Wilde with anticipation

I just finished reading "The Picture of Dorian Grey" by Oscar Wilde, and am compelled to write about how unimpressed I've been. I'll grant that Wilde was very forward thinking for his time, but I found his work to be an utter failure. I didn't mind the fact that all three main characters were blatatly homosexual (or perhaps bi), which was one of the main issues that victorian society took with the novel. I say, you have to write what you know. However, in the preface, Wilde asks the reader to believe in art for art's sake, and then procedes over the next twenty chapters to demonstrate that he's not even sure if such a thing exists. His style was tiring and long winded, fild with frilly, superflous detail that were supposed to make the book more artistic, but came across as merely an illustration of Wilde's own vanity.