subtextual
i don’t really care for the dark academia genre, but tsh has been on my tbr list for a while so when i saw it while browsing at the library i thought i’d give it a read. overall, i found it to be not very dark, and not even that academic, but the prose was spectacular and rich with beautiful turns of phrases that beguiled me for all 500 pages despite the dragging plot. if nothing else, i’d recommend reading it just to experience the sheer visual pleasure of well-written navel gazing.
the thing that was kind of amusing to me is that donna tartt was clearly asking: is it worse to be a murderer or to be annoying? and my answer was: it’s hands down worse to be annoying. so i was expecting everyone to kill each other/themselves at the end but instead it was just pages and pages of them being hysterical and paranoid trying to cover up their murder(s) with very poor opsec. since i didn’t care about any of the characters (i don’t think you were meant to care about them anyway, they were all functionally archetypes) i was expecting some good entertainment at least, i genuinely was under the impression that there were going to be cannibalism and bacchanal orgies and whatnot but at worst they just killed their most annoying friend and surpriseeeee the twin blondes were in an abusive incestuous relationship…..well tazmuir’s abusive incestuous twin blondes were much more interesting to me anyway! now what.
in general i feel like the odds were already stacked against me liking the story/characters anyway since 1) greco-european classical studies is literally the average liberal arts major and i don’t find it mysterious or romantic, 2) there are better, more interesting ways to depict the inner workings of classism and elitism in these elite institutions than “rich people can actually be just as stupid as poor and middle class people”, and 3) i wish it HAD taught me something interesting about ancient greece/linguistics/classical literature instead of using the subject as a glorified plot device.
but again, her writing is electrifying and moody and humorous and very special. that by itself is worth reading this for imo.
His students – if they were any mark of his tutelage – were imposing enough, and different as they all were they shared a certain coolness, a cruel, mannered charm which was not modern in the least but had a strange cold breath of the ancient world: they were magnificent creatures, such eyes, such hands, such looks – sic oculos, sic ilk manus, sic oraferebat. I envied them, and found them attractive; moreover this strange quality, far from being natural, gave every indication of having been intensely cultivated.
“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, ‘more like deer than human being.’ To be absolutely free!”
To compound this – all these unpleasant recollections to the contrary – so much remained of the old Bunny, the one I knew and loved. Sometimes when I saw him at a distance – fists in pockets, whistling, bobbing along with his springy old walk – I would have a strong pang of affection mixed with regret. I forgave him, a hundred times over, and never on the basis of anything more than this: a look, a gesture, a certain tilt of his head. It seemed impossible then that one could ever be angry at him, no matter what he did.
Or maybe it was a question of his making people see. He had the far more remarkable talent of making himself invisible – in a room, in a car, a virtual ability to dematerialize at will – and perhaps this gift was only the converse of that one: the sudden concentration of his wandering molecules rendering his shadowy form solid, all at once, a metamorphosis startling to the viewer.
Viewed from a distance, his character projected an impression of solidity and wholeness which was in fact as insubstantial as a hologram; up close, he was all motes and light, you could pass your hand right through him. If you stepped back far enough, however, the illusion would click in again and there he would be, bigger than life, squinting at you from behind his little glasses and raking back a dank lock of hair with one hand.
“I could help you.” “I don't want you to help me.” She raised her head and looked at me: her gaze hit me hard and sweet as a shot of morphine.
i don’t really care for the dark academia genre, but tsh has been on my tbr list for a while so when i saw it while browsing at the library i thought i’d give it a read. overall, i found it to be not very dark, and not even that academic, but the prose was spectacular and rich with beautiful turns of phrases that beguiled me for all 500 pages despite the dragging plot. if nothing else, i’d recommend reading it just to experience the sheer visual pleasure of well-written navel gazing.
the thing that was kind of amusing to me is that donna tartt was clearly asking: is it worse to be a murderer or to be annoying? and my answer was: it’s hands down worse to be annoying. so i was expecting everyone to kill each other/themselves at the end but instead it was just pages and pages of them being hysterical and paranoid trying to cover up their murder(s) with very poor opsec. since i didn’t care about any of the characters (i don’t think you were meant to care about them anyway, they were all functionally archetypes) i was expecting some good entertainment at least, i genuinely was under the impression that there were going to be cannibalism and bacchanal orgies and whatnot but at worst they just killed their most annoying friend and surpriseeeee the twin blondes were in an abusive incestuous relationship…..well tazmuir’s abusive incestuous twin blondes were much more interesting to me anyway! now what.
in general i feel like the odds were already stacked against me liking the story/characters anyway since 1) greco-european classical studies is literally the average liberal arts major and i don’t find it mysterious or romantic, 2) there are better, more interesting ways to depict the inner workings of classism and elitism in these elite institutions than “rich people can actually be just as stupid as poor and middle class people”, and 3) i wish it HAD taught me something interesting about ancient greece/linguistics/classical literature instead of using the subject as a glorified plot device.
but again, her writing is electrifying and moody and humorous and very special. that by itself is worth reading this for imo.
His students – if they were any mark of his tutelage – were imposing enough, and different as they all were they shared a certain coolness, a cruel, mannered charm which was not modern in the least but had a strange cold breath of the ancient world: they were magnificent creatures, such eyes, such hands, such looks – sic oculos, sic ilk manus, sic oraferebat. I envied them, and found them attractive; moreover this strange quality, far from being natural, gave every indication of having been intensely cultivated.
“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, ‘more like deer than human being.’ To be absolutely free!”
To compound this – all these unpleasant recollections to the contrary – so much remained of the old Bunny, the one I knew and loved. Sometimes when I saw him at a distance – fists in pockets, whistling, bobbing along with his springy old walk – I would have a strong pang of affection mixed with regret. I forgave him, a hundred times over, and never on the basis of anything more than this: a look, a gesture, a certain tilt of his head. It seemed impossible then that one could ever be angry at him, no matter what he did.
Or maybe it was a question of his making people see. He had the far more remarkable talent of making himself invisible – in a room, in a car, a virtual ability to dematerialize at will – and perhaps this gift was only the converse of that one: the sudden concentration of his wandering molecules rendering his shadowy form solid, all at once, a metamorphosis startling to the viewer.
Viewed from a distance, his character projected an impression of solidity and wholeness which was in fact as insubstantial as a hologram; up close, he was all motes and light, you could pass your hand right through him. If you stepped back far enough, however, the illusion would click in again and there he would be, bigger than life, squinting at you from behind his little glasses and raking back a dank lock of hair with one hand.
“I could help you.” “I don't want you to help me.” She raised her head and looked at me: her gaze hit me hard and sweet as a shot of morphine.