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Article: The importance of being bored: the dividends of ennui in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray.'(Special Number: Queerer Than Fiction)
- Article from:
- Studies in the Novel
- Article date:
- September 22, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 University of North Texas. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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My story is much too sad to be told Almost everything leaves me totally cold.
--Cole Porter
Believe it or not, there is still a secret left to be told about The Picture of Dorian Gray, a secret no less open, only less sensational than the scandalous passions all but named in the novel that all but exposed the secret of its author's own. Let's face it, the book is boring: for all the thrill of Dorian Gray, long stretches of the story are almost unbearably uninteresting. If the fanfare of illicit excitement generated in the novel and by the novel has mostly managed to keep this secret unspoken,(1) it has scarcely succeeded in keeping it unfelt. If the ...