The Secret History in Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)

Sep 26, 2017 Jeff Koeppen rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017-read, read-alongs-book-club, general-fiction, mystery, reading-envy-jenny

Very interesting. I need to read more books like this. This was a fun and engaging read about some not-so-pleasant subject matter. While I loved the story, and loved to hate the six main characters, at times I had a hard time believing in them. I went to college in the 80s, the same time as the main characters, and never knew any one who drank and took pills constantly as it seemed they did. (And drank not the cheapest beer on sale, but scotch, whiskey, etc.) Maybe the college experience was dif ...more

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Jan 25, 2015 lethe rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: d-20th-c, c-record-correct, a-adult, l-eng, r-group-read, p-owned, z-reread, t-crime

18 June 2022: copying my text updates here in case they are disappeared:

December 11, 2021 – page 25
4.78% "I honestly can't remember much else about those years except a certain mood that permeated most of them, a melancholy feeling that I associate with watching "The Wonderful World of Disney" on Sunday nights. Sunday was a sad day ― early to bed, school the next morning, I was constantly worried my homework was wrong ― (p. 8)"

December 27, 2021 – page 238
45.51% "I wandered from light to light un ...more

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Oct 06, 2018 Rachel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: not-so-contemporary-fiction

This might be the perfect fall book. Set on a university campus in Vermont, it follows an academic year's worth of progressively chilling and dramatic events. The characters are ridiculous, which is part of the fun. They're like kids wearing their parents dress-up clothes-completely pretentious but blissfully unaware of it- and their self-seriousness is actually rather charming. It helps counterbalance their near absolute moral depravity, which is quite alarming. Most of them, one way or another This might be the perfect fall book. Set on a university campus in Vermont, it follows an academic year's worth of progressively chilling and dramatic events. The characters are ridiculous, which is part of the fun. They're like kids wearing their parents dress-up clothes-completely pretentious but blissfully unaware of it- and their self-seriousness is actually rather charming. It helps counterbalance their near absolute moral depravity, which is quite alarming. Most of them, one way or another, have been left on their own to figure out adulthood, so they vacillate between attempting to emulate stoicism and the behaviors of New England Old Money (which , on second thought, don't differ from stoicism all that much).

Written right before the Internet became a thing-and we believed technology and connectivity was going to save us all, The Secret History could be read as a critique of the liberal arts to effectively mold good humans. For the previous two hundred years, the belief was that a firm foundation in the classics would teach the character and persuasive skills needed for gentlemen to be strong members of their community. The students in Julian's cohort at Hamden College pervert their education to selfish, violent ends and subsequently use their "persuasive skills" to emotionally manipulate each other, tormenting each other to another violent climax.

It's great fun seeing this system collapse, but there's also a sense of nostalgia for a time when we believed in humanism. I'm not sure what we believe in now- especially since we've learned all the ways that technology and greater connectivity have betrayed us, too. Tartt was young when she wrote this- and I attribute her youth to the biggest gap in this book, which is Julian. He's supposed to be this extraordinarily charismatic professor- and I can imagine this person from favorite professors from my college days (usually in the arts) that had their clutches of groupies, but Julian isn't developed enough to be as influential as the characters say he is. She doesn't (or can't) recreate the mesmerizing lectures he gives. We get a glimpse of one- and we get some of his chummy conversations with the students- but those are seasoned with Richard the Narrator's knowledge of what Julian does at the end, so the reader senses what the students don't. The reader can't experience the devotion that the students feel because they're encouraged to hang back, to be suspicious. Instead, readers get a lot more exposure to Henry-and Henry acts very much like a professor- and since they get very little insight into Henry's relationship with Julian, Henry's the charismatic mastermind. Since the reader already knows that Henry is polluted because of the murder that happens at the beginning of the novel (cleansing ritual with the pig aside), Tartt lets Richard catch up with the reader rather than have Richard guide the reader to a big emotional catharsis. Therefore, the end has the same impact as a well-written mystery. It's more satisfying on an analytical level.

Still, what Richard ends up concluding from that experience might not be what the reader draws from it- so there's a tension in what to make of that big finale. There's a lot here to think about and to draw readers back into this world that combines the classical and the gothic in such an intriguing way. ...more

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