Dorian Gray–and other idolatries
My first Kindle e-book was The Picture of Dorian Gray. I hadn’t ever been compelled to read it in school, which is why (a) I could read it and simply enjoy, and (b) I hadn’t ever read it before.
I want to say to all the e-reader skeptics out there that I was one, too. I didn’t want a Kindle but was gifted one and I absolutely love it. The e-ink is fabulous. It’s not l
ike reading off a screen at all. The only think I do miss is being able to thumb through pages to find something I’ve passed. I especially like the built-in dictionary. Some people uses fancy words and stuff…
But about the book itself: the story is about Dorian Gray who, as a beautiful young man, has a picture painted of him that, as they say, captures him perfectly. He’s so enthralled by the beauty and wonder of youth that he wishes for the picture to age instead of him. And his wish is granted.
The story goes on to chronicle the life that ensues, a life in which the vanity and apparent freedom from recrimination that the Dorian Gray embodies destroys his soul. The picture ages gruesomely, and he knows that he has escaped nothing, and been trapped by something awful.
The story contains some forthright reflection on issues of sin and death; it echoes the Faustian questions of whether a sold soul can be redeemed.
But it also got me thinking of how it might embody other areas in life in which we are reticent to change, other than appearance. Is there an inherent death and decay that comes from holding onto something at a stage of development and insisting that this is the ideal of perfection? No doubt, we can treat our work in such a fashion–books that we’ve written (God help us if we ever so treat our blog posts!), ideas we’ve come to.
I sometimes wonder if there is an analogy to be had when we hold too tightly to particular moments of our theological past as well. When we idolatrously cling to a beautiful image of a pristine past, do we become the aging wraiths that bear the marks of hardening and degradation we will not allow to our systems? In this case, I know, the image is reversed. But…
The beauty of the thing frozen in time can become a mask for what lies beneath. We must age. We must grow old. We must die. Must our ideas as well? If not, are we not at least confronted with the possibility that we should say, “Yes, it was a beautiful child, and now it must become a man?”
Or maybe I just need a nap.
Image © Coris. Found at http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/060524/060524_dorian_vmed_9a.widec.jpg
Great recap & stirring reflections. Thanks, Daniel.
Had you thought yet about applying this to ecclesiology? I know your house church gathering is still fairly young. How well are you guys “aging” so far?
Great question, Bill. I think that we recognize that we had no pristine, innocent, perfect beginning. That helps instill an ongoing sense of needing to grow, develop and change. But ask again in a year!
Will do. A Story is always more compelling than a snapshot, anyway.
Keep up the good thinking.
Mr Kirk, you are addressing all the e-reader skeptics out there, so I thought I’d let you know I’m sorry to learn you have left our company.
You write that the only thing you miss is “being able to thumb through pages to find something I’ve passed.” I would reply that one can only miss the things one knows (about). So let us engage in a little experiment. I will mention a few things which you will get to know about as the result of my writing them. Will you then miss these too?
When I was 21 years old I spent a month or so in Cambridge UK at a Summer school. I stayed at Queens College and had my meals in the room where Erasmus had sat. While there I bought (in a small bookshop, on August 19th in the year 1978) the collected works of Oscar Wilde. In my room I read the Picture of Dorian Gray. Now, after reading your blog post, I took out this copy, and flipped the pages. Immediately I was back at Collegio Reginae. Will you, in 20 year’s time, remember where you were when you held the Kindle reading Wilde? Will you still have the Kindle even 5 years from now? Will you be able to check your blog with your thoughts?
As I said, one only misses the things one knows (about). But smell and touch bring back memories. And there is no smell, no touch, no romance involved in buying an ebook from amazon. Don’t you think smell and touch are important? And how about jotting down thoughts in the margin? The story obviously triggered some thoughts with you, so you wrote them down. How are these notes going to survive (and remain linked to the book) for the next 10 years, if not in the book itself?
Moreover, my impression is that the physical book form enhances poetry, especially when the poetry is powerful. For internet stuff, and newspapers, and academic titles, Kindle or iPad may be quite all right. But there is mystery to books as well as information. There is atmosphere as well as literal content. You may not miss those things because of not knowing about them, but believe me, you would cherish them if you did know.
I don’t want to condemn e-readers. I’m hoping to buy an iPad. But I would say this: Oscar Wilde wrote a story called ‘The Nightingale and the Rose.’ Do yourself a favour: read it in book form. Go find yourself a beautiful second hand copy and smell its pages. Disconnect yourself from the internet and try to read the story as these kind of stories are meant to be read: from paper and sitting in a good chair. And then ask yourself if that experience equalled the Kindle experience, or not at all.
To underscore my point, here is the last line of the story of the Nightingale and the Rose: ‘So he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and began to read.’ Mr Kirk, have you ever pulled out a great dusty book from a shelf? And did you feel no emotion? No sensation from having a dusty old book in your hands?
Here is a line from Lord Henry in the Picture of Dorian Gray: ‘The longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us.’
Are we going there? Are the books our fathers esteemed and cherished no longer good enough for us? Then why read Oscar Wilde at all?
I have a Statenbijbel from 1682. A huge, heavy, book, I need two hands to lift it. Old style letters, impressive illustrations, its pages more than 300 year old, with lots of tiny holes in them. The book is worth learning to read Dutch for. I also have the same book on my Mac in the Online Bible program. I cannot even begin to describe the difference between clicking on an icon to open the e-book, or taking the heavy leatherbound volume from the shelf, laying it flat on a table, pressing down on it in order to open its two clasps. And then I open the book, and begin to read.
An e-reader is great for when one needs information, but fails in letting one experience a book. You put such emphasis on stories, so I wonder: will we from now on only read stories as information consumers, or will we also allow ourselves sometimes to read them as Mensch?
Happy readings,
Robert