A small, secluded liberal arts college in the Northeast, a close-knit classics department with odd rituals and a narrator with vision muddled by casual substance abuse and the disdainful conviction that he is “cut off from the rest of the college.” It isn’t exactly hard to interpolate the critical events of Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” into the W.H. Gifford Classics Center, the Quarry and maybe the Colgate Inn. In fact, it’s tempting to, especially in the bleak winter months when there is a romantic appeal to opening up a big book and watching the snow gather on the campus buildings’ “carefully preserved” stonework. I’m no stranger to the desire to romanticize bookishness — I proudly own a black woolen peacoat and my fair share of cloth-bound books — but I’m here to tell you that using “The Secret History” as your aesthetic bible will cheapen your intellectual experience.
I picked up “The Secret History” for the first time last winter break in an attempt to kill time on some long flights and placate my insistent friends. The book starts slow, with its first foreign language quotation coming in right after the first paragraph: “A moi. L’histoire d’une de mes folies,” meaning, “And me. The story of one of my madnesses,” a translation I found on “The Secret History” Reddit community, which is both very active and chock-full of the type of people who model themselves after the book.
Quoting Arthur Rimbaud isn’t exactly a Colleen Hoover move, so, my hopes for an easy vacation book dashed, I settled into my economy middle seat and prepared myself for a slog. An ocean and a quick 350 pages or so later, I reluctantly tucked the half-finished book under my arm to deplane, totally hooked.
In 1992, 29-year-old Donna Tartt published “The Secret History” as her first book. It was inspired by and arguably critical of her time at Bennington College, where she studied the classics and graduated with a degree in philosophy. The novel follows Richard Papen, a 28-year-old academic tumbleweed, as he stumbles into a tight-knit group of classicists led by an enigmatic professor. This new group of friends worships aesthetics and poetry, double-fist books in Greek and Latin and engage in extracurricular bacchanals, all in hopes of infusing their lives with some kind of meaning. It’s only after one such mythological rager has perilous consequences that Richard starts to understand just how out of control his companions are (which I understand to be a pretty common experience for hastily formed friend groups). After that, the stakes and secrets continue to pile up until, well, you’ll just have to read the book. I’d recommend it, especially if you like drama and gossip but want it fed to you with words that will make you feel a little erudite and elite.
“The Secret History” isn’t without its headaches. Despite its pace and pretensions, my gripe with the novel is rather with what so many people seem to take away from it 33 years after its publication. “The Secret History” is often cited as one of the foundational works of the “dark academia” aesthetic, alongside works like “Dead Poets Society,” “Saltburn” and “If We Were Villains.” This aesthetic is a moody, gothic take on the campus novel, focused on sleepless nights, reckless ambition and burning candles on wood-paneled library shelves (or something like that). Don’t get me wrong, the dark academia aesthetic is a good look, and I love what it has done to some of your wardrobes (I see that V-neck), but it is fundamentally superficial — which is one of the main themes that the book confronts through its portrait of a clique of refined degenerates. Academics in a liberal arts university simply aren’t a montage of black and brown still shots of students in high-ceilinged halls with dark windows, all set to classical music. Realistically, academics at Colgate look a lot more like rushing from your lab to your film screening before spending the rest of the night wrapping up a reading. Real academia involves long hours and sustained focus. I’m sorry, but just because you can buy a reader’s guide to “The Secret History” to help you catch the references does not make it timeless literature! It’s well-written pulp fiction with a bibliography.
“The Secret History” is a great read, and I think, to an extent, its romanticization of academia has led me to appreciate my college experience more. Still, there is a danger to focusing only on its aesthetics. Intellectual experiences come in all shapes and sizes, and it’s a shame to let the way something looks dictate what is allowed to spark academic joy. In fact, that’s why I enjoyed “The Secret History” — for all its appearances, it still gave me plenty to think about. So take the needle off the thrifted Mozart record for a second and read a trashy romance novel, catch a superhero movie, watch Instagram Reels, whatever. When you do, please don’t tell me that the most interesting thing you thought about the media you consumed was that the shoes the actor wore are only $20 on Depop.
Rating: 4/5
