Episode 8.6: ‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt - Revisited!
It’s finally happening! We’re going back to the beginning and re-examining ‘The Secret History’ with 8 seasons of the podcast behind us and this season of reading Tartt’s influences - how has our list of tropes held up? Do we still love the novel whole-heartedly?
'Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together---my future, my past, the whole of my life---and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!'
Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.
We’re so excited to revisit this novel and re-examine it with our updated knowledge and experience of dark academia.
In this episode we discuss:
Richard’s obsession with Charles and Camilla
The revelation that Richard is an unreliable narrator
Bunny’s instability, and the road to his murder
You can listen to it here:
TEXTS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt
If you fancy going back to the beginning with us and losing yourself in ‘The Secret History’, we’d love it if you considered using our bookshop.org link below to purchase your copy of the book which helps us fund ‘The Dark Academicals’ and gives back to independent bookshops at no extra cost to you.
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