Oscar Wilde’s talk inspired his rise and led to his downfall | Hacker News Reader

Oscar Wilde’s talk inspired his rise and led to his downfall

irishtimes.com

44 pointslermontov42 comments

The 1973 movie Papillon talks a bit about how terrible it is to be sentenced to silence. It's based on an autobiography and was supposedly fairly accurate, though it is about a French colonial prison system, not the English system.

My maiden name is Irish in origin. My father was quite the raconteur. My German mother was one of twelve children. Talk was a very big thing at home and it seems to get me in plenty of social hot water.

My expectation that online discussion forums are places for in depth discussion appears to generally be out of step with the expectations of most denizens of the internet. I've worked at toning it down, but remain baffled that actually talking with people gets so many negative reactions.

I enjoyed the article. It felt like a tiny slice of my own life reflected back to me and explained to some degree.

I encourage debate on my Facebook page between differing ideologies because I grew up in a home where that kind of discourse was not only expected but encouraged. There are people who start throwing death threats at one another when they disagree with their ideas.

We are definitely living in interesting times. I remain uneasy about the future of the freedom I so enjoy.

Yeah, it's also shockingly common for people to hang weird and hostile interpretations on any statement whatsoever. I have seen conversations that went roughly:

"I love my hometown of Denver for thus and such features."

"Hey, asshole. Why are you talking trash about my hometown of Columbus, Ohio?!!!"

Um, dude. He said nothing at all about your city. Get a grip already.

I haven't watched the movie, but I read the book it adapted. If I recall right, the main feel (theme?) of the book was not "how terrible it is to be sentenced to silence", but closer to the feel of an adventure book, with the author telling about evasion attempts (successful or not), living on the run and living with an Indian tribe in South America. There are also depictions of the inmates' life in the French prison system. According to Wikipedia the autobiographical authenticity of the book is questioned, which I'm not too surprised about.

I wasn't suggesting it was the main theme by any stretch of the imagination. But the scene commenting on how terrible it was to be compelled to silence made the single biggest impression on me from the entire movie, even though there are plenty of powerful scenes.

Sorry, I failed to completely and accurately read your comment.

> “the golden rule of conversation” was “to know nothing accurately.”

I've witnessed so many fun conversations killed by someone looking up the facts on their phone.

"Never let facts get in the way of a good story"

Being factually correct is probably not the best way to get someone to go home with you.

If one can't converse intelligently when the truth of the subject is known then one has nothing worth saying on that subject.

"listen, will you get on your phone and find that actor's name?"

"Oh of course that's him, brilliant! And he was in that other movie, what was it? yes, that was the one!"

And I've witnessed so many conversations ending up with people believing bullshit, because nobody knew anything accurately and nobody really cared.

Some conversations are held for fun, others for exchange of information. Nothing good comes from the two goals getting mixed up.

My advice is don't hang out with people who believe in bullshit, or look things up on their phones. Hard to find, but worth the effort!

So people are supposed to accurately detect bullshit without ever confirming it with a reputable source?

They are not supposed to expect accurate information from social conversations.

Maybe they should avoid conversations that don't lead to accurate information instead? I can forgive lack of precision (especially when qualified), but knowingly giving another person inaccurate information is an act of sabotage.

>knowingly giving another person inaccurate information is an act of sabotage.

But I don't know any accurate information.

Or, you know, avoid spreading bullshit, so you won't feel guilt when they believe you or shame when they find out :)

Or deliberately bullshit as much as possible so that people develop critical thinking skills :)

While occaisionally talking about things that are not bullshit but sound exceedingly like it, just to keep people on their toes. The ongoing research into quantum time crystals is a particularly good topic for this.

LOL, some friends of mine do this. Aaaall the time.

My advice would be to simply don't hang out too much with people who believe in bullshit. People who look things up on their phones are mostly fine; they have a healthy habit.

(IME, people who complain about others having their phones out tend to be insensitive and disrespectful. The scenario I usually see is such a person happily getting their fill of social media, putting their device away, and then imposing themselves on someone else and expecting them to drop everything they were doing and engage in a conversation.)

> Among the many hardships of prison life, perhaps the greatest for Wilde, was the absence of talk. The “silent” system then in operation, condemned men to a solitary existence in their cells; and even during the short interludes of exercise and divine worship all talking was forbidden. Without talk Wilde lost part of his own identity.

The 'silent treatment' of this prison system indeed seems cruel and unusual.

Agreed. The fact that he was convicted of ‘sodomy’, sentenced to two horrible years and the world lost him just a few short years later is absolutely criminal.

One of the "Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries" by Gyles Brandreth is set in the convict years of Oscar Wilde, and goes into detail about the prison life.

The period settings seem quite well researched, and are rather grim. But the writer also managed to make a decent whodunnit out of it.

Dramatization of the after prison time is also grim - I recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melmoth_(comics)

I always had the feeling, reading Wilde, of him standing in the firelight surrounded, on all sides, by slavering beasts staring and waiting for him to stray a just a step too far.

At least HH Munro's end was quick.

That's a haunting image, but it's so close to the premise of this classic Monty Python sketch that my mind leaps immediately to it anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uycsfu4574w.

Hadn't seen that. Tx.

Work is the curse of the drinking class.

-Oscar Wilde.

The man is the undisputed king of one-liners.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions, a quotation.

On fox hunting by English country gentlemen: “The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable!”

Depends. It is said that once after Whistler got off a good line, Wilde said, "I wish I'd said that!", to which Whistler replied "Don't worry, Oscar, you will."

In his Life of Waller, Samuel Johnson remarked of another one-liner

"Such is the story, which I once heard of some other man. Pointed axioms, and acute replies, fly loose about the world, and are assigned successively to those whom it may be the fashion to celebrate."

(http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5098/5098-0.txt)

I find that alcohol, when taken in sufficient quantities, can produce all the effects of drunkenness.

- Oscar Wilde

In his Autobiographies, Yeats is most interesting on Wilde as the talker.

It is important to keep always in mind that Wilde had been born into a world of talk. The sound of human voices – vital, informed, humorous, provocative – flowed around him from the moment of his birth...

This is such an odd truism. It is like saying a young chef's early life was redolent with food, or that a young interior decorator was born into a home filled with furniture.

You'd be surprised how many households have not many "voices" flowing around -- but silence, solitude, anger, confusion, addiction, and other issues.

And even less have "vital, informed, humorous, provocative" voices flowing.

This is true.

Since my first child was born and I suddenly had the responsibility of modeling conversation so that they could learn to speak, I became acutely aware of my and my wife’s inclination towards comfortable silences.

Love the way reality was mirrored in this answer. So hard is life, even today, when I look back, I feel hunted because of the silence and solitude of my childhood.

Not all families talk the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_gap

The Hart & Risley book that's kinda the foundation of all this is a pretty good read. Not exactly a page turner but nowhere near the sleep aid one might expect, either.

It's more like saying a young chef's early life was redolent with, say, Tuscan food. The Irish are masters of talk.

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