great book hard to read because print was so small

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a fine piece of literature- a tale of excess, of corruption, of decay and of facades.
Basil Hallward, an artist, paints a picture of Dorian Gary, a handsome and vain young man, whom the artist is besotted with. Dorian Gray sells his soul for eternal youth, in a Faustian bargain, whereby all the age , decay corruption will show in the picture , while Grey's appearance will stay eternally young and fresh.

Encouraged by the hedonistic cynic Lord Henry Wotton, Gray embarks on a life of corruption, decadence and cruelty. Lord Henry is also the vehicle through which Wilde put down his many uniquely Wildesque epigrams into the novel, such as " Conscience and cowardice are really the same thing, Basil. Conscience is the trade name of the firm. That is all"; " Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love. It is the faithless who know love's tragedies"; "There is only one thing worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about" ; "The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it." ; " It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But it is better to be good than to be ugly." And " As for the virtuous poor , one can pity them of course , but one cannot possibly admire them".

The bargain made by Gray can only lead to eventual destruction , and the novel is a statement by Wilde on humanity and society , in the cavalier and irreverent way that only Wilde could.