Not such a Wilde ride

The idea of Will Self reimagining Oscar Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray is nearly as nasty as Wilde's original conception of a portrait that ages and corrupts while its subject stays outwardly beautiful.

Even Wilde's elegant aphorisms became tiring eventually; Self's imitations are infinitely worse and, although he tells a good story, his pretentious wordiness and vicious mockery are to Wilde's sneers what his hard-edged video installation of the modern Dorian is to Wilde's original painting.

The debauchery is very much updated but to no real purpose: Self is no modern Wilde.