I found The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde in our apartment building's dumpster just a week ago!
A woman and her child had been evicted, and they wouldn't let her get her things. They said she had to make an appointment, then they kept jerking her around when she came to retrieve her stuff. I spoke with her about a month ago outside the building. She was supposed to meet the manager, but was completely ignored. Of course since she is a homeless nomad now, she has very little political power to do anything about it. They just threw the stuff in the garbage. I was furious and complained vehemently to management, and anyone else who would listen.
Along with Wilde, I salvaged some punk rock books, van Gogh and Picasso coffee table books, Catcher in the Rye, and more. Also a number of household items. I hope to find the girl, because I know she wanted her things.
Since then I have read some of Wilde's stories. I was interested and read the essay "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" first!
My favorite excerpt:
"We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannize over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table? They should be seated at board, and are beginning to know it. As for being discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or country labourer to practice thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing."
I also read as much of his letter from prison to Lord Alfred Douglas as I could. What a drama. I immediately was thinking about the movie, but after doing an internet search on Wilde, there are several already.
Yes Oscar Wilde was genteel. So what. He definitely had no place in a ditch. He also made it clear, and I agree, that socialism is not about reducing everyone to mundane workers. To me it's about equity, and opportunity. It's about being freed from wage slavery, at least enough so that I can have a chance to prepare a fine meal for my family once in awhile, create, ponder, or indulge in the art of conversation.
Jennifer Young
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