This was her answer:
Huh? What? Oscar Wilde? As in the homo that my bisexual boyfriend of so many years worshipped and adored? Gay icon extraordinaire? Was this a joke?
Nope.
She recommended this book, written by a convert to Catholicism, because it is a book that explores Wilde's lifelong dance with the Catholic faith. Or rather, his lifelong fascination with it, but a fascination that more resembled a quest to run from, hide, and avoid it. (It's also a book that strongly challenges - no, it actually destroys - the accepted notion that Wilde died of syphilis, as contracted from his numerous homosexual escapades.)
To be honest, I've known nothing of Oscar Wilde because by the time the bisexual boyfriend had gotten around to reading and introducing me to Wilde, I wanted to avoid anything that smacked of decadence and homosexuality, etc., like the plague. I didn't even know until just recently that Wilde had written "The Importance of Being Earnest." So let me say it was very odd for me to agree to read a biography about a person in whom I had no interest and no experience. But I did.
While reading this book, I wept. Many times. I related to Wilde's story and struggles in ways that shocked, scared, and even comforted me in the sense that I didn't feel so alone as a human soul.
Parallels and similarities to my own life and situations from the past abounded: I saw him struggle with the real and true love he had for his wife - and then abandon it for the lure of homo erotica. I observed his struggle with pride, notoriety of the self-created kind, and caricatures of his own making that eventually turned into reality (and were his eventual undoing). I watched him wrangle and wrestle with the Holy Spirit as he pitted Him up against his domineering intellect and desire for absolute freedom.
I cried for Wilde (and myself) as he landed himself in prison, saturated with the knowledge that he was there because he had ignored the truth of his inner self and Truth itself. And then I cringed when upon his release from prison, he is unable to make the change that he so desperately wants to because sin has eclipsed his being to the point that it has transformed him into a person he nearly despises but can no longer escape from: himself.
Oscar Wilde eventually converted to Catholicism on his death bed.
When I finished the book, I had the overwhelming urge (and still do) to have a mass said for him. But I figure I'll just get laughed at if I tried or someone will think it's a joke.
Below are quotes I found inspiring and thought-provoking, as taken from the author of this book, Joseph Pearce, as well as quotes from Wilde's writing. I offer them here not really for anyone but myself - as a memory or diary of a journey I made with Oscar Wilde earlier in the year. Sort of a reminder to actually ponder and reflect deeper upon something that made such a huge impact on me.
"Anarchy
Freedom's own Judas, the vile prodigal
License who steals the gold of Liberty
And yet has nothing....." Oscar Wilde
A Catholic friend to Wilde: "You will be damned, you will be damned, for you see the light and will not follow it!"
"Wilde's 'higher emotions', his aesthetic sensibilities, were attracted to Rome, but he was troubled by a pessimistic rationalism that led him toward scepticism. The warring paradox at the center of his psyche was that he was emotionally attracted to the faith but temperamentally tempted to doubt. Logic, as perceived by the pessimistic side of his character, led him away from the Church and not towards it. He accepted...that Catholicism was the only rational form of Christianity...." Joseph Pearce
"...loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin." Oscar Wilde from "A Picture of Dorian Gray"
"The tragedy at the core....is that Wilde had ceased to believe in metaphysical truth while remaining in love with it...The paradox of Wilde's position is that he believes in the capacity for belief but only possesses the capacity for disbelief. He is in love with the Church but finds himself exiled with the unbelievers. He desires metaphysical truth but can only see it as a beautiful lie." Joseph Pearce
"I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy." Oscar Wilde from "The Importance of Being Earnest"
"I don't think now that people can be divided into the good and the bad as though they were two separate races or creations. What are called good women may have terrible things in them, mad moods of recklessness, assertion, jealousy, sin. Bad women, as they are termed, may have in them sorrow, repentance, pity, sacrifice....." Oscar Wilde from "Lady Windmere's Fan"
"Nowadays people seem to look on life as a speculation. It is not a speculation. It is a sacrament. Its ideal is love. Its purification is sacrifice." Oscar Wilde from "Lady Windmere's Fan"
"[The definition of a cynic is] a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." Oscar Wilde from "Lady Windmere's Fan"
"With no clear understanding of the true nature of love, its source and its sustaining power, she [Salome] fails to perceive life's highest common factors and turns to its lowest common denomination. Incapable of love, she is left with lust." Joseph Pearce discussing Oscar Wilde's "Salome"
"....a man who has lived a life of sin is confronted at his death with the consequences of his actions. As the Book of Life is read, it emerges that he has been cruel, has spilt innocent blood, has idolized lust and has betrayed his friends. He answers defiantly when God decrees that he is to be sent to hell that God cannot send him there, 'Because in hell have I always lived.' The man's wisdom outwits God, who has no answer. Eventually God answers that as he cannot send the man to hell he will send him to heaven. The man tells God that he cannot send him to heaven either, 'Because never, and in no place, have I ever been able to imagine it.'" Joseph Pearce discussing Oscar Wilde's "The House of Judgement"
"And every human heart that breaks,
In prison-cell or yard,
Is as that broken box that gave
Its treasure to the Lord.
And filled the unclean leper's house
With the scent of costliest nard.
Ah! happy they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from Sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?"
Oscar Wilde from "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"