live forever

welcome to the blog dedicated to donna tartt's bestseller, "the secret history" i track #tshedit and #dailysecrethistory

[notkatniss]

come on henry 

[notkatniss]

In this essay, I will-

[tonytoponi]

Time of Day Tag / [original video] → no time for breakfast | a book that has been sitting on your shelf for ages

Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.

– The Secret History by Donna Tartt

[nolaversus]

part i

[nolaversus]

part ii

[capulets]

the secret history quotes.

[meiselr]

Penguin Classic Redesigns

The secret history

[choschang]

they all shared a certain c o o l n e s s , a cruel, mannered charm which was not modern in the least but had the strange cold breath of the ancient world : they were magnificent creatures, such eyes, such hands, such looks — SIC OCULOS, SIC ILLE MANUS, SIC ORA FEREBAT. 

[kvndreil]

character posters ↠ henry winter (the secret history)

“But how,” said Charles, who was close to tears, “how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?”

Henry lit a cigarette. “I prefer to think of it,” he had said, “as redistribution of matter.”

[kvndreil]

COMING SOON: THE SECRET HISTORY (based on the novel by Donna Tartt)

Richard Papen’s life turns upside down when he transfers to an elite Vermont college and gets entangled with a closely knit group of Classics students, hiding secrets, lies, and murder. (x)

[the-god-of-illusion]

She, I thought, was very beautiful, in an unsettling, almost medieval way which would not be apparent to the casual observer.

[the-god-of-illusion]

There was a piano, too, and Charles was playing, a glass of whiskey on the seat beside him. He was a little drunk; the Chopin was slurred and fluid, the notes melting sleepily into one another.

[the-god-of-illusion]

Except that my life, for the most part, has been very stale and colorless. Dead, I mean. The world has always been an empty place to me. I was incapable of enjoying even the simplest things. I felt dead in everything I did.

[sugarbabywenkexing]

[fhsfjdkfgkkdkgg-deactivated2020]

Camilla’s night table was littered with empty teacups, leaky pens, dead marigolds in a water glass, and on the foot of her bed was laid a half-played game of of solitaire. The layout of the place was peculiar, with unexpected windows and halls that led nowhere and low doors i had to duck to get through, and everywhere i looked was some fresh oddity. 

for @andromdea

[kamillamacaulay]

I am very particular about my surroundings. When I think of poor Oscar Wilde, dying in Paris and saying, ‘Either that wallpaper goes, or I do’, sometimes I feel the same way.

Donna Tartt, from her essay This much I know (Nov. 2003)

[kamillamacaulay]

My mother, despite the accusations leveled at her, was actually not such a bad mother as all that. She liked to play with me, listened to me as carefully as I were an adult, and bought me Goo Goo clusters (her own favorite candy) at the little store down the street from where she worked. And though she was admittedly a bit on the childish side, this childishness enabled her to understand me better than just about anyone else. She, too, had been a dreamy little girl who sleepwalked and had imaginary playmates.

We also shared the gift-alarming to everyone else-of being able to plunge ourselves into sort of eerie, self-induced fits. I would stare fixedly at a certain object and repeat a word or phrase until it became nonsense. Then, at some subsequent point, I was never sure exactly how long, I would snap to again and have absolutely no idea who or where I was, and be unable to recognize even the members of my own family. This lasted sometimes as long as three or four minutes, during which I would be completely insensible to shakes, snapped fingers, my frantically repeated name. I was able to do this anytime I felt like it, to amuse myself when bored-the amusing thing being always those first strange minutes when I woke up and saw everything and everyone for the very first time; like a person blind from birth who has just had the bandages unwrapped after an operation restoring sight. I stumbled upon this gift quite by accident when I was four or five, while sitting in an Italian restaurant in Memphis with my parents.

On this first occasion, while my father-a black-haired, bad-tempered stranger-shook my arm and shouted an unfamiliar name in my face, my mother remained oddly calm. Later, alone, she questioned me. I explained what had happened and how I had brought it about. She then told me that she had once been able to do the exact same thing, though the knack, had been lost with age. (As I grew older, my talent, too, disappeared; the last time I was ever able to successfully pull this trick was when I was a sophomore in high school, bored in the back of biology class.) We discussed it for a while, the ins and outs. Her procedure, it seemed, was slightly different from mine. And yes, she said, if you were bored, it was sort of an interesting thing to do, wasn’t it?

— Sleepytown: A Southern Gothic Childhood, with Codeine by Donna Tartt (July 1992)