McKenna reckons a first meeting in a public toilet wouldn't be too far-fetched - and so on). Moreover, McKenna's account of Oscar's love for Lord Alfred Douglas is the first one I've read that actually makes some sense (although at times it seemed to me that McKenna was trying too hard to justify Bosie and his actions), and the same goes for the relationship between Bosie's brother Viscount Drumlanrig and Lord Rosebery.

I really enjoyed reading this biography. show less

So. This is exactly the biography of Oscar Wilde I would write if I were to uh, write one. It focuses on the important questions like, "Whom did he have sex with, maybe?" and "Whom did his friends have sex with, maybe?" No matter if in answering these questions he uses the most questionable sources, for example Trelawny Backhouse, who in addition to claiming all sorts of salacious things about Oscar Wilde and Bosie also claimed to have had sex with the Empress of China. Frankly, if there was anything, anything that had to do with Oscar Wilde and homosexuality and I was writing a book on Oscar Wilde and homosexuality, I would go ALL OUT, too and just put everything I could find in there. If I found out that some guy had sent letters to show more Oscar and later Oscar had dinner with him then I am writing that, yeah, maybe they had sex, okay? All in the effort to answer the biggest, most important question: "Just how much of a flaming queen was Oscar Wilde?" because the answer is girl, the man was OSCAR WILDE, you could make up all sorts of shit and it wouldn't come close. show less

A very readable, fascinating, and poignant account of Wilde's life.

Like so many biographies, this leaves me cold. Lots of facts, dates and names, but ... It's all just too subjunctive. And who uses "graven" as a past participle?

Unfinished