Modern Classics: The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Why We Are Still Obsessed with Donna Tartt's Debut 30 Years Later
Modern Classics: The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)
In Modern Classics, we examine a book that continues to have an outsized influence on readers, writers, and publishing professionals
Thirty Years and Counting
Published in 1992, a year after I was born, The Secret History remains one of the single most referenced books inside of publishing and for aspiring writers. Speaking to its enduring nature, Jenna Bush Hager chose the novel for her monthly Today-show-backed book club in December 2022— that’s thirty years after its publication. This was only the second time in three years that Jenna did not pick a book newly publishing that month. This is significant: a Jenna pick is one of the few factors—alongside Reese Witherspoon (e.g. see “New Hardcover Bestsellers” above) and the Pulitzers—that guarantees a certain level of success in the world of books. Choosing a book that’s decades-old speaks to not only to The Secret History’s reputation, but its ability to stay culturally relevant.
Genius: An Origin Story
The myth goes like this: Donna Tartt was a prodigy, attending the prestigious writing program at Bennington College where whispers began about her being a genius among the geniuses (her classmate Bret Easton Ellis famously sold his first novel at 21, while still a student). When she entered the literary world and came into public view the aura around her only grew. At 28, she received a cool two million dollars for her debut novel The Secret History and no one at the time seemed to begrudge her for it—the book was that good. Nothing captures attention quite like a preternatural genius – it’s as enchanting a thought in the popular imagination as winning the lottery or waking up with super powers. “The young genius” narrative has existed since whenever art and marketing first met, but when books sales actually backed up the hype, The Secret History became not just a book to admire, but an entire publishing mythology to invoke and trajectory to try and copy.
What is The Secret History?
The Secret History is about a lower class outsider—Richard Papen—who attends an elite college in the northeast. Through his smarts he breaks into a small, invite-only class taught by an enigmatic Classics Professor. Much of this is clearly inspired by Tartt’s personal experience at Bennington college (see link above), as an outsider with a very smart, wealthy, and artistically-concerned set of friends. There are a lot of riffs on ancient Greek culture, literature, languages, and philosophy in the book. The tight-knit group slowly spirals out of control with our narrator at its center, navigating this chaotic, new, amoral world of the smart and privileged. One of the most iconic choices in the novel is the voiceover style flash-forward of the prologue. Here we are given the ending before the novel even begins: one of the group members is murdered by the group, infusing the story that follows with a tension that miraculously Tartt is able to maintain for 600 pages, even after showing her hand.
This setup has gone on to become part of the campy and foundational milieu behind the Dark Academia movement. But what makes The Secret History special—transcending the knockoffs that would come after—is the seriousness with which Tartt infuses what otherwise might have been a straight murder mystery or psychological suspense novel. It is a capital “L”, Literary novel, and Tartt’s sentences are brimming over with intelligence. Not only is the storytelling superb, but it is also extremely readable for such highbrow material (art, philosophy, dead languages, literature, social class, etc.). One of the reasons the novel endures is the way that Tartt is able to translate pretensions into smooth, easily absorbed sentences without losing a sense of depth or meaning. This the essential trick of The Secret History: entertaining you while making you feel smarter. It’s also precisely this combination that would doom generations of writers to come, making them believe that Tartt’s easy brilliance was easily achievable.
The most highlighted passage in The Secret History according to Kindle. See: popular and good, simple yet smart.
Influence
From Tartt’s personal mythology, to the quality of the book itself, to the page-turning plot, to the effortlessly smarty-pants prose—there are few more intoxicating stories or idealizations for young writers than The Secret History. It exemplifies in books what would happen in all realms of media over the next few decades: the merging of critical and commercial concerns into one hydra. Excitingly, this shift opened the possibility to write seriously outside of what were once considered the types of sober, serious dramas that ruled the literary world for centuries. This movement, accompanied by Tartt’s massive financial success, told young writers (and editors) they can have it all: a critically acclaimed literary novel with massive popular and commercial success. The effortless feel of The Secret History has inspired young literary novelists to say “I could do that” in a way that more in-your-face, verbose literary writers like Thomas Pynchon or David Foster Wallace will never do in the same numbers. In actuality, writing a novel that has the best of a murder mystery as well as something real and existential to say, asks the writer to do more, not less. Still, it hasn’t stopped thousands from trying to capture this same lightning in a bottle. My advice to aspiring writers of the next Secret History: borrow, don’t steal. There is a fine line but a vast difference between an homage and a knockoff.
Top Five Things to Expect When The Secret History is Mentioned
Intellectual Subject Matter + Murder Mystery
When you hear about a book that “this novel is The Secret History meets x (other book title),” you know you are most likely going to get a novel that attempts to be both intellectual and also a mystery or suspense “page turner.” Probably, it will use some piece of stereotypical intellectual subject matter—like Ancient Greece in The Secret History—as the chief metaphorical component. Something like classical music, high-end art, a scientific field (astrophysics, whale migration, geology, etc.), fashion, basically whatever you would try not to roll your eyes at if someone told you it was their hobby at a dinner party. Often this subject is also very much part of the setting (museum, high fashion house, opera, etc.)
The Big Voice Framing Device
Tartt is responsible for inspiring many unnecessary two-page prologues. More often, it’s better to start with the story rather than a grand proclamation. These flash-forward openings can still work, but there are many more that writers should leave on the cutting room floor.
College
The blame for the increase in co-eds, friends, and professors getting murdered in fiction lies squarely at The Secret History’s feet. Tartt brought the campus novel to the fore in a big way.
The Experience of Youth
Tartt hardly invented using a personal experience in youth as the basis for a first novel. But she showed publishers how potent this inspired-by story off the page could be as a tool for building a first time novelist’s profile. Tartt’s story also told many young writers that all the material they needed to write a great novel could come from their college experience or MFA program.
Toxic Friendship or Group
A hallmark of a The Secret History style novel is some kind of outsider in their 20s (usually poorer but smarter) inserted into some toxic relationship with a rich or group of rich people. The Secret History is like a literary novel version of a Wall Street or war story—it’s ostensibly supposed to be about the dangers of aspiring to upper class, intellectual concerns, but instead of turning writers off from these topics it has inspired them to write more stories about aspirational worlds and the toxic people in them.
New Hardcover Bestsellers: Finally!
Fiction
After three consecutive weeks of no new hardcover books, the New York Times bestseller list that will publish on January 22nd will bring five new entrants. In fiction, there’s Danielle Steel’s 143rd novel, and now established bestselling domestic suspense author Rachel Hawkins’ new book. Accompanied, hearteningly, by two other newcomers: one a Reese Witherspoon pick that is a debut psychological thriller, and a Good Morning America book club pick Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor, a novel I highly recommend. As nice as it is to have some new fiction, we’ll have to wait longer for something shocking or more interesting: two authors with long track records and two of the major book club picks (taking nothing away from the accomplishment).
Nonfiction
On the nonfiction side, much more surprising is Myth America, an anthology in which historians debunk foundational mythologies in American history. Usually anthologies struggle because they lack a central personality to promote the collection, even if the contributors are impressive, or have a clear single subject with which to target readers (the two other history bestsellers on the list are in the Danielle Steel zone of nonfiction subjects: the umpteenth Samuel Adams [11th week on the list] and Lincoln [12th week on the list] biographies). All in all, an anthology appearing on The List is a rarity. Kudos to whomever conceived Myth America, as it clearly taps into a larger movement and conversation readers care about—it’s great to see a fresh idea without the obvious benefit of megawatt publicity rise to the top.
One Page at a Time: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
A Weekly Read Along
Next week I’ll be embarking on a journey out to sea. Every weekday morning, I’ll be reading a chapter or a few pages—just as long as it takes to drink a cup of coffee or two—from a dyed-in-the-wool classic that is notoriously difficult to read or arduously long. A few years ago, I decided this was the only way I would ever get through the famously daunting Pale Fire. If you want to participate, pick up a copy of Moby-Dick, and we’ll start the first chapter next Tuesday, January 24th (Ch.1 is only 6 pages; see how easy this is going to be?). I’ll be recapping the journey every week with page progress and an observation or two.
A very normal, totally run of the mill English language sentence in Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire.
Back Matter: Links and Other Happenings
Bad news: if you read a book, you’ll forget it anyway. A not entirely safe-for-work suffix is word of the year (the most interesting note in the article is that it was popularized through Tik Tok and isn’t really used outside of the internet, which, regardless what you think of the choice, is kind of…sad?). Holy s***: Prince Harry’s book sells 1.4 million copies on day one. An English soccer team grants leave to their best goal scorer to go on a messy reality tv dating show. Blunt movie names are in, a trend that is no doubt already happening in books too.
Perfect Grandmother finds Dear Head of Mine Perfect probably because he is/was/will be a grandchild but wonders when you become a genius author do you cease for those moments to be a perfect grandchild or most probably perhaps the Perfect Grandmother would also then in solidarity with both the principle of Balance and the perfect grandchild, cease for those same moments to be perfect too - Is this Quantum??and then does this have anything to do with the Status Quo?❤️