Am reading a book about Oscar Wilde. It’s called Oscar Wilde in America. I can’t remember exactly when I got interested in Oscar Wilde. But he has been a huge presence in my reading of English literature from the Victorian period. He has been around marauding my soul some way or another. It just happens to be interesting. I mean he wrote Dorian Gray and was incarcerated for being a homosexual where he created another great book called De Profundis which was published posthumously. I read it some decades later, lots of decades later in a pdf format. I still have the work in my kindle. He pops up in media these days and before that with quotes that people quip about, so he is remembered quite a lot up to this day. Heck, I am writing this post because I have been wanting to but got to it because I see someone brought him up unto the stream of consciousness of today’s media streaming platforms. Oscar Wilde about America. The movie 2025 lasting 98 min apparently. Am more about the book and because I have a bone to pick about his visit to America.
Details about the book
Oscar Wilde in America
The Interviews
Edited by Matthew Hofer & Gary Scharnhorst
University of Illinois Press
Urbana and Chicago
2010
There is a parting of sorts here. I never thought about him this way but now I have. Before this year I admired him very much, he is a canon on my bookshelf. I mean, I would read anything about him or what anybody had to say about him. I had him in a high pedestal. When I bought the book I was enthralled about it. I looked forward to it as if I too was part of the tour. But the more I got into it I realized one thing, this year at least. His visit to America was purely eurocentric. There was minimal interest in America and its native inhabitants. This shocked me very much. To the point of disappointment which left a sour taste in my mouth. The more Westwards he got the more I sought his impressions about the landscape and its people. There isn’t very much so far. He mentions some names in Spanish as he rounds up his visit to California and other western states.
Such an impressive period of time he happened to visit. 1882. Manifest Destiny was in full swing, killing Indians was still ok and the racist spirit of European civilization held sway in the euro peeps of the day. 1882 was a new dawn and the new era of a greater America smelled like fresh buns out of the oven. I guess heroes do disappoint. I never put Oscar Wilde within the context of Manifest Destiny but I guess I am now. I am reading with my Mexican-American glasses, my Xicano lenses are in full gear now. Why was I expecting a reaction of a mention of America in 1882 from an Irish nationalist? Was not the expansion of the USA reported adequately in the euro press of those days to merit a mention that a wiping of the natives was in full swing? Then again the idea of barbarians was well entrenched so no matter how Christians these Anglo-Saxon lads were no pity was aroused in that press one would surmise. He does mention RW Emerson though so why not give it a good old chewing of the mind? Suffice to say it hasn’t happened in my reading yet. And if so what held him off to this point of my reading? Good question indeed. He must’ve been shuffled about as a protected witness. I suppose. The Aesthete as he is known in the press of America in 1882 has more business critiquing architecture or the antics of the euro people of the day, that is because nothing measures up to his euro standards in the new country except that everything is huge. As it still holds when Europeans visit America, they are duly impressed how big the USA is and can’t fathom it. Is one supposed to read then ignoring he ignored or chose to ignore or did not know about the ignominious atrocities of his euro kins? Where does one even begin to seek ground here? Hard to say but the more westwards and the more the tour goes about the more sour I get. And am not done reading it yet.
Another assault in my mind or suspicion if you will is that he was a propagandist for Manifest Destiny. Or paid by it if one wants. Whitewashing the westward expansion with interviews and being a star of the day. One does have to ask, who paid him? He was getting 500 dollars per lecture, that is in today’s 2025 15.5k that is a lot of dough for one night.