I'm reading "Wilde's Last Stand", a factual book from my Wilde collection. Broadly speaking, it's about the decadant movement after his death, the ongoing lives of certain members of his circle, the impact of both his trial and the two world wars on the "uranians" of Britain, and the growth of facism. Fact of the day - one of my favourite slang insults "sod" is ultimately derived from "sodomite".

I'm just lapping up the luxurious atmosphere. It keeps reminding me of the Oscar Wilde book I want to write - twenty chapters detailing the lives of his secondary characters. You only ever hear about Robbie Ross, Constance Holland, Lord Alfred, Speranza as far as their lives intertwine with his. I want to know more about them, and one day I will research and write it. I feel it will be a better tribute to many of them to be their own people, not the supporting cast of someone else's tragedy. Most writers of Wilde biographies are, understandably, very sympathetic, as are most of its readers. But the "extras" are only viewed through the prism of how they affected him - Robbie Ross, Wilde's literary executor, comes out of it very well, and Alfred Douglas comes out looking appalling. Not fair to either of them - both were simply men, and they deserve their own stories separate from their role as "goodie" and "baddie" in someone else's. Because they're all artists, poets, creators, wits or geniuses in their own right, most with equally barmy lives.

I've also learnt a little more about art. A few of the terms used for schools sent me scuttling to a dictionary. My demands of art are not so different from his - I want it to make me go "wow", and if a work of art has moved me emotionally, I then class it as beautiful. The book wonders what Wilde would have made of the war - he was only 46 at his death in 1900 - but to be honest, I'm more worried how he'd react to 1920s art. I believe he would have despaired of much of it. I have never liked Futurism all that much, it's grim and downbeat. It looks forward to the future, but it's not a very nice one - all cars and oil and gas, like steampunk without the romance. Some of it is breathtaking, though - I really liked this one, and this one because of the colour explosion. Cubism I don't get at all - no, I don't really like Picasso. Wilde's Last Stand mentioned two I'd never heard of, which sent me scurrying. Vorticism is the local variation - "the Futurist was concerned with movement - the excitement of a speeding car. The Vorticist was concerned with the static centre of a whirlwind of movement. The Cubist was concerned with apples, guitars and life in the cafe. The Vorticist was not afraid of looking outside the cafe and observing the architecture and people of the street. There is a hint of aggression, or confrontation in some Vorticist works that is missing in French work. Vorticist works are characterised by the unease created by a disrupted perspective."




Finally. I'm a compulsive writer-down-er-of-things, and sometimes there's nothing more revealing than flicking through an old notebook. But with my penchant for cryptic hints, sometimes my findings are endearingly meaningless. Here's some highlights from today. None of the following had any context whatsoever. Theories to the usual address.

"It's more the memory of the murder itself, not precicely who he killed"


"What haps in Hamlet"