The Secret History: 30th anniversary edition

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people never seemed to notice at first how big Henry was. Maybe it was because of his clothes, which were like one of those lame but curiously impenetrable disguises from a comic book (why does no one ever see that 'bookish' Clark Kent, without his glasses, is Superman?). Or maybe it was a question of his making people see. He had the far more remarkable talent of making himself invisible – in a room, in a car, a virtual ability to dematerialise at will – and perhaps this gift was only the converse of that one: the sudden concentration of his wandering molecules rendering his shadowy form solid, all at once, a metamorphosis startling the viewer." A truly modern classic masterpiece - Tartt's first offering as a writer is this juggernaut - a descent into evil, unreliably narrated by the newest addition to a group of highly eccentric elitist misfits, who form a group around a just as eccentric classics professor at a small liberal arts college in Vermont. Within this microcosm, they are creating their own norms and in time, their own morality, which leads to a descent to evil. Apparently Donna Tartt was well-versed in this theme, as it is prevalent in The Secret History. The gist of Nietzsche’s theory is that the ancient Greeks attained such a high level of culture mainly due to their personal struggle between the opposing philosophies of Apollo and Dionysus; Apollo being the god of art, and thus, stagnation, while Dionysus is the god of debauchery and barbarism, and thus, action. This struggle between appreciation for art and culture and a zeal for living is what Nietzsche credits for the Greeks impressive progress. He also believed that the only way we can progress today is to swing the pendulum toward Dionysus. The most vivid thing for me was how what Richard found so beautiful in the beginning unearths itself to be rotten to the core. In his inadvertent journey of self-discovery after all the unpleasant things they do (like a naked forest ritual to invoke Dionysus that results in tragedy), Richard watches as this facade slowly unravels itself. His esteemed friends are a highly flawed lot. Even the bombastic sybarite Bunny who was at first fun turned out to be bigoted and with an annoying habit of leaving his friends with an inflated bill.

you'll have to excuse me, i'd love to actually write something here but my brain is broken and i am incapable of thought. Right now I have this problem. Because I have used the word “immersive” before, and immediately upon my completion of this book it became clear that I should have saved it for right now. I don't think you're supposed to relate to them, or to see their story as something that might happen to you if you read too much Greek myth or like pretty things too much. I know this review is probably inadequate and does not fully capture my thoughts, but it is the best I can do right now. In my first foray at writing about this (which you can still see below), I focused on the immersion of it. I said I "loved" its characters, though of course I meant more that I loved them as figures, considering they are unlikable murderers. I wrote about it vaguely and glowingly, thinking everyone had sort of...gotten the point of the book, already.

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I can definitely see why people have a love/hate relationship this book. It was really distinct outlook on character relationships- driven and heavy. Pretentious and tedious. Reminded me of A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara and a little of Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. For some reason, her characters are bland, have no personality and are really annoying. Yes, even more than that bitch of Bunny. I can think of many reasons why The Secret History strikes such a chord with me. For one thing, I have a thing for timeless and ethereal stories, and this is one of those. Somehow the book has a dreamlike, almost hypnotic quality, despite it being very firmly set in the rather unromantic 1980s. I love that. For another thing, I have always been drawn to the unabashedly intellectual, and this book has that in spades. It makes geekdom alluring, and I just love Tartt for that. I wish I were as geeky as Henry!

Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.This book was told in the first person but in past tense. It reminded me a lot of The Great Gatsby and the way that book was narrated. Donna Tartt has invested this simple and suspenseful plot with a considerable amount of atmosphere and philosophical significance. . . . She's a very good writer indeed." -- The Washington Post Book World Our merry band of classics fetishists may think they are living a life of poetry and meaning, but we, the readers, know they aren't. We know that life's beauty lies not in pleasure without regard for others, in the fulfillment of selfish desires, but in case we get confused, Donna Tartt shows us that a life lived by those guidelines leads to irrevocably damaged relationships, unfading pain, and death. While finishing the book, me and Paloma had a discussion about the ending and how Greek heroes’ tales normally go. We talked about how murder taints everything, and how blood is the only thing that can purify it. We talked about how wearing masks is so important, yet death is another mask that we will all eventually wear. God, I’m being so cryptic, but if you’ve read the book maybe this paragraph will mean something to you, because it means the world to me. And I would agree. To find meaning, one must leave Hampden behind - for it was never intended that what happened there should be lived by as example.