When the Internet evaluates Donna Tart novels, you’d expect her Pulitzer Prize-winning The Goldfinch, or her Orange prize-winning acclaimed story The Little Friend to come out near the front of the pack – but instead her 1992 debut The Secret History usually tops lists. And I agree.
Over its 600 pages, The Secret History details the winter semester murder of Bunny Corcoran by his eclectic coterie of friends at the six person group of Classics students at Hampden College, a small liberal arts school in New England. Hampden resembles the type of school that takes second sons of the rich and wealthy misfits that didn’t quite fit in (or get in) anywhere else, five of the six students falling into one of these two categories. The sixth student and narrator Richard Papen has just transferred from California and hails neither from money nor New England. He spots the original group of five Classics majors on the first few days of college and immediately becomes infatuated by their aura of dark mystery. The novel journeys his efforts to join the friend group, and then the effects their murder has on their isolated circle.
The Secret History mirrors Procopious’s retelling of Byzantine misdeeds. The gorgeous facade, the aesthetic, and the prose mask the rotten innards and obscures what the words actually spell out; the story that Tartt tells of murder and death and corruption and how far we will go for appearances. Within the world she builds, the students — rich, intelligent, and as the narrator reminds us ever so beautiful — hide away their vile actions with their aura and aesthetics. As Tartt writes, “Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it…we want to be devoured by it, to hide ourselves in that fire which refines us.”
Tartt’s group of six lives by this mantra. They love beauty, yearn for it, and revere it. To Richard’s and our eyes they are viewed as ethereal, dripping in wealth, chic and smart, more cultured than their contemporaries, just so effortlessly cool. They would live and die for it, and so they do.
And now, for a quick anecdote. It is relevant, I promise.
Frank Herbert first published Dune in 1965. A cautionary tale, Dune critiques religiosity and blind devotion, warning readers about power, control, and admiration. To quote Frank Herbert; “the bottom line of the Dune trilogy is: beware of heroes. Much better to rely on your own judgment, and your own mistakes”. Instead of heeding his warning, readers fell in love with Paul Atreides, the protagonist. Staring this misunderstanding in its face, Frank Herbert released his 1969 sequel titled Dune: Messiah, Herbert crafted this book to express his messages on power, idolatry, and obtuse vernation with a significantly more overt hand. He says; do not fall for the pretty words of the elite, think for yourself. Few can read Dune: Messiah without coming away with that exact idea.
I implore Tartt to follow in his footsteps, not purely because I yearn for more of Tartt’s stunning writing (although I do), but because of the broad popular inability to grasp the themes of The Secret History. At its core, The Secret History critiques the aesthetic of intellectualism. And, in Tartt’s efforts to explore this theme, the book became a crucial aspect of that very aesthetic. I’m sure you’ve seen it; smooth jazz accompanied by soft singing in a Romance language (often French or Italian), dark wood and low light, a scattering of candles, stacks of classic novels; the works of Austin, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche. It’s all ribbons, Mary Janes, essays written in scrawled, cramped handwriting, Baroque paintings, black coffee and nothing more vivid than a deep ocean blue. The domain of dark academia – Donna Tartt its reigning queen, The Secret History its eternal constitution.
Some try to co-opt the dark academia aesthetic, not realizing that in the process they are reaching for a paperthin illusion. These characters are not cool, or chic, or a tightnite group of elegant geniuses. They are murderers, people who hate each other and bury their secrets from one another, yearning for beautiful purity at all costs. To readers of Dorian Gray: sound familiar? And the lovers of the aesthetic — the pretty things and world, the prose and ideas Tartt’s characters explore — do exactly what Tartt warned against: they are seduced by aesthetics. Just like Herbert fans loved Paul Atreides, Donna Tartt fans love dark academia – and in the process, they ignore the silver platter piled high with caution. Do not live for others’ consumption, for you will destroy yourself.
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