Comments on The Secret History - Part One

Disclaimer: All of the quoted material is from The Secret History written by Donna Tartt and is solely her copyright. It has only been quoted here for the purposes of a book review (fair use).

This text is part one of a series, where I will analyse some of the books that have been most influential in my own writing. My aim is to put into words some of the thoughts I have had on structure, plot, character developments and stylistic choices for the benefit of my own writing. Hopefully, they are of some interest to read. As it includes a substantive discussion of the plot, spoilers abound.

The Secret History, published in 1992, is Donna Tartt’s debut novel. It is set at Hampden College, based upon the real-life Bennington College where Donna Tartt studied between 1982 and 1986 together with Bret Easton Ellis. Donna was taught by Barry Hannah, in the esteemed M.F.A. program at the University of Mississippi, where he was both well-known for his mentorship as well as teaching while drunk. This should serve merely to inform about the writer’s background.

Now, to the main subject matter.

First, the plot development. At heart, The Secret History is not a plot-driven novel. The plot is ancillary and derives its value from how the characters are constructed. In simplified terms, it is a story about murder, but it is also so much more than that. The murder in the novel is not strictly speaking necessary, if you take a step back. It is not clear, at face value how we arrive from point A, a group of eccentric students, at point B, where two murders have been committed, one as part of an accident and the other, of a person that the reader slowly grows to hate. And yet, at no point in the progression of the plot does it seem possible that developments could occur any differently. It is an impeccably paced plot. This is further highlighted by the fact that we learn about the second murder early in the novel, and yet the story loses none of the excitement. This is perhaps what I mean by saying that it is not a plot-driven novel—it is not a tight-rope exercise concealing whodunnit, instead, it is a slow walk down memory lane, where revelations focus mostly on the psychological.

Therefore, a more in-depth look at some of the main characters.

Richard, our protagonist is from California. He appears to have led an average teenage life until he comes to Hampden College in New England, a college at once elite and welcoming to misfits like Henry who have not had a normal schooling. Richard’s relationship with his parents, in so far as they are mentioned, appears clinical and distanced. His father is an alcoholic and displayed at times violent behaviour both towards his mother and himself. Nonetheless, he blames them, mostly, for having grown up in a bland small town in California. Feelings of bitterness mixed with apathy accompany any sections related to them.

There is a beautiful section at the start of the book centred around the feeling he once had in his childhood home.

I grew up in Plano, a small silicon village in the north. No sisters no brothers. My father ran a gas station and my mother stayed at home until I got older and times got tighter and she went to work, answering phones in the office of one of the big chip factories outside San Jose.

Plano. The word conjures up drive-ins, tract homes, waves of heat rising from the blacktop. My years there created for me an expendable past, disposable as a plastic cup. Which I suppose was a very great gift in a way. On leaving home I was able to fabricate a new and far more satisfying history, full of striking, simplistic environmental influences; colorful past, easily accessible to strangers.

The dazzle of this fictive childhood—full of swimming pools and orange groves and dissolute, charming show-biz parents- has all but eclipsed the drab original. In fact, when I think about my real childhood I am unable to recall much about it at all except a sad jumble of objects the sneakers I wore year-round; coloring books and comics from the supermarket; little of interest, less of beauty. (7-8)

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 but as I watched the fireworks go off in the night sky, over the floodlit castles of Disneyland, I was consumed by a more general sense of dread, of imprisonment within the dreary round of school and home: circumstances which, to me at least, presented sound empirical argument for gloom. My father was mean, and our house ugly, and my mother didn't pay much attention to me; my clothes were cheap and my haircut too short and no one at school seemed to like me that much; and since all this had been true for as long as I could remember, I felt things would doubtless continue in this depressing vein as far as I could foresee. In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way. (8)

It is clever to place this passage towards the start of the book when we are still largely unacquainted with Richard. Richard’s objective for joining the group of Greek students is both juvenile and simple—reinvention. It is this which makes him in the very end commit those grievous crimes.

I suppose there is a certain crucial interval in everyone's life when character is fixed forever; for me, it was that first fall term I spent at Hampden. So many things remain with me from that time, even now: those preferences in clothes and books and even food-acquired then, and largely, I must admit, in adolescent emulation of the rest of the Greek class--have stayed with me through the years. It is easy, even now, for me to remember what their daily routines, which subsequently became my own, were like. (84)

Another passage, later in the book, sees him reflecting on why places are usually the most beautiful in the early hours of the morning; there is something about the light that renders even some of the ugliest places more pleasant, perhaps mysterious—even the town Richard is from, Plano.

Richard, early in the morning, finds Henry translating Milton’s Paradise Lost into Latin.

"Latin," he said solemnly.

"Hmm," I said. "Why?"

"I am interested to see what I will wind up with. Milton to my way of thinking is our greatest English poet, greater than Shakespeare, but I think in some ways it was unfortunate that he chose to write in English-of course, he wrote a not inconsiderable amount of poetry in Latin, but that was early, in his student days; what I'm referring to is the later work. In Paradise Lost he pushes English to its very limits but I think no language without noun cases could possibly support the structural order he attempts to impose." He laid his cigarette back in the ashtray. I stared at it burning. "Will you have some coffee?"

"No, thank you."

"I hope you slept well."

"Yes, thanks.

"I sleep better out here than I usually do," said Henry, adjusting his glasses and bending back over the lexicon. There was a subtle evidence of fatigue, and strain, in the slope of his shoulders which I, a veteran of many sleepless nights, recognized immediately. Suddenly I realized that this unprofitable task of his was probably nothing more than a method of whiling away the early morning hours, much as other insomniacs do crossword puzzles.

"Are you always up this early?» I asked him.

"Almost always," he said without looking up. "It's beautiful here, but morning light can make the most vulgar things tolerable."

"I know what you mean," I said, and I did. About the only time of day I had been able to stand in Plano was the very early morning, almost dawn, when the streets were empty and the light was golden and kind on the dry grass, the chain-link fences, the solitary scrub-oaks.

Henry looked up from his books at me. "You're not very hap where you come from, are you?" he said.

I was startled at this Holmes-like deduction. He smiled at my evident discomfiture.

"Don't worry. You hide it very cleverly," he said, going back to his book. Then he looked up again. "The others really don't understand that sort of thing, you know."

He said this without malice, without empathy, without even much in the way of interest. I was not even sure what he meant, but, for the first time, I had a glimmer of something I had not previously understood. Why the others were all so fond of him. Grown children (an oxymoron, I realize) veer instinctively to extremes; the young scholar is much more a pedant than his older counterpart. And I, being young myself, took these pronouncements of Henry's very seriously. I doubt if Milton himself could have impressed me more. (83, 84)

Richard is quirky, sometimes arrogant. But at the same time, he believes himself to be deeply boring and average. He is most arrogant in his interactions with women; his observations of women are flat, focused on the sexual or behavioural. He is a broody person, there is nothing light-hearted about him. This is fundamental in setting the tone for his interactions with the group of Greek students he encounters.

The eponymous passage when Richard, our protagonist, observes the group of Greek students from afar, walking across campus.

Four boys and a girl, they were nothing so unusual at a distance. At close range, though, they were an arresting party--at least to me, who had never seen anything like them, and to whom they suggested a variety of picturesque and fictive qualities.

Two of the boys wore glasses, curiously enough the same kind: tiny, old-fashioned, with round steel rims. The larger of the two-and he was quite large, well over six feet-was dark-haired, with a square jaw go Coarse, pale skin. He might have been handsome had his features be less set, or his eyes, behind the glasses, less expressionless and blast Hie wore dark English suits and carried an umbrella (a bizarre sight Hampden) and he walked stifly through the throngs of hippies and beatniks and preppies and punks with the self-conscious formality of a Old ballerina, surprising in one so large as he. "Henry Winter," said my friends when I pointed him out, at a distance, making a wide circle to avoid a group of bongo players on the lawn.

The smaller of the two—but not by much—was a sloppy blond boy, rosy-cheeked and gum-chewing, with a relentlessly cheery demeanor and his fists thrust deep in the pockets of his knee-sprung trousers. He wore the same jacket every day, a shapeless brown tweed that was frayed at the elbows and short in the sleeves, and his sandy hair was parted on the left, so a long forelock fell over one bespectacled eye. Bunny Corcoran was his name, Bunny being somehow short for Edmund. His voice was loud and honking, and carried in the dining halls.

The third boy was the most exotic of the set. Angular and elegant, he was precariously thin, with nervous hands and a shrewd albino face and a short, fiery mop of the reddest hair I had ever seen. I thought (erroneously) that he dressed like Alfred Douglas, or the Comte de Montesquiou: beautiful starchy shirts with French cuffs; magnificent neckties; a black greatcoat that billowed behind him as he walked and made him look like a cross between a student prince and Jack the Rip-per. Once, to my delight, I even saw him wearing pince-nez. (Later, I discovered that they weren't real pince-nez, but only had glass in them, and that his eyes were a good deal sharper than my own.) Francis Abernathy was his name. Further inquiries elicited suspicion from male acquaintances, who wondered at my interest in such a person.

And then there were a pair, boy and girl. I saw them together a great deal, and at first I thought they were boyfriend and girlfriend, until one day I saw them up close and realized they had to be siblings. Later I learned they were twins. They looked very much alike, with heavy dark-blond hair and epicene faces as cleat, as cheerful and grave, as a couple of Flemish angels. And perhaps most unusual in the context of Hampden—who re so on d and perhaps most anus decadents abounded, and where black clothing was de rigueur—they liked to wear pale clothes, particularly white. In this swarm of cigarettes and dark sophistication they appeared here and there like figures from an allegory, or long-dead celebrants from some forgotten garden party. It was easy to find out who they were, as they shared the distinction of being the only twins on campus. Their names were Charles and Camilla Macaulay.

All of them, to me, seemed highly unapproachable. But I watched them with interest whenever I happened to see them: Francis, stooping to talk to a cat on a doorstep; Henry dashing past at the wheel of a little white car, with Julian in the passenger's seat; Bunny leaning out of an upstairs window to yell something at the twins on the lawn below.

Slowly, more information came my way. Francis Abernathy was from Boston and, from most accounts, quite wealthy. Henry, too, was said to be wealthy; what's more, he was a linguistic genius. He spoke a number of languages, ancient and modern, and had published a translation of Anacreon, with commentary, when he was only eighteen. (I found this out from Georges Laforgue, who was otherwise sour and reticent on the topic; later I discovered that Henry, during his freshman year, had embarrassed Laforgue badly in front of the entire literature faculty during the question-and-answer period of his annual lecture on Racine.) The twins had an apartment off campus, and were from somewhere down south. And Bunny Corcoran had a habit of playing John Philip Sousa march tunes in his room, at full volume, late at night.

Not to imply that I was overly preoccupied with any of this. I was settling in at school by this time; classes had begun and I was busy with my work.

It is not quite admiration, but reverence revealed in this passage, the fervour of infatuation. Richard appears to project his own ideas on the group. To the reader, they appear infinitely more interesting because of this. Everything that Richard notices about them, their way of dressing, how they move, has value. The group is everything that Richard is not—he does not think that his appearance or his mannerisms could be of interest. He is just a boy from Florida, who aspires to be something. The group, their eccentricity, is a gateway. He is flattered and enjoys, tremendously, that his mundane habits, are not just of interest to the group, but worthy of attention and analysis.

They were all so used to one another that I think they found me refreshing, and they were intrigued by even the most mundane of my habits: by my fondness for mystery novels and my chronic movie-going; by the fact that I used disposable razors from the supermarket and cut my own hair instead of going to the barber; even by the fact that I read papers and watched news on television from time to time (a habit which seemed to them an outrageous eccentricity, peculiar to me alone; none of them were the least bit interested in anything that went on in the world, and their ignorance of current events and even recent history was rather astounding. Once, over dinner, Henry was quite startled to learn from me that men had walked on the moon. "No," he said, putting down his fork.

"It's true," chorused the rest, who had somehow managed to pick this up along the way.

"I don't believe it."

"I saw it, " said Bunny. "It was on television."

"How did they get there? When did this happen?").

They were still overwhelming as a group, and it was on an individual basis that I really got to know them. (85)

Because he cannot see that he might be a person of interest, he is ultimately surprised when the group reveals to him that at first, they found his behaviour strange, suspicious, not trustworthy.

There is something slightly pathetic about Richard’s behaviour. Later in the novel, we will see that at first, he believed his personality and his character were magnified through the presence of the group. Towards the end, after certain events have played out, this turns into resentment. He feels increasingly caged by his friendship and the group, even suspecting them of murderous motives towards him. This plays out largely through Henry, to whom I will turn in a later section.

As soon as Richard is welcomed within the group, he becomes protective of them, in his interactions with anyone else at Hampden College.

"Judy told me all about you. You're the new guy who's studying Greek with those creepos."

"Judy? What do you mean, Judy told you about me?"

She ignored this. "You had better watch out," she said. "I have heard some weird shit about those people."

"Like what?"

"Like they worship the fucking Devil."

"The Greeks have no Devil," I said pedantically.

"Well, that's not what I heard."

"Well, so what. You're wrong."

"That's not all. I've heard some other stuff, too."

"What else?"

She wouldn't say.

A place of innocence and debauchery, the countryside house, owned by Francis. Leisurely drinking, a slow, steady drip of alcohol from morning to nighttime. It is difficult to accurately describe the atmosphere that permeates the countryside house. It is the place where Richard’s friendship with the group makes great strides, and where he is welcomed into their inner circle. It is also the place where the preparations for the event which leads to the first murder take place, the Bacchanal. The isolation of the place, the lake, the drunk picnics. The golden sunlight, the library room, Henry translating Milton into Latin, discussions about beauty, the terror of real beauty, about things executed on a grand enough scale (Gucci quote). The fact that towards the end, when things have turned sour, the atmosphere is altered so significantly, makes us realise that Richard as a narrator embellishes. The country house seemed magical because of how he felt about the group at the start.

There is something noteworthy about certain stylistic elements in the story. The imagery in the novel evokes wide plains, forests, a certain destitute wilderness that seems infinitely more suited to the English countryside. Classics are still revered at Oxbridge, not in the US. And yet we find ourselves at New Hampden College in New England.

Similarly, Henry’s wealth fits the new world standards of wealth, but his behaviour towards people below his level in society is more reminiscent of other more hierarchical societies. Wealthy Americans like to pretend that everyone is equal, the whole ethos of if you just work hard enough you can reach any level in society.

Henry’s behaviour appears more reminiscent of societies that accept hierarchy and the inherent inequality in status between humans. He is not necessarily patronising or condescending to people beneath his status. He makes them feel at ease because he does not fake being equal. There can be something displeasing about American tech billionaires dressing and acting as if they are all equal to the rest of society.

Henry’s ideals of grandeur and duty emerge at different moments throughout the novel.

When Francis complains about Gucci, Henry responds, calmly, that "anything is grand if done on a large enough scale". This sentiment is referenced later after Bunny’s death when Henry and Julian watch the search for Bunny’s body from atop a hill. Henry and Richard can see the glee in Julian’s eyes, admiring the magnificence of the search, like something out of a film.

This finds its culmination in Henry’s quasi-suicide at the end of the book. The use of the gun merely to prove a point to Julian, prove that you can indeed live by the harsh ancient values he taught them: beauty, duty, to a certain extent terror.

Julian. There is something almost biblical about the devotion which the Greek students direct towards Julian, their teacher. In Richard’s first interaction with Julian, we immediately see that there is something curated about Julian’s group of Greek students, which immediately proceeds to exclude Richard. Julian, as Richard tells us with a distinct lack of self-reflection, enjoys drawing out the best qualities about his students, rendering them into almost fictional characters, characters worthy to be within his circle; Henry, the talented Greek scholar, at its helm. Richard enjoys that Julian finds him interesting enough to be part of his eccentric group of students. And even for Bunny, Bunny who must be the most trivial character, Julian manages to conjure up some image that renders him more interesting. When any of his students engage in something trivial or engage in jokes as Bunny is prone to, he appears displeased; his image of them is disrupted. He likes to say things like let us enter the sublime. His study, and the room where the lessons take place is not the romantic ideal of a dishevelled brilliant professor with books everywhere, he is more stoic; instead, Julian aims to conjure up an image of Socrates, an ancient, learned man, who taught their students in every discipline. He is of the opinion that more than one professor confuses young minds; this is likely because he is keen to shape his students in his own image and instil respect for certain ideals in them. He succeeds in this desire, particularly with Henry. He appears as a father figure for Henry; a small exchange is seen between them, a paternal kiss on the cheek. Richard engages in Julian’s practice of magnifying certain qualities, any act which the students execute has a purpose and an intention behind it that renders them more interesting. For example, Julian and Henry’s conversations in old Greek. Richard observes that both Henry and Julian appear to be more comfortable speaking Greek and Latin. Judy Poovey appears flat and loud next to them, she serves as a contrast – she is the normal bubbly, druggy, slightly cynical college student.

Julian is also crucial for one further reason, he instils the desire to lose themselves, to engage in a Bacchanal in his students, that one night which leads to the first murder:

“The Greeks, you know, really weren’t very different from us. They were a very formal people, extraordinarily civilized, rather repressed. And yet they were frequently swept away en masse by the wildest enthusiasm—dancing, frenzies, slaughter, visions—which for us, I suppose would seem clinical madness, irreversible. Yet the Greeks—some of them, anyway—could go in and out of it as they pleased [. . .] The revelers were apparently hurled back into a non-rational, pre-intellectual state, where the personality was replaced by something completely different – and by ‘different’ I mean something to all appearances not mortal. Inhuman.”

Bunny is an average young man, funny and insidious, at times enraging, perhaps the most "normal" within the group. He is the one who opens up the group to Richard when the students translate certain old Greek passages. Our first lengthy introduction during the dinner with Richard reveals a hint of his most displeasing qualities. Henry is the one who redeems Bunny by showing up to the dinner and being willing to pay. Some speak of them as friends. Henry seems to have a dutiful attitude towards Bunny but also appears to find him repulsive at times.

It is a testament to Donna Tartt’s skill as a writer, that to the reader, or at least to me, Bunny becomes progressively more deserving of hate and punishment, more so than his murderers, who somehow appear less worthy of judgement than Bunny. It is Bunny, who, after the first murder, has all his undesirable character qualities enhanced and enlarged. His sexism towards Camilla for which he uses the practices of the Greek as a pretence becomes unbearable, his teasing of Charles’ tendency towards alcoholism devious, and his bullying of Francis, who everyone knows is a homosexual, unendurable. Richard too is attacked by him, because Bunny picks up on the fact that Richard is lying about his background. Bunny pounces on the fact that his friend who went to the school in California which Richard says he attended, has no recollection of Richard. Bunny becomes like this, not because he fears the fried group, or is scared that they might do something to him. Instead, his anger and consternation derive from pettiness; he hates the fact that he was not in on the murder of the farmer, the crucial night of the Bacchanal where the group left him behind because he would not take it seriously.