Siempre es un placer leer a Oscar Wilde.
Cada uno de los cuentos de esta colección me ha encantado. En cada uno de ellos se percibe perfectamente la época personal que pasaba el autor en el momento de escribirlo.
Ahora, he de decir que la última de las partes del libro (poemas en prosa), aunque es cortita, me ha enamorado de principio a fin.
Muy recomendable.

Like most authors, Oscar Wilde's short stories are a mix of fabulous and meh. There was one in particular where I got so bored that I just skimmed for a couple of pages. Happily, though, that was a one time occurrence because I enjoyed almost every story in this collection. My husband and I particularly enjoyed the story of Lord Arthur Seville. It very much had the vibes of Kind Hearts and Coronets.

Oscar Wilde'a duyduğum hayranlığı dünyada kimseye duymuyorumdur herhalde. Neticede okuduğum en iyi kitabın (Dorian Gray'in Portresi) yazarı! Nezdimdeki olağanüstü yüksek kredisine rağmen ne yazık ki bu derlemenin sonunu zor getirdim. Hikayelerini de masallarını da genel olarak sevmedim. Elbette tipik Wilde alaycılığının bol kahkahalı enfes örneklerine, ışıl ışıl birey ve toplum eleştirilerine yer yer rastlayıp hayranlığınızı sürdürecek rüzgarı yakalıyorsunuz ama eserin genel düzeyi insana hiç de yeterli gelmiyor. Belki de beklentim çok yüksek olduğundan böyle oldu.

Sondaki mensur şiirler ise tek kelimeyle harikaydı. Ne yazık ki çok kısalar ve sayıları çok az. Kitabın çok küçük bir kısmını teşkil ediyorlar. Onların dimağımda bıraktığı belli belirsiz tat kitabı kurtarmaya yeterli gelmedi.

Siz siz olun, Wilde'a bu kitapla başlamayın!

The short stories here aren't all that great, honestly.

Oscar Wilde is great at quips and epigrams, but many of the stories here don't show that.

Probably the story 'Lord Arthur Savile's Crime' is the best one here, and 'The Canterville Ghost' is a close second. But many of his other stories are cutesy fairy tales, apparently written for children, and they just don't do much for me. I got bored and couldn't even finish parts of his collection. When the stories are good, they're great -- but they're not often good, and many of them are rather uninteresting and boring.

Oscar Wilde writes some of the most boring and tedious short stories ever like wtf, first off this story is not short, second I don’t like there being like 2 whole pages of elaboration on something random like all the people the canterville ghost scared and how, irrelevant… Gay loser thinks he’s profound, but he just comes off as quirky through these tales, being Catholic was a major hit to his potential tbh

Some are so good that they pulled me out of an emotional rut I’d been in for weeks. But some were so cumbersome that I forgot what I liked about Wilde at all. There’s also some antisemitism in the very first story—I think some dumbass reference to Jewish people being supposedly overly preoccupied with money—but nowhere else in the rest of the stories, unless I skimmed past it.

Loved “The Sphinx Without a Secret” in particular. It was just…! It was lovely. I don’t even want to talk about it because each little bit was a good surprise to read after trudging through the fairy tales. It’s relieving that someone could write that story after writing about a fucking giant who hates children and then a child form of Jesus visits his garden and plays on a branch and decades later the boy comes back and shows the giant his stigmata and then the giant dies and turns into flowers?????

I’d give it a three if the last handful weren’t so nice. Imagine being a child in the 19th century and one of the stories read to you is “The Selfish Giant.” Misery.

I really enjoyed this! It’s hard to rate it given the fact that it’s a collection of many different stories and I have rated those individually, so this rating only applies to the experience of reading the book in general. Wilde has never failed me :)

আমাকে যদি জিজ্ঞেস করা হয় কার ছোট গল্প আমার জীবনে অনেক বেশী প্রভাব রেখেছে আমাকে নিঃসন্দেহে অস্কার ওয়াল্ডের নাম নিতে হবে। তার লিখা "The Happy Prince", "The Nightingale and the Rose", "The Remarkable Rocket" এবং "The Selfish Giant". কিছু প্রিয় উক্তি আমি তুলে ধরলাম
“Travel improves the mind wonderfully, and does away with all one’s prejudices.”
“Common sense, indeed!” said the Rocket indignantly; “you forget that I am very uncommon, and very remarkable. Why, anybody can have common sense, provided that they have no imagination. But I have imagination, for I never think of things as they really are; I always think of them as being quite different. As for keeping myself dry, there is evidently no one here who can at all appreciate an emotional nature. Fortunately for myself, I don’t care. The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.”
“Dear little Swallow,” said the Prince, “you tell me of marvellous things, but more marvellous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery. ”
“What I a silly thing Love is,” said the Student as he walked away. “It is not half as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true. In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be practical is everything, I shall go back to Philosophy and study Metaphysics.”

I’ve always had a suspicion that Oscar Wilde is a prime example of style over substance. Yes the writing is arch and clever, the epigrams are well crafted and plentiful – but is there really anything else there? Is his fiction merely just an excuse for Oscar to show off his brilliant intelligence and keen wit? Is there much else going on behind that?

It’s something I raise knowing I’ll never reach a satisfactory answer, but this collection does contain examples for both the defence and the prosecution.

Take ‘The Portrait of Mr W.H.’, which is about literary theories and frauds built onto Shakespeare’s name. In other hands this could have been a serious and thoughtful essay, and whereas Wilde is bright enough to see there are serious points to be made, he mainly chooses to be flip and glib and shy away from them all. Furthermore the twists are obvious, the literary theory feels like it’s been clumsily inserted and the whole thing ends up resembling no more than the work of a clever sixth former.

But then we come to ‘Lord Arthur Saville’s Crime’, which is a cracking tale and one of the best ruminations on fate which exists in fiction. Although it’s clearly written by Wilde, it has the required seriousness to tackle the subject but also a dainty lightness in the prose. It’s a tale I greatly admire. The same is true for ‘The Canterville Ghost’, which is the kind of comic ghost story that Charles Addams or Tim Burton would enjoy. Again it’s Wilde, but hasn’t been subsumed by the Wildean.

The jury on style over substance therefore remains out.

Also of note in this collection are the children’s tales – ‘The Happy Prince’ and so on. Years after I first read them I remain unconvinced though. Yes they have their moments and there’s a nice line of cruelty within them, but they always feel somewhat pompous and sanctimonious to me. And Wilde doesn’t do hectoring all that well.

There are a number of other insubstantial sketches in this book, but the presence of ‘Lord Arthur Saville’s Crime’ and ‘The Canterville Ghost’ means that even a doubter like myself has to acknowledge that there were moments when Wilde was as brilliant as he though he was.

Facing a horrendous reading (and reviewing) block for months, this is the book I looked up to, to pull me out of the morass. It was mainly due the memory of two tales: The Selfish Giant which I studied in school, and The Happy Prince, which I read in translation as a kid and was mesmerised.

Reading these tales as an adult on the threshold of sixty, I can say that the magic of Oscar Wilde still works. He is a consummate storyteller, and the fairy-tale format suits him to a 'T'. He writes a bit like Hans Andersen, but infuses his tales with a lot more irony than the pure tragedy that Andersen strove for. The result is a curious mix, as though a mischievous uncle is purposefully distorting a story to tease his audience.

Written in a universe where socialism and communism were still relatively unknown, Wilde however proves himself to be squarely on the side of the underdog. Many of these tales criticise social inequality quite harshly, albeit from a moralistic Christian point of view - but without the preaching which would make them unreadable.

The Selfish Giant, with its cloying sentimentality, is still my favourite among these tales. The Happy Prince is much better written, however - especially the tragic irony of the conclusion. Wilde uses the same method in The Nightingale and the Rose and The Star Child, wrong-footing the reader at the end.

The most unusual tale in this collection is The Canterville Ghost, a true-blue ghost story, containing elements of genuine horror - yet handled in sardonic vein which highlights its absurdity. If I were not a fan of The Selfish Giant way before I chanced upon this collection, I guess I would have ranked this story as tops.

A highly readable collection. Good? Definitely. Great? Not so much.

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime - Lord Arthur Savile, is introduced by Lady Windermere to Mr Septimus R. Podgers, a chiromantist, who reads his palm and tells him that it is his destiny to be a murderer. (4 stars)

The Sphinx without a Secret - When Lord Muchison catches sight of a mysterious and beautiful lady in a carriage on London's Bond Street, he is captivated and spends the next few days on the lookout for her again. (3 stars)

The Canterville Ghost - (3 stars)

The Model Millionaire - Hughie Erskine has a problem. He is madly in love with Laura Merton, but both of them are flat broke and unable to marry. Then a beggar makes an appearance. (2 stars)

The Happy Prince and Other Tales and A House of Pomegranates collections are reviewed here (4 stars)

The Portrait of Mr. W. H. - (4 stars)

Poems in Prose

The Artist, The Disciple, The Master, The House of Judgement, The Teacher of Wisdom (3 stars)

The Doer of Good (4 stars)

This is a strong collection of fiction though the synopsis is misleading and makes it sound more varied than it is. Most of the book is made up of fairy tales, the first helping of which are written as parables for children, and the latter half being more ambiguous and sometimes eerie (as well as a small selection of prose poems). The remainder of the stories offer more in the way of variety with a bit of crime, ghost, comedy, and a large heaping of satire. I would have loved to have more of these stories in particular as they were excellent, but I'm happy with the collection overall. Wilde's writing is sumptuous and remarkably accessible for its time.

My favorite stories: The Nightingale and the Rose, The Portrait of Mr. W.H., The Birthday of the Infanta, The Fisherman and his Soul, Lord Arthur Saville's Crime, and of course, The Canterville Ghost. Mr. W.H. was especially amusing and well-done and Fisherman I found to be quite haunting. The only story I absolutely did not like was The Remarkable Rocket, which was tedious. The message was clear from the start and Wilde continues to beat it into you for the duration of the text.