The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde by Neil McKenna

December 17th, 2007

The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde
Neil McKenna
626 p.

Arrow Books, 2004
(first published 2003)

Back cover blurb:

none

This biography shows a side of Oscar Wilde which I find rather uninteresting. Its manifesto is that Oscar Wilde was never attracted to women and was a pederast. It goes to extreme lengths to prove its points, so far that I stop being fascinated and instead I just feel intensely bored. My interest in Oscar Wilde lies in his talents as a poet, playwright and author, not in how many boys he has slept with. Still, I can’t say that it was merely a too long tale of too much sex. There were parts I had never heard about, and it was, I must admit, quite amusing to read extracts from all those letters sent from and to him. The way McKenna handled these letters, however, fatigued me. Everything that Wilde ever wrote, McKenna claims, is about how much he loves young men. The way Wilde was constantly referred to as “Oscar” was anothing thing that irritated me incredibly. I am one of the people who think that authors should, by no account (unless you know them personally) be referred to by their first name. There is a reason why you have a surname!

The book focused mainly on Wilde, of course, with some deviances and stories about other people. At times I could not remember who McKenna was talking about, which is, to say the least, a bit of a drawback. The biography also ends abruptly with Wilde’s death. I would have liked a chapter just in the end where the fates of Bosie Douglas and Robbie Ross were discussed, and maybe something about Wilde’s sons. The sons are mentioned only a few times, and then just in the passing. The myriad of characters who were and were not important to Wilde, probably as good as everyone he ever slept with and a good few that he didn’t, lead to a confused reading. In places it was a very well-written book, but its lack of structure, obsession with gay sex and repetition of quotes put me off. However, this does not mean I regret reading it. I always think that reading biographies are interesting, even though they might be fallible.

Entry Filed under: Biographies, English, Non-fiction