OK, so I just read the first 25 or so pages of Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray and have found it to be pretty much insufferable. I really don't know if I can take any more of these horrible toffee-nosed, old "upper class" British fops who do nothing but sit around all day exchanging pithy philosophical one-liners. Wilde clearly has a way with words and there is some interesting ideas to be found amongst all the ponderousness but I can't help but feel that if Wilde really did just want to pontificate about life, art, vanity, beauty etc, he would have been better served to have simply compiled all these ideas into a collection of essays or even a book of quotations.

As a piece of fiction though, I sincerely do not feel that it has worked at all over these opening pages. Can anyone tell me why I should carry on beyond these opening chapters and give this supposed classic a second shot?