Wilde wrote this quickly and it shows — not in carelessness, but in velocity. There’s a wit to it that doesn’t wait for you. The novel keeps moving even when it’s being aphoristic, which is rarer than it sounds. Most writers slow down to be clever. Wilde accelerates.

I uploaded this one on a Sunday in December 2025. The boiler had been making a sound all morning that I’d decided to ignore.

— G. H. Schreiber

14/12/2025