The Quintessential Dark Academia? A Review

Blurb for The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last—inexorably—into evil.

A note on style

I just recently came across this post again:

I think when I first saw it, it was in reference to Victor Hugo, author of The Brick (Les Misérables), and then people in the comments were adding all the authors they thought it also applied to. Needless to say, Dickens and Tolstoy got dragged.

I submit for your approval: Donna Tartt.

Incredibly beautiful, smooth, flowing writing style that simply sings to your senses as you read along. So much so, it disguises the fact that there is actually very little happening in the plot, character beats, or anything else besides.

And I’m mad that I let her get away with it, not realising what was happening until well over halfway through the story and by then, well, of course I have to find out what happens to the perpetrators of the crime.

Spoiler alert: nothing much.

But wait, isn’t there a gun? Shots fired? People suffering PTSD? Revelations of a sordid and scandalous nature? Mental unravelling of the core group of friends?

Yeah, and all this happens within the last maybe 1/8th of the book. What happened for the 3/8ths before that? A funeral. I kid you not. The bulk of the second half of this book is a funeral. And somehow, it’s one of the more interesting parts. How does she do it? It’s incredible. It’s not fair!

The Secret History is like a study in atmosphere. And if I don’t fault Nathaniel Hawthorne for it, whose The Marble Faun I happened to be reading at the same time, I guess I can’t fault Tartt either. Unless…

A comment on character

Let’s talk about the characters.

There are seven core characters: The eccentric Greek professor, Julian, (who is way less cool than promised—I wrote “more hype than substance” in my notes) and his six students.

1) Richard is our narrator and access character (the story is in his first person POV), the newcomer to the group;

2) Henry is the charismatic de facto leader of the little band of Athenians (think Gansey from the Raven Cycle, only way less effortlessly charming, sympathetic, or morally responsible);

3) “Bunny” is the darker foil/romantic doppleganger of Henry (who ironically gets the most character development and sympathy of any of them);

4) Francis is gay (not to be reductive, but that’s about all the personality he’s given);

5) and 6) Charles and Camilla are fraternal twins (I guess their names were meant to be funny, after two notable people who also indulged in forbidden relationship with each other).

Is it important to know what these characters are like or what roles they play in the drama? To a limited extent, perhaps. But mainly, they are just props for the plot to unfold in the atmosphere in which they have been placed. Predictably, we follow along with Richard as he discovers this exclusive society at a New Hampshire college and manages to win himself a place in the group. However, for much of the story he is a detached observer, kept out of the inciting events that lead to the critical action which determines the way the rest of the book unfolds.

In the moment, it leads to an interesting scene of a character filling him in on things that had happened he (and the reader) had not been present for, explaining odd incidents and peculiarities of their behaviour that he noted in the narrative, but could not explain until now.

In hindsight, it also leads to uncertainty about what actually did happen, because several of the characters tell the narrator their experience at different times and they tend to differ considerably from each other’s accounts. Other sources differ still more. Of course, the hysteria and drugs may account for much of that, but still it leaves the reader with a question about what really happened and if it was all so out of their control and recollection as they claim it is.

A memo on construction

The story begins with the climactic event, letting the reader witness the fatal moment along with Richard, but not knowing how it came to that. Then, Richard backtracks to fill in how he came to be there, with those people, at that time. It’s not a bad way to construct a story, a technique that has been used with audience approbation in films such as Sunset Boulevard (1950), and it makes us settle in for the story with a sense of dread as it wends its way to a foregone conclusion.

By halfway through the book, we have again reached the inevitable moment, now with the context and the why, fully realizing the premeditation and horror of the situation. Unfortunately, the deed was set in stone on page 1. There is no going back in time like Richard could go back in telling the story. From then on, the characters and reader must continue moving forward, aftermath notwithstanding.

A tag on correlaries

Let’s see if I can organize my thoughts: the main event of the story is very much a classic staple of what has come to be known as “dark academia.” It involves classical studies, elitist philosophies, and a healthy dose of desperation.

Certain conversations reminded me of Rope, a 1948 Hitchcock film about wealthy college students who adopt the philosophies of a charismatic professor who expounds the belief that murder is permissible for some people. That, in turn, reminds me of the philosophy put forward in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment by the protagonist/criminal who asserts that exceptional people cannot be held to the same standard as others as they achieve great ends very often through military campaigns and executions of their enemies, etc., which would be considered crimes in someone less successful and therefore less “great.” Think your Napoleons and Alexanders.

Like in Rope, the professor in History is eventually apprised of the practical applications made independently by his students, and is profoundly disturbed by it. Like Crime and Punishment, great swathes of the time following the crime in History are filled with delirium bordering on insanity as well as varying attempts to cover up the crime while appearing as innocent and affected by it as others who knew the victim.

A collection of impressions

What’s different is that there are about four too many characters involved to actually do justice to the internal turmoil of any of them. As a result, they must get glossed over or neatly done away with by exhibiting behaviours never before hinted at that establish them as terrible people all along.

Francis

Despite my earlier dismissal of him as only being characterized as the gay one, Francis ultimately gets one of the more interesting developments when he starts suffering panic attacks. On the other hand, he could also be seen as the vehicle for what diversity Tartt was willing to display in her upper class New Hampshire academic circle: gay minority? Check. Differently abled minority? Check. She even made him ginger, for crying out loud. If we didn’t get the hint that he’s in a minority, that should do it. Oh, and he can’t let a phone ring without picking it up. I guess that’s a stand-in for a personality?

Camilla & Charles

One wouldn’t think in a discussion of twins that you would have to give a content warning for descriptions of incest and domestic violence, but for this one, you do. That’s all I will say about that.

Camilla is basically eye candy for Richard, and gets turned into a victim and simultaneous kink by the end of it all. And she’s inexplicably in love with Henry? Give me a break. I kept waiting for her to grow a personality, or to exercise any personal agency in the story at all, but she is instead consistently the token female in a boys club (as explicitly stated by the narrator more than once). Is it a commentary on academia? Is it a bid to be “realistic” by the author? I don’t know if it’s quite fair to say “all,” but for a lot of scenes she could be replaced by a sexy lamp with no effect on the plot. I don’t care if you think it’s representative of academia, it makes for dashed uninteresting fiction.

Charles gets done dirty by the writing, but perhaps it’s excusable to some extent? Or perhaps it’s not meant to be excusable? My issue with Charles is character consistency. It’s not a “plot twist” to have a character turn out to be completely the opposite of what they were established to be, it’s lazy writing. An argument could be made for the effect of substance abuse and addiction in altering a person’s personality, but it wasn’t fully framed in a way that is consistent with that reading throughout the entire book. There is a clear Charles-in-the-first-half of the book/Charles-in-the-last-half distinction that is never really reconciled as it should have been if Charles was privately displaying those behaviours, even to a lesser extent, since the beginning.

If the point of Charles’ character was to be a “gotcha” for the reader once they’d developed liking and sympathy for him, then I suppose that was accomplished, however hollow and cheated it makes the reader feel afterward.

Henry

Henry turns into a caricature of a rich kid, leader-of-the-pack and for the life of me I can’t figure out why the rest of the idiots follow him. For a while, sure, he’s charismatic and easy enough to go along with… but toward the end when Richard starts questioning how he’s been leading them along in the wake of the investigation, I thought to myself exactly how did they let him get this far being the de facto leader in charge of things when he has displayed the emotional range and maturity of a piece of damp cardboard?

After one particular conversation Richard has with Henry in a garden, in which their conversation goes nowhere and Henry is completely non-responsive and just walks away, I realised how many of their prior conversations went similarly. In fact, I don’t think Henry ever admits to any questioning of him. And instead of it coming across as a power move, I think in reality it would simply make the people around him think twice about whether he’s actually mentally present or trustworthy–he clearly doesn’t think he’s accountable to anyone, and doesn’t much care what anyone else has to say. Kind of a red flag in a leader, especially one so informally elected and easily demoted.

Bunny

I don’t have much to say about Bunny because I think he is by far the best written and most interesting of the bunch, however dislikable. His character evolution is grounded in early portrayals of him and progresses naturally to reveal a distinctly malignant character disguised by an easy nature. He is also, notably, not wrong about a lot of the things he torments some of the members of the group with. I found it a bit rich of them to get offended about his insinuations when later it turned out he was dead on. Perhaps it’s the spirit with which it was given, but still–know thyself.

In a way, I realised, he’s a trickster character. He takes advantage of everybody without appearing to, sowing discord and dissent, casting everybody’s dark secrets in their teeth, and like the trickster, his society eventually gets fed up with his shenanigans and takes measures to oust him–permanently.

Richard

Richard the narrator manages to be the shallowest type of person who despises his beginnings, is ashamed of his family (not without reason, I grant), and has delusions of grandeur that lead him to manipulate, mansplain, and nearly manwhore his way into the elitest group of students on his new campus. When his lies to save his pride almost lead to his dying of exposure during the winter, you’d think he’d learn something about humility, but of course, that’s when Henry swoops in to the rescue and he is fully accepted into the little cabal.

He’s a functional access character, as I’ve said, but he is by no means an independent, active character in his own right, unless you include the activity it required to get himself to the college and into the group in the first place. Everything beyond that is almost purely circumstantial and driven by other characters’ initiative.

A summary of content

For being such a long book, one would think the author would want you to actually like or be invested in someone, but perhaps that’s not her style. Perhaps we’re just supposed to realise everyone is awful and sometimes there are no redeeming qualities to speak of and life sucks, get used to it. In fact, that appears to be the ultimate point of the story, if point it could be said to have.

I’m not necessarily advocating for a tidy ending where justice is done and everyone gets their deserts, per some sort of general moral resolution. I think there’s room for more grey explorations of crime and non-judicial punishment. But then you still have to put in the work to earn that ending. In some ways, leaving everything open and unresolved is the easy way out. If there was any type of reckoning, it would have to be justified. Whatever we might privately think about the “triteness” of endings of stories like Rope and Crime and Punishment, there is some rigorous moral and philosophical argumentation that had to go into them in order to get the story there.

With The Secret History, all that had to happen to get to the ending Tartt provides is some drug-fueled orgies and a complete lack of moral culpability. In the end, there is no redemption.