During the writing of her debut novel The Secret History, a feat that took her eight years, Donna Tartt did not believe that many readers would be interested in this book.
And so was born a work inspired by the love of Greek mythology, which was the main theme of the melancholic story in the style of Charles Dickens about a group of students of the classical sciences at an elite university in New England, who share a terrible secret.
"I thought I was writing an old-fashioned, very bizarre book, which no one but me would like. I wrote for myself and my friends," said the author in an interview in 2018.
Turns out she was worrying for no reason.
After the novel was published in September 1992, it became a hit with both audiences and critics, and was in the rare company of works that caused as much sensation in literary circles as they did on bestseller lists.
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At the same time, the success was not short-lived.
A secret history has become a book that people read more than once and give to others with complete trepidation.
Since its publication, it has been printed in 40 languages.
Three decades later, it is still being discussed, a whole new generation of readers heard about this book through the TikTok network.
In the meantime, Donna Tartt published two more books, among others Goldfinch, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, but her debut novel caused the strongest reactions.
Part thriller, part coming-of-age novel set on a university campus, and finally - part Greek tragedy, A secret history begins with one of the most memorable sentences in literature:
"The snow in the mountains was melting, and Bani had been dead for weeks before we realized the gravity of the situation we were in."
From the book's chilling prologue, we immediately learn that narrator Richard Papen and his friends have committed a terrifying crime.
The reader is immediately introduced to the secret - the novel is a story in two parts: what preceded the death of their colleague and what happened after.
Upon publication, a New York Times critic wrote:
“Imagine the plot Crime and Punishment Dostoyevsky in combination with a story from Euripides Bakhe in the atmosphere The Rules of Attraction Brett Easton Ellis, told in an elegant, set voice that dominates the novel Back to Brighthead Evlina Vo."
Writer Lori Petrou read it A secret history "several dozens" of times.
"I had so many copies of that book, some fell out in the bath while I was reading them, some I gave to friends, and some were missing pages as I read them," she tells BBC Culture.
She read it for the first time at school, she borrowed it from a friend.
"I connected with the book in a way I hadn't with any I had to read in school.
I remember how at the very beginning, when Richard talks about how monotonous adolescence is, it struck a chord with me.
But actually, the writing won me over. It is so beautifully and precisely written.
The book exudes discomfort and coldness; she made me both a reader and a writer."
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Life in a dormitory
A secret history belongs to a long tradition of novels set on a university campus, and among them is Stargazer, Lori Petrou's last novel about two friends at a university in the Canadian hinterland during the 20s, where the inspiration for writing this book was the author's love for To the secret history.
"There's an obvious parallel, since the novel is set on a small campus and deals with close friendships, and also in both books there's a certain coldness, a cruelty you're not sure where it's coming from, that makes the reader uncomfortable."
The closed world of university campuses, with their own rules and hierarchies, combined with characters coming from different social backgrounds and trying to reinvent themselves, already provide the basis for an interesting story.
"These are young people who are alone for the first time in their lives," says Petrou.
"They are dissolute and behaving terribly. We have intelligence, snobbery, privilege, all these things are ideal terrain for great literature."
U To the secret history, Richard Papen arrives at Hamden College almost by accident, by finding an advertising brochure for the college in his coat pocket and applying to be a student after an argument with his parents, without much thought.
Leaving California for New England is an escape from his family and the boredom he felt at home, but when he arrives in Hampden, a new world opens up before him.
Having initially failed to enroll in the Ancient Greek course, where the students are personally selected by the charismatic professor Julian Morrow, Richard will finally be allowed access to this exclusive club, where he joins the twins Charles and Camilla McCauley, Francis Abernathy, Henry Winter and Edmund Bunny. Corcoran.
Richard's middle-class background makes him an outsider in this wealthy clique, but of course, in literature, everyone loves an outsider.
Like her characters, Tart also studied the classical sciences, and the references to classical works add another layer to the novel. A secret history.
"The author's knowledge of the classical sciences and her love of the field are evident in The Secret History," says Owen Hodgkinson, professor of Greek and Roman culture at the University of Leeds.
"Someone else could have written a similar plot with characters based on people who like the classical sciences and that would probably be just fine, but it's clear from a classicist's perspective that she didn't happen to read Euripides Bahke, she had already studied this work and appreciated what was written about it."
The "violence and cruelty" of Euripides' play is mentioned at the beginning of the book, when Julian Morrow discusses with students what Dionysian rituals are, explaining to them that "beauty is terrible."
The students later stage their own version of a bacchanal in the woods - it will be a night of heavy drinking, drunkenness and, finally, murder.
And while they are Bakhe the most obvious reference, in Donna Tartt's novel there are many others, more complex, mostly hidden from those who are not familiar with the classical sciences, says Hodgkinson.
"The irony is that it creates outer and inner circles of readers, like inner and outer circles between students of the classics and those who don't," he says.
"Some readers will be able to appreciate many more allusions and layers in the book, knowing that they are privileged; however, it is also an uneasy position, since it makes readers like Henry or some other member of the exclusive clique of classicists."
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Popular team
Being part of a talented circle is something Donna Tartt is familiar with.
She started writing Secret history while she was a student at Benningon College, an elite liberal arts university in Vermont.
Her generation, which graduated in 1986, included Jonathan Letham and Brett Easton Ellis, to whom The Secret History is dedicated.
Ellis published his debut novel Less than zero while attending Bennington, and it was there that he picked up the inspiration for the next novel The Rules of Attraction (which mentions "that group of weirdo classicists, who probably wander around sacrificing farmers and performing pagan rituals.")
Like her protagonist, Tart, originally from Mississippi, seemed like an outsider among the kids at this college, who had inheritances, but, like Richard, she quickly fit in with the crew.
In 2019, journalist Lily Anolik wrote a history based on oral traditions about the time three future literary stars spent at Bennington College in the 14s, published in Esquire magazine, which later spawned a XNUMX-part podcast. Once upon a time at Bennington College (Once Upon A Time… At Bennington College).
Of the books by the mentioned authors, as a teenager she first read, and completely fell in love with A secret history.
"It's the first book that kept me up all night because I wanted to finish it," she told BBC Culture.
"I made various decisions based on this book. I struggled with Latin for four years because I wanted to experience what Richard Papen experienced. I remember how much I wanted it.
"It doesn't mean that I wanted to participate in the murder of my friend. I wanted to go to a college that was old, with a rich tradition, to study in ivy-covered buildings, tucked among trees."
Anolik firmly believes that A secret history wouldn't exist without Bennington College, such was the impact the college had on Donna Tartt, who said it was where she was happiest.
In the book, Richard Papen says:
"I suppose that in everyone's life there is a key moment when the personality is formed; for me, it was the first semester spent at Hamden College," a sentence copied word for word from Donna Tartt's 1986 Bennington graduation speech.
During her intensive research into life at Bennington College in the XNUMXs, Anuluk uncovered juicy details, such as the fact that Donna Tartt held martini parties in her dorm room, and that Ellis once came to campus with a suitcase full of drugs.
Anuluk also researched the genesis of the novel - trying to find out who the people were who inspired the characters.
Among them is Mat Jacobsen, a former colleague from the studio, who did not like Donna very much (in a conversation with Anulik, he described her as "the Joko Ono of our Greek classes"), and who was the inspiration for Bani, a character who was killed by his colleagues.
Tart rejected claims that the book was based on her life.
"Only in an indirect way, it's a fantasy of college life," she said in an interview.
When the New Yorker magazine profiled Bennington classics professor Claude Fredricks, citing him as the inspiration for Julian Morrow's Secret history, Tart responded to the fact-checkers of this magazine with a statement in which she defended her "dear and broad-minded" former professor, resenting the fact that journalists made such a comparison.
"That kind of confusion is both tragic and unfair to the memory of Claude."
While the podcast, written by Anulik, was on air, Donna Tart's lawyers sent a letter to the producers, warning them not to use "false, misleading or inaccurate statements" about the writer.
Unlike Bret Easton Ellis and Jonathan Lethem, Tart refused to talk, whether it was by text or podcast.
"Donna is clearly a person who cares about privacy and fame is not something that attracts her. Despite this, popularity did not pass her by," says Anulik.
"A secret history is not the only literary creation produced during her years at Bennington College.
"She also created herself - her own persona, which is equally theatrical. It is about a conscious creation as ingenious as its literature."
Part of that persona is her appearance - black hair cut into a bob haircut, tailored suits, ties and scarves, what we recognize her by today, and which Anulik considers to be like her literature, influenced by the book Return to Brideshead.
"She made a conscious decision to look like a character from an Evelyn Waugh novel. She's the female Sebastian Flight."
Bret Easton Ellis was among the first to read the manuscript Secret history, and then introduced a friend to his literary agent, who managed to secure $450.000 in royalties for the book.
Upon publication of the book in 1992, reviews were mostly positive (Time magazine rated the book as "appealing to the intellect", and Newsday called it "a thriller for people who like to think", although there are other opinions, although only to a certain extent, because The Independent noted that in her "style is again and again taken as essence".
However, the hype-making machinery was already in full swing when Tart was given an eight-page profile in Vanity Fair magazine, with a photographer snapping her with her boxer dog, Pong.
Her publisher, Soni Mehta, told The New York Times: "We didn't know what she looked like when we bought the book, but her appearance hasn't changed in any way."
The sentence that begins the text in Veniti fero reads: "Donna Tart, who will very soon become famous...", but from the very beginning Tart wanted to maintain an air of mystery, refusing to answer questions about her private life.
The rare details that did emerge would soon be mythologized: when you leave a voice message on her phone, you'll get TS Eliot reading Waste landin; she shops for clothes in the children's department at the Gap and can drink a lot more than Bret Easton Ellis.
During her career so far, she did not often give interviews - only when she had to promote a book, and in the previous 30 years this happened only twice, when she published novels A little friend (2002) and Goldfinch (2014)
The mystery only added to the legend about her.
"It's a very good book, which is why it's stood the test of time," says Anulik. "It certainly doesn't hurt that Donna has an instinct for atmosphere in contemporary culture. Also, she knows how to maintain an enigmatic reputation."
However, the idea that she is some kind of recluse is completely wrong.
In an interview with the Italian magazine Rivista (Rivista) last year, she openly talked about how much she loves fashion, about the contemporary music she likes to listen to (Lana del Rey), the time she spends writing ("every morning for three hours"), and she also announced that a new book will appear soon.
It came as no surprise to anyone that she announced that she has never used social media.
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Viral prose
Therefore, it can be said that the height of irony is the fact that social media is the reason why A secret history is experiencing a new wave of popularity, thanks to Dark Academia, a sculpture on TikTok and Instagram that romanticizes scholarship and celebrates the aesthetic of "traditional academicism with a touch of Gothic".
The book is considered the most important text of the Dark Academy, and videos with the hashtag #thesecrethistory have more than 150 million views on TikTok, in which young people dress up as characters from the book, recite favorite parts of the book by heart or show copies of the novel with notes they wrote.
"It's wonderful that a whole new generation has discovered Donna Tartt's masterpiece," says Isabelle Wall, editor at Viking, the British publisher of Donna Tartt's novels, which will publish a special XNUMXth anniversary edition. Secret history.
It is completely understandable then that this book finds new young readers - even though the world described in it seems very far from today's digital age, believes Petrou.
"That's youth, isn't it," says Petrou. "The things that I recognized in this book when I was young are recognized, again and again, by other young people."
Anulik agrees that the book is timeless.
"I think it's natural for young people to be snobs. A secret history is a great American snob novel, just as it is Back to Brighthead the great English snob novel."
After thirty years and millions of books sold, he will reveal Secret history in a way it feels like you are becoming a member of an exclusive club.
"To read this book for the first time is to enjoy the work of someone who is the best at his craft," says Petrou. "I envy anyone who has never read this book."
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