Secret History (Tartt)

The Secret History 
Donna Tartt, 1992
Knopf Doubleday
576 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400031702


Summary
Truly deserving of the accolade a modern classic, Donna Tartt’s novel is a remarkable achievement—both compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful.

Richard Papen arrives at Hampden College in New England and is quickly seduced by an elite group of five students, all Greek scholars, all worldly, self-assured, and, at first glance, all highly unapproachable. As Richard is drawn into their inner circle, he learns a terrifying secret that binds them to one another...a secret about an incident in the woods in the dead of night where an ancient rite was brought to brutal life...and led to a gruesome death. And that was just the beginning.... (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio 
• Birth—December 23, 1963
• Where—Greenwood, Mississippi, USA
• Education—B.A., Bennington College
• Awards—WH Smith Literary Award
• Currently—lives in New York, New York

Donna Tartt is an American writer and author of the novels The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002), and The Goldfinch (2013). She won the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend in 2003.

Early life
Tartt was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta, and raised in the nearby town of Grenada.   

Enrolling in the University of Mississippi in 1981, her writing caught the attention of Willie Morris while she was a freshman. Following a recommendation from Morris, Barry Hannah, then an Ole Miss Writer-in-Residence, admitted eighteen-year-old Tartt into his graduate short story course. "She was deeply literary," says Hannah. "Just a rare genius, really. A literary star."

Following the suggestion of Morris and others, she transferred to Bennington College in 1982, where she was friends with fellow students Bret Easton Ellis, Jill Eisenstadt, and Jonathan Lethem, and studying classics with Claude Fredericks. She dated Ellis for a while after sharing works in progress, her own The Secret History and Ellis's Less Than Zero.

Novels
• Secret History
Tartt began writing her first novel, originally titled "The God of Illusions" and later published as The Secret History, during her second year at Bennington. She graduated from Bennington in 1986. After Ellis recommended her work to literary agent Amanda Urban, The Secret History was published in 1992, and sold out its original print-run of 75,000 copies, becoming a bestseller. It has been translated into 24 languages.

The Secret History is set at a fictional college and concerns a close-knit group of six students and their professor of classics. The students embark upon a secretive plan to stage a bacchanal. The narrator reflects on a variety of circumstances that lead ultimately to murder within the group.

The murder, the location and the perpetrators are revealed in the opening pages, upending the familiar framework and accepted conventions of the murder mystery genre. Critic A.O. Scott labelled it "a murder mystery in reverse." The book was wrapped in a transparent acetate book jacket, a retro design by Barbara De Wilde and Chip Kidd. According to Kidd, "The following season acetate jackets sprang up in bookstores like mushrooms on a murdered tree."

• The Little Friend
Tartt's second novel, The Little Friend, was published in October 2002. It is a mystery centered on a young girl living in the American South in the late 20th century. Her implicit anxieties about the long-unexplained death of her brother and the dynamics of her extended family are a strong focus, as are the contrasting lifestyles and customs of small-town Southerners.

• The Goldfinch
Tartt's long-awaited third novel, The Goldfinch, was published in 2013. The plot centers on a a young boy in New York City whose mother is killed in an accident. Alone and determined to avoid being taken in by the city as an orphan, Theo scrambles between nights in friends’ apartments and on the city streets. He becomes enthralled by a small, mysteriously captivating painting of a goldfinch, which reminds him of his mother...and which soon draws him into the art underworld. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/14/13.)

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Book Reviews 
A thinking-person's thriller.... Think Lord of the Flies, then The Rules of Attraction.... The Secret History combines a bit of both—the unmistakable whiff of evil from William Golding's classic and the mad recklessness of priviledged youth from Bret Easton Ellis's novel of the '80s.... As stony and chilling as any Greek tragedian ever plumbed.
New York Newsday

Tartt's voice is unlike that of any of her contemporaries. Her beautiful language, intricate plotting, fascinating characters, and intellectual energy make her debut by far the most interesting work yet from her generation.
Boston Globe

A long tale of friendship, arrogance, and murder knit together with the finesse that many writers will never have.... Her writing bewitches us.... The Secret History is a wonderfully beguiling book, a journey backward to the fierce and heady friendships of our school days, when all of us believed in our power to conjure up divinity and to be forgiven any sin.
Philadelphia Inquirer

One of the best American college novels to come along since John Knowles's A Seperate Peace.... Immensely entertaining.
Houston Chronicle

Donna Tartt is clearly a gifted writer.... The cadence of her sentences, the authority with which she shaped 500-plus pages of an erudite page-turner indicate she has the ability to leave her literary contemporaries standing in the road.... The decision to murder has about it the inevitability of classical Greek tragedy.
Miami Herald

Tartt's much bruited first novel is a huge, rambling story that is sometimes ponderous, sometimes highly entertaining. Part psychological thriller, part chronicle of debauched, wasted youth, it suffers from a basically improbable plot, a fault Tartt often redeems through the bravado of her execution.... [T]he plot's many inconsistencies, the self-indulgent, high-flown references to classic literature and the reliance on melodrama make one wish this had been a tauter, more focused novel. In the final analysis, however, readers may enjoy the pull of a mysterious, richly detailed story told by a talented writer.
Publishers Weekly

This well-written first novel attempts to be several things: a psychological suspense thriller, a satire of collegiate mores and popular culture, and a philosophical bildungsroman. Supposedly brilliant students at a posh Vermont school (Bennington in thin disguise) are involved in two murders.... The book's many allusions, both literary and classical...fail to provide [a] deeper resonance.... Ultimately, it works best as a psychological thriller. —Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, MA
Library Journal

[P]recious, way-too- long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods.... Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking...seems dated, formulaic.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions 
1. Richard states that he ended up at Hampden College by a"trick of fate." What do you think of this statement? Do you believe in fate?

2. When discussing Bacchae and the Dionysiac ritual with his students Julian states, "We don't like to admit it, but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything. All truly civilized people--the ancients no less than us--have civilized themselves through the willful repression of the old, animal self" (p. 38). What is your opinion of this theory? Are we all atracted to that which is forbidden? Do we all secretly wish we could let ourselves go and act on our animal instincts? Is it true that "beauty is terror"?

3. "I suppose there is a certain crucial interval in everyone's life when character is fixed forever: for me, it was that first fall term spent at Hampden" (p. 80). Did you have such a "crucial interval" in your life? What/when was it?

4. In the idyllic beginning it is easy to see why Richard is drawn to the group of Greek scholars. It is only after they begin to unravel that we see the sinister side of each of the characters. Do you think any one of the characters possesses true evil? Is there such a thing as "true evil, " or is there something redeeming in everyone's character?

5. In the beginning of the novel, Bunny's behavior is at times endearing and at others maddening. What was your initial opinion of Bunny? Does it change as the story develops?

6. At times Bunny, with his selfish behavior, seems devoid of a conscience, yet he is the most disturbed by the murder of the farmer. Is he more upset because he was "left out" of the group or because he feels what happened is wrong?

7. Henry says to Richard, "...my life, for the most part, has been very stale and colorless. Dead, I mean. The world has always been an empty place to me. I was incapable of enjoying even the simplest things. I felt dead in everything I did.... But then it changed.... The night I killed that man" (p. 463). How does Henry's reaction compare to that of the others involved in the murder(s)? Do you believe he feels remorse for what he has done?

8. Discuss the significance of the scene in which Henry wipes his muddy hand across his shirt after throwing dirt onto Bunny's coffin at the funeral (p. 395).

9. List some of the signs that foreshadowed the dark turn of events. Would you have seen all the signs that Richard initially misses? Or do you believe Richard knew all along and just refused to see the truth?

10. Would you have stuck by the group after learning their dark secret?

11. The author states that many people didn't sympathize with Richard. Did you find him a sympathetic character?

12. What do you make of Richard's unrequited love for Camilla? Do you feel that she loved him in return? Or did she use his love for her as a tool to manipulate him?

13. Do you feel the others used Richard as a pawn? If so, how?

14. What do you feel is the significance of Julian's toast "Live forever" (p. 86)?

15. The author mentions a quote supposedly made by George Orwell regarding Julian: "Upon meeting Julian Morrow, one has the impression that he is a man of extraordinary sympathy and warmth. But what you call his 'Asiatic Serenity' is, I think, a mask for great coldness" (p. 480). What is your opinion of Julian?

16. Do you think that Julian feels he is somewhat responsible for the murder of Bunny? Is that why he doesn't turn the group in when he discovers the truth from Bunny's letter?

17. What causes Julian to flee? Is it because of disappointment in his young protegees or in himself?

18. While the inner circle of characters (Richard, Charles, Camilla, Henry, Francis, and the ill-fated Bunny) are the center of this tale, those on the periphery are equally important in their own ways (Judy Poovey, Cloke Rayburn, Marion, and so on). Discuss the roles of these characters.

19. The rights for The Secret History were initially purchased by director/producer/screenwriter Alan J. Paluka (All The President's Men, The Pelican Brief), and they are currently with director Scott Hicks (Shine, Snow Falling on Cedars). What are your feelings about making the novel into a movie? Who would play the main characters if you were to cast it?

20. What is the meaning of Richard's final dream?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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