If I Were A Book...

Which literature classic are you?

Oscar Wilde: The Portrait of Dorian Gray. You are a horror novel from the world of dandies, rich pretty boys, art and aesthetics, and intellectual debates between ethical people and decadent pleasure-seekers. You value beauty and pleasure but realize their dangers, as well. Take this quiz!

I don't want to indulge in this personality-quiz stuff too often on my blog... but I loved the result I got here. Four years ago I was trying to write a musical (!) of Dorian Gray... I still think it would be great source material, but for someone else!

It really is a fantastic book--as the quiz result suggests, it "has its cake and eats it too" with regard to ethics. You get to wallow in deliciously described decadence along with Dorian--then cheer when he gets his comeuppance at the end. I remember studying it and having a big class debate about what Oscar Wilde meant in his preface by "All art is quite useless." So there's a tension and complexity there. Also wit (how could there not be?), swooning rhapsodies, and an archetypal horror plot.

In fact, I knew the plot of Dorian Gray long before I read the actual novel... having read a plot summary in The Great American Bathroom Book (how embarrassing!) at the age of 9 or so. It scared the bejesus out of me! When all the other kids were getting goosebumps from Goosebumps, I was getting them from Dorian Gray. In sixth grade, standing in line for the haunted house at my school's Halloween Carnival, I told the story of Dorian Gray to the girl ahead of me--it was the scariest story I knew. And two years ago, when my godfather's kids (including little P.) were swapping ghost stories, I told it again. It got a good response. And all the adults in the other room fell quiet to listen.

I feel this might be one of those books that'll stick with me for my whole life, and pop up when I least expect it.

The other results in this quiz are equally fantastic works of literature--so go find out what book you are!