Weird mystery about book called "The Secret History"!

[badger2005]

Can anyone help me solve this mystery by checking their copy? It's so weird!

I read this cult-ish book by Donna Tartt as a 20-something year old and distinctly remember a line from it. But my son has just finished reading the book (new copy that I bought him - I've lost my old one), and when I quoted the line to him, he did not recognize it. We checked, and it's not in his book, nor in any version that we can find online! So you'd think that I dreamt this - except that it is also quoted in just one place - a single obscure essay on the book that I found online.

The line is in this part where the college students are assigned a new tutor, and when he tries to teach them something one of the students says (in perfect 'attic Greek'): "Without your patience my excellent friend, we should wallow in ignorance like pigs in a sty". Or something pretty much like that...

My son thinks that I'm misremembering - but how I can be when it also is in this obscure essay? His alternative theory is that this is Mandela syndrome and me and some random scholar are having a collective hallucination!

Sometimes UK and US edits are different. If the UK publisher is not an offshoot of the US one, or vice versa, then the script might have had different line editors. Is one copy US and one UK?

Fascinating, though.

I remember reading a really clunky, ugly couple of sentences at the end of a chapter in the translation of Camus's L'Etranger which I'd studied for French A level. I never remembered Camus being that crass, so I looked up the French to see if it was better in the original. It wasn't there at all. The English translator had 'improved' the text by writing a few explanatory sentences of his own.

Yay! Hope your son grovels. Infuriating that he leaps to some random false memory syndrome over... his mother actually being correct!

It's quite possible for a book to have an American and a British editor and for them both to include or exclude lines.

Yep definitely in my 1992 Penguin version.

I was obsessed with this book at university. I haven't read it for years - may be time to re read.

Like others I am astonished it has not been made in to a film, but also I'm not sure I want it to be - it could be RUINED.

Whilst I know you are joking, I never quite understand why some jobs are a joke to people. Oh and the pay is pretty good actually

I don't quite know where to go with that. There's plenty of stuff in TSH that's 'ignorant' by that measure! Bunny says plenty of stuff that's pretty 'offensive' (although entirely in keeping with his character).

Anyway, glorious book. My absolute favourite. I'm glad there's never been a film version. The characters exist so vividly in my head, a film could never live up to my versions of them!

The smiley face was also partly to avoid the posters I quoted being offended, as well, to lighten up my reply.

But no, someone else decided to get offended.

Completely different book, but illustrating how different editions can make changes: One of my favourite books as a child was "Charlotte Sometimes" by Penelope Farmer. This is a time swap story where a modern (well, 1950s modern) girl swaps with a girl living in 1918 at boarding school, each time they sleep in the same bed.

The original ending is where another 1918 character writes Charlotte, now back in the present, a letter.

When I became a teacher in the late 1990s I read the book to my class - and the last chapter with the letter was missing. I thought I had imagined it.

However very recently I wanted my daughter to have a copy and found that the most recent editions once again include that final letter.

I always assumed that the writer had total control but it seems that different editions can make changes that can be quite significant.

Another possibility is that someone accidentally deleted it in editing, while popping an extra carriage return in or similar.

I have definitely never done anything like that to a second edition <thank god for ctrl-z, and timelines>

I think it breached copyright and was removed in response to a complaint under the DCMA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act).

Haha, that's quite an admission, you vandal!

Some editions of A Room with a View have a what they did after. I bought my copy online and it doesn't, which I'm still quite disappointed about.

I think this is a UK/US editorial decision as someone previously said.

Americans don't really have the idea of pig ignorance. It's British English.

Why Donna Tartt was au fait with it, I cannot say but I imagine US versions removed it. That may then have made its way back here in future publications.

That seems much more likely to me than a concern about being offensive about pigs...

I've just checked my copy on Kindle. It has eight results for pigs, none for sty. I can't find anything like the sentence in question. Some of the referencing of pigs is, let's say, uncomplimentary to pigs. So it doesn't seem likely that the sentence was edited out for insulting the species.
My copy just says 'copyright 1992' and doesn't say anything about being a later edition.

WobblyLondoner yes, it would have been an odd editorial decision to axe it incase it offended pig lovers.

There's an interesting essay about the intertext in Secret History. I'll try and post the link.

Weirdly, having thought to check my copy, I can't find it on my bookshelf. I know I wouldn't have got rid of it. Goldfinch and The Little Friend are there but no Secret History.

I'm not sure how copyright could have been breached.
Copyright of what?

Not in my Penguin edition which seems to date from 1993.

It isn’t in mine - 1993 Penguin edition, p587. I feel a bit cheated!

Same!

DH recently bought a new copy of one of his favourite books The Exploits of Moominpapa. He was surprised and pleased to see that the line about smoking being good for you is still in there.
If a line like that will stay in a children’s book then I can’t imagine they would remove a line about pigs in case the pigs are offended.

Copyright of the line "without your patience, my excellent friend, we should wallow ..." (I havn't included the whole quote incase I'm reported under DCMA 😀

@MadeOfAllWork indeed, there is plenty more to be offended about in the Secret History than dissing the brain power of pigs!

@Shortandfat I have two copies of Charlotte Sometimes. My original, now very fragile, 1976 Puffin edition contains the letter from the grown-up Emily and then two further pages of text dealing with the end of term and Charlotte’s thoughts on the journey home.

My second 2013 Vintage edition ends with the letter and two paragraphs of Charlotte’s reaction to it. This copy was meant to be a back-up for my first one since it has been read so many times it is close to falling apart, but without those missing pages it can’t be.

I wonder if someone with a first edition of Charlotte Sometimes could add their tuppence worth.

Do was Henry quoting someone rather than just showing off his perfect Greek?

Where does the quote come from?

It's not in my version!!! ( which I bought about three or four years ago in paperback)

In my copy that paragraph is on page 587, but the last line is missing completely!