Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

I waffled about whether to post my Wednesday Reading Meme as usual even though it's Christmas, but in the end the siren song of habit simply proved TOO STRONG, as did the fact that I read Donna Tartt's The Secret History and I simply had to share.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, which was An Experience, a little bit like Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin, another book full of whip-smart college students in beautiful surroundings having crackling intellectual discussions full of allusions to a thousand books they all read and can quote at the drop of a hat - except that The Secret History is like if Tam Lin took place inside its own insular classics department, and also the magic was… possibly nonexistent? There’s an important (off-page) incident in The Secret History that could go either way.

Or you could also compare this book with Brideshead Revisited, in that both of them begin with a sort of college idyll, “Et in Arcadia Ego,” beautiful well-off young people (and their less well-off admirer) hanging out in the country and drinking far too much and whiling away the happy days as if they have all the time in the world. But in both books, this is an illusion: this is only a golden bubble in time before darkness bears down to crush the characters. (Both books also have an atmosphere saturated with homoeroticism.)

It’s also - well, it’s just an experience. I was also really impressed by Tartt’s use of, hmm, inevitability? The book centers around an event, an murder, that most books would make a great mystery of, but Tartt lays out the basic facts about it in the prologue, and then the first half of the book is just laying out how it came to that point, a march of doom toward a predetermined end - while the second shows what came after.

I also finished William Bowen’s The Old Tobacco Shop: A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure, which, as you may recall from my post last week, is bananas. When last we left Freddie and his friends, they were being menaced by pirates from the reign of King James, who were at length banished with the churchwarden’s Odour of Sanctity (an evil-spirit-banishing perfume that he keeps in a little stoppered bottle) once it finally occurred to him that two-hundred-year-old pirates had to be spirits and not mortal men.

But before the churchwarden realized this, the pirates (with Freddy and company in tow as their prisoners) retired in High Dudgeon, which is their castle stronghold. There’s a certain Phantom Tollboothishness about all this that makes me wonder whether Norton Juster read this book in his youth.

I also finished Aminder Dhaliwal’s Woman World, which I would have liked more if I went into it with the understanding that it’s a gag comic rather than a high concept one. The basic premise is that it takes place in a world where men have gone extinct, so you can see why I expected some in-depth worldbuilding.

But all the world-building questions are dealt with perfunctorily, as in the early comic where Gaia announces to an assembled crowd, “The men are extinct! What will the straight women do?” She ponders a moment, then asks, “How many of you skewed bi anyway?” and then almost all the women raise their hands, and that’s the end of that. We never come back to the question.

It’s not that I wanted the comic to navel-gaze specifically about the difficulty of being a straight woman in a world that no longer has men, but this is the level on which Woman World deals with everything and I found it disappointing.

What I’m Reading Now

The introduction to Bodies in Blue: Disability in the Civil War North states specifically that the book is not about amputees, which I suppose is fair enough, but as I got the book specifically because I’m working on a novella where the hero is a Civil War amputee… well, I put it aside for most of the week in a fit of pique. However, I’m sure it has lots of interesting information and I should read it anyway.

Oh! And I also began reading Elizabeth Goudge’s The Dean’s Watch! But then I got distracted by The Secret History, so I haven’t finished it yet, although I’ve gotten far enough to strongly suspect that this book has a truly off-the-charts woobie concentration.

What I Plan to Read Next

A few days ago I realized that I was six books away from reading all the Newbery Honor books of the 2010s (have since whittled this down to three), and my goal is to knock those last three out before 2020. Heart of a Samurai! Splendors and Glooms! (This one has puppets on the cover, which intrigues me. Magic puppets?? And was written by Laura Ann Schlitz, who wrote Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, which I liked a lot.) Bomb: The Race to Build - and Steal - the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon! CAN I MAKE IT???

I have also decided that I should read Donna Tartt's other novels, of which there are only two, The Little Friend and The Goldfinch. My impression is that The Goldfinch is more highly regarded than The Little Friend, although possibly this just reflects the fact that I've heard more about it because there was a recent movie adaptation?

Comments

[ursula]

I read and enjoyed The Little Friend but bounced off The Goldfinch halfway through because the protagonist was stressfully making bad choices. I think The Goldfinch has an aesthetic more obviously related to The Secret History, though.

[osprey_archer]

Given that all anyone does in The Secret History is make stressfully bad choices, it sounds like The Goldfinch could be its twin. Possibly I should take a little break before I dive into more Donna Tartt, though.

[rachelmanija]

I adore The Secret History. The prose is so marvelous - the prologue and the bit where Richard describes the classics students before he knows them are some of my all-time favorite bits in anything - and I love the narrative momentum and dark humor, though I think the first half is much better than the second.

I haven't yet read The Goldfinch because I was so disappointed in and frustrated by The Little Friend. For me it ended just as it was starting to get interesting. I didn't understand what the point was of the whole book.

[osprey_archer]

Yes! I definitely agree that the first half is stronger (perhaps because so much more of it is set at the college, while the second half has that excruciating interval at Bunny's parents' house?). It's too bad that the murder has to bring the idyll to an end, although I suppose without the murder the book might feel sort of inert.

[troisoiseaux]

Oh, man, The Secret History. What a book. I’ve re-read it two or three times since high school despite it giving me excruiciating second-hand embaressment/anxiety every. single. time. It’s like a food I’m mildly allergic to but won’t stop eating, because it’s just so good!!

I’ve read The Goldfinch but not her other one; however, more than either of those, I recommend you read the longread article about Bennington College in the 80s, because she features prominently and the entire article is like, ohh, that’s why TSH is Like That.

Article in question, not formatted because I’m on my phone, sorry: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a27434009/bennington-college-oral-history-bret-easton-ellis/

[osprey_archer]

I read an article (not that one, something much shorter) about Bennington in the 80s, and that's what put me onto reading The Secret History in the first place, the sense that this book was channeling this very distinctive, decadent, beautiful and terrible place. Which the long article just makes clearer! Gosh.

One of the things that really struck me about The Secret History is how all of the characters' lives are shaped by their time in college - most especially by the murder, of course - and one of the things that comes through in that article is that this was the real experience for Bennington students, too, even though (presumably) they weren't running around committing murders. It's so compulsively readable even when everything is awful.

[troisoiseaux]

The absolute funniest thing about the article is that multiple people read her novel and IMMEDIATELY knew who she based Bunny off of. Like, can you imagine?? Just one day discovering that your college classmate wrote you into a book and then your character got murdered, basically for being an annoying asshole?

[osprey_archer]

RIGHT THOUGH? I mean, ouch. Does it make it better that I never got the impression that she chose the murder victim because she hated the guy? Or is it actually worse that he's the murder victim because he's the one who doesn't fit in (ironically, because he's the most "normal")?

I also wonder if she actually based Bunny's family over that guy's real family, because damn, she rakes the family over the coals.

[troisoiseaux]

The first time I read the book, I hated Bunny so much that I felt a genuine sense of relief when he was murdered, simply because I wouldn't have to read about him anymore. I'm... not necessarily sure where I stand on him now.

(To be fair, I hated absolutely everyone in that book except Francis, the first time around. I still don't particularly like any of them - except, again, for Francis, who I find incredibly endearing for someone who should be in prison for conspiracy to murder - but I don't really think you're supposed to.)

[osprey_archer]

Yes, it's clearly not a book where the author gives a damn whether you like the characters or not. At one point Richard comments (I should try to find the exact quote) something to the effect that for a long time he tried to believe that the people he found interesting were good, and I think that sort of sums up what's going on with the main characters in this book: they're so interesting and well-educated and well-polished that it looks kind of like being good, but they really aren't, and in the end (despite their delightful shimmering surfaces) that undercuts their likability, too.

[troisoiseaux]

Richard is such a fascinately unreliable narrator— I feel like you can’t help but be at least a little bit dazzled by Henry & co., seeing them through his eyes, regardless of your actual feelings about them as a reader.

......I’m going to have to re-read The Secret History now, aren’t I?

[osprey_archer]

Yes, especially at the beginning, when he's watching them from afar/just getting to know them - they really seem kind of like royalty, or like fairy folk, beautiful and untouchable and a little bit magic.

And then they turn out to be... well, what they are.

[ancientreader]

I enjoyed Splendors and Glooms; it might suit if you're in the mood for something creepy. But it's long, so perhaps not best for that Race Against Time. And not the best of this writer's work, either, imo.

[osprey_archer]

I have not infrequently had the experience of reading Newbery books and going "Well, the Newbery committee was right that this is a great author, but... they chose this book?? This one????? WHY."

[brigdh]

I've been vaguely meaning to read The Secret History for years, just because it's one of those books that well-read people have read, but you make it sound actually interesting!

[osprey_archer]

I also had been vaguely meaning to read The Secret History for years, without ever really knowing what it was about. If someone had told me that it was about classics majors running wild and committing murder at a seductively, intellectually decadent college isolated in rural Vermont, I would have been there with bells on years ago.

[skygiants]

I've read The Little Friend but don't remember anything about it except that I vaguely expected it to be more exciting from everything I'd heard about The Secret History, which I suppose tells you something. (I had not read The Secret History at that time.)

The other thing The Secret History reminds me of honestly is The Great Gatsby -- Richard is sort of like what you'd get if you mixed Nick and Gatsby together into one desperate smooth-faceted disaster. (Why are Classics majors in literature always so wild, though? My mom was a Classics major and I'm almost certain she never ritually sacrificed anyone in her undergrad days ...)

[osprey_archer]

I'm almost certain she never ritually sacrificed anyone in her undergrad days ...

Well, that's what she WANTS you to think. Clearly a cooler customer than everyone in The Secret History: they all slowly but surely fall apart after murdering Bunny!

And yeah, I can kind of see the Gatsby comparison. There's a similar obsession with wealth, that Fitzgeraldian feeling that "the rich are different," and in a "and I want to emulate that difference" kind of way rather than a "bring out the guillotines!" one.

[littlerhymes]

Tam Lin is such an apt comparison to The Secret History though I way prefer Tartt's story.

The Little Friend and The Goldfinch are each interestingly flawed and unsatisfactory in their own ways! The Goldfinch is much more memorable and has an excellent book hiding inside the rest of its mess.

[osprey_archer]

I have begun reading The Goldfinch and it is An Experience, will report back once it is over whether the Experience was Good or Bad, although honestly I suspect that hoping to sum up a Donna Tartt book with a single adjective is... unlikely.