Volume 31, Number 5 · March 29, 1984
Oscar at Oxford
By Richard Ellmann
Oscar Wilde—we have only to hear the name to anticipate that what will be quoted as his will change conventional solemnities to frivolous insights. So it was in his lifetime, and so it is eighty-four years after his death. Wit, grace, unexpectedness: these are his essence, yet what attracts us too is, as Borges declares, that Wilde is almost always right.
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