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Article: `AN IDEAL HUSBAND' DUSTS OFF OSCAR WILDE.(Spotlight)
- Article from:
- Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
- Article date:
- June 27, 1999
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Rocky Mountain News. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Dialog LLC by Gale Group. 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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Byline: Robert Denerstein
Laurence Housman, a British writer and artist who dissected the Victorian era, once called Oscar Wilde the most accomplished talker he'd ever met, a man whose conversation was ``self-possessed, oracular in tone, whimsical in substance.'' If talk were tennis, Wilde might be described as alarmingly perfect, serving a steady stream of aces to baffled opponents.
This assessment has lingered, creating an impression of Wilde as a virtuoso of the drawing room whose epigrammatic wit struck like lightning. ``Only the shallow know themselves,'' Wilde once wrote, vanguishing centuries of Western philosophy as quickly as you can say bons ...