imagine if Richard went by his first name in the secret history… like fucking JOHN is doing all this?? no way

is it just me or is the new season of you giving TSH vibes when they were in the country house lol

down

date idea- meeting Dionysus with Henry Winter

the secret history has chemically altered my brain chemistry

the secret history is so wild. like there's a hundred different analysis essays you could write about it and it's meaning and whatnot. but there's also a genius who thinks of elaborate ways to kill someone but didn't know or believe that the moon landing happened. they pull off the murder of their classmate and don't get caught. they try to hit a wasp with a prayer book during said classmate's funeral service. the unreliable narrator does cocaine in a burger king parking lot. said unreliable narrator lives in a hippie's house that has a hole in the roof in a vermont winter and doesn't realize it's literally killing him. the absolute hilarious unhinged energy from this book is overshadowed by a writing style where the most batshit things seem almost mundane. i love it.

yep me

i am nothing in my soul if not fucking dumb

For those who read both

i feel attacked but facts

donna tartt: literally writes an entire 600 page book about how it can be dangerous to do things just for the aesthetic

us, already making pinterest boards: oh to be a classics student in vermont in the 80s drinking whiskey from a teacup and occasionally murdering people 

I’ve been going through the Secret History again to annotate it and one of the things that I’ve noticed is Richard’s unreliable view of Bunny.

❗️The secret history spoilers ❗️

Now, even from the first time he sees Bunny, he accounts him to be annoying, going so far as to describe his voice as ‘loud and honking’ (pg17).

Then, in his first lesson with Julian (pg35), he describes him to be pushy, while talking about a pen Henry bought. He asks a lot of questions, despite no one answering, which then leads to a lot of silence. He demands to see the pen again and, in general, is subtly annoying. (Stay with me I have a point here)

Now, his interest in others’ lives is obviously a quality that Bunny has HOWEVER, it’s not his only quality. Judy Poovey claims ‘he’s hilarious’ and we are told that Henry and him have always been good friends. Bunny is more than his worse qualities and so why is Richard only describing him as these?

Guilt.

We know that is narration is after they killed Bunny and so it would make sense that Richard only remembers his bad parts, as it’s a way for him to subconsciously justify what he did.

And this is the absolute genius of Donna Tartt. She has made Richard an unreliable narrator but in such a subtle way that it feels so human.

Ahhhhh I love this book

Richard's unhinged energy is the most entertaining part for me beside the murders. Like the guy is an inspiration for chaotic people. He lies about his family life, pretends his rich father has business in oil (who irl has a petrol pump), lies to his part time employer to get money, goes on a 90s teen movie shopping spree, takes any free item from Judy, lies about going to a prep school, lives on a diet of wine and more wine, takes any pill anyone gives him, joins a cultish greek gang, lets Bunny die an aesthetically pleasing death and not to forget.....does cocaine in the parking lot of Burger King.

still thinking about how donna tartt executed the concept of having no moral binary in her characters so well. when you first read the secret history your desire is to place henry, francis, and camillia in the right. and that would work, except that henry is so obessed with the aesthetic of perfection and of the intellectual that he has lost his moral compass altogether. francis is so attached to his wealthy, comfortable lifestyle that he'd rather sacrifice his own well-being and desire in order to maintain it. camilla knows the implications of the wrongdoing that she and the others have committed, but she doesn't change her behavior or try to solve the situation, because that would disrupt the order she is trying her hardest to maintain. ultimately, they are all iredeemable, both for their own faults and for their participation in bunny's murder, and that's exactly what makes the novel as thematically nuanced as it is.

The Secret History:

reading books like the secret history is always such a wild ride, because i'm fully aware that it's a criticism of aesthetic hedonism and the elitism of academia, and then i'll read a line like " if we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look at that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. then spit us out reborn" and i go absolutely fucking feral.

the urge to take a greek class in my college is unreal

This 14th century archangel Gabriel in the V&A museum has two scars where their wings used to be, and that always makes me feel some kind of way.

screaming

probably the most upsetting realisation is when the desire to try to emulate either henry, charles, camilla, or francis is precisely what makes you a richard papen.