Wilde

I can't get Oscar out of my head. The Picture of Dorian Gray wasn't necessarily more enjoyable to read than The Big Nowhere. And while I'm certainly more attached to poor Detective Danny Upshaw than the insolent Dorian and his pie in the shy mentor Lord Henry Wotton, I still think about Wilde and the ideas behind his classic novel.

What is the purpose of art? Indeed, what is the purpose of life? What is the difference between those who talk a philosphy and those who live it out?

Wilde as a person is fascinating too. Here's a quote from near the end of his life:

I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a flaneur, a dandy; a man of fashion. . . . Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others, I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has someday to cry aloud on the house-tops. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace.

Has anyone made a movie about him yet?