Reading Something

[shesnake]

Aneurin Barnard in The Goldfinch (2019) dir. John Crowley

[lowleee]

[lalocorleone-deactivated2026041]

“Hey. You need to walk. Yes? All right. Okay. Come on. There he is. Come on.”

[lalocorleone-deactivated2026041]

“He’d grown up to be good-looking. Even at his gawkiest and most pinched he’d always had a likable shrewdness about him, lively eyes and a quick intelligence, but he’d lost that half-starved rawness and everything else had come together the right way. His skin was weather-beaten but his clothes fell well, his features were sharp and nervy, cavalry hero by way of concert pianist; and his tiny gray snaggleteeth—I saw—had been replaced by a standard-issue row of all-American whites. […] It occurred to me that despite his faults, which were numerous and spectacular, the reason I’d liked Boris and felt happy around him from almost the moment I’d met him was that he was never afraid. You didn’t meet many people who moved freely through the world with such a vigorous contempt for it and at the same time such oddball and unthwartable faith in what, in childhood, he had liked to call “the Planet of Earth.””

Aneurin Barnard as Boris Pavlikovsky in The Goldfinch (2019)

[brilliantbookend]

Re-reading books is great and good until it’s The Secret History by Donna Tartt and you realize that within Julian’s first lecture we are witness to he speaks of Tiberius, a flawed Emperor held in disdain by his people, partially on the account he followed Augustus- a savior, a god. He spent his life striving to life up to his predecessors name and when he couldn’t, he indulged his perversions in an effort to feel something, but ultimately “died, old and mad, lost in the pleasure gardens of Capri: not even happy there, as one might hope, but miserable.”

Re-reading books is great and good until it’s The Secret History by Donna Tartt and you realize that just like Tiberius tried to follow in Augustus’s footsteps, Henry tried to follow in Julian’s. You see Richard’s focus shift from Julian- who was at first a savior, a god- to Henry, a flawed student of his who, at his end, is held in disdain by the majority of his closest friends and is lost in the indulgence of his own perversions- his attempts (and, arguable, success) to finally live without thinking.

Re-reading books is great and good until it’s The Secret History by Donna Tartt and you get to the part where Richard asks Henry in his dream, “are you happy here?” And Henry responds, “Not particularly” and you realize that Henry, like Tiberius, had never known peace or happiness in life and certainly not in death and you were warned about it in Julian’s first lecture.

[macrolit]

Giveaway Contest: Thanks to the generosity of @harperperennial, we’re giving away all eight of the brand new, limited edition 2018-19 Harper Perennial Olive Editions! And this year, all of the Olives are CLASSICS! <3 Won’t these look lovely on your shelf? :D To win these books, you must: 1) be following macrolit on Tumblr (yes, we will check. :P), and 2) reblog this post. We will randomly choose a winner on November 10, at which time we’ll start a new giveaway. And yes, for the third straight year, Harper Perennial has agreed to make this an International giveaway! Good luck!