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If one tells the truth one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
A genius wrath unwrapped, gently, in loving detail: such is the character of Melissa Knox's biography of Oscar Wilde, alchemist of language, enemy of self-deception. If you have ever been moved to laughter or sadness by his cascade of puns within puns, or by the devilish slaughter of the grandiose, verbose, and the plainly otiose, and if you ever recognized and shrank from the avenging diatribes of this enfant terrible, this book is a must.
This book could be subtitled “The Importance of Being Oscar Wilde,” so convincing is this account of the creation of Oscar Wilde by Oscar Wilde. And the psychoanalyst curious about the contradictory Wildean persona, revealed and concealed by perfidious sentences that turn on a dime, backsliding from sublime affirmation to outrageous betrayal, of a mind in a state of creative anarchy, will be amply rewarded.
Eschewing biographical completeness, Knox wisely takes a selective and integrative approach to Wilde's life. The book starts