Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius

Wilde died on November 30, 1900Dthus the timing of this centenary biographyDand media attention to this anniversary could send people in to purchase this new bio of the outrageous but likable dramatist and wit. The standard life is by Richard Ellmann, published posthumously in 1987 and nearly twice as long as this one by Belford, biographer of Violet Hunt and Bram Stoker. Belford's major quarrel with Ellmann is whether Wilde at his death was suffering from the final indignities of syphilis acquired in his youth, but that controversy is not enough to make a case for this new biography. Belford's strategic strengthDsince few if any can compete with a masterly stylist such as EllmannDis to exploit Wilde's words whenever possible. She sees Wilde as evading overt homosexual conduct while building a reputation as satirist and social critic, and even marrying for what seemed like love. Yet leading an imaginary life, however obviously precious, was, she says, a tiring role he rejected for a bolder deception. At first his guilty parallel life was craftily reinvented in his writings, becoming the fulcrum of his comedies. When it surfaced, as was inevitable, so did his ""intractable nature,"" and he made a public caseDin courtDfor the absolute freedom of the artist. It cost him two years of hard labor, his health and his career. Out of prison and in exile in France, he insisted, ""I must remake my maimed life on my own lines,"" but by then his life was all but over. His wife was dead, his two sons lived under new surnames, and his plays had been pulled from the stage. Cerebral meningitis, whatever its origin, did Wilde in two weeks after his 46th birthday. With a penchant for overstatement (""Christ had his cult, and Wilde had his""), Belford claims, ""Ellman wrote the tragedy of Wilde, not the life."" Still, there is more life in what remains the standard biography of Wilde than in what Belford offers. Illus. not seen by PW. (Oct.)