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!

Yes, 2013. I have the same Penguin UK copy (and obviously it’s not in mine either).

The Secret History may be my favourite novel, so thanks for this intriguing mystery thread, op.

Copyright (in the translation itself if that is what has occurred) seems like the most sensible explanation, but that seems odd too as you could keep the line by either crediting the translation as history books do all the time or substituting for an older translation that is itself out of copyright. Or even getting someone willing to translate the line themselves.

I’d love to know.

I read a non-fiction book called Mystery Cults of the Ancient World last year, which brought TSH vividly back to me. Worth reading if you’re at all interested in this subject. Donna Tartt’s depiction gets a brief mention.

I tried googling the quote and this thread is the top result.

What an interesting thread, and a reminder that I need to re read this book.
I was obsessed with it back in the day. Would love to see a film made from it but I would have to direct it as it needs to be how I picture it in my head.
Am off to download it to my Kindle.

Are you thinking of Burke? That seems deeply unlikely!

I don’t have my copy to hand, but I’ve reread it lots of times and the line was certainly in my early paperback edition — it was when the well-meaning, dopey substitute tutor with only very basic Greek comes to replace Julian, after he flees after the big revelation, and there’s an embarrassing class where it’s obvious the gang’s Greek far surpasses his, and he mutters about it being a long time since he’s seen students at their level’, to which Henry replies with the line.

I also have a very bad French translation which is full of errors where the translator has misunderstood something in the US campus context.

I loved it as a student, and had a cast all ready to go for a film adaptation — I had Ethan Hawke as Richard, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Bunny… I think I even cast Judy Poovey and her ‘intensely aerobicised midriff’…

1993 penguin copy,

no quote about pigs.

My 1993 Penguin copy has the quote on p616

In mine the story ends on page 606!!

If there really is a missing sentence, the most likely explanation to me is that the author decided she didn't like it and requested that it be excised. Just from reading her novels she seems like an incredibly exacting, austere and probably scary person. I can imagine her continuing to pick at and perfect her work after publication - and I can imagine editors acquiescing in trepidation.

That's such a weird edit. It takes away the punchline, as it were - removes the whole point of the paragraph, which is to show Henry's intellectual superiority but also his quietly vicious way of demonstrating it. Without the line, the scene ends on a flat note and it's wasted.

I've long since given my copy away, but I'm pretty sure that line was in it.

Ha yes I tried the same!

I still think copyright infringement of somebody’s translation is the most likely explanation. It sounds like the sort of thing someone would say to Socrates in one of Plato’s dialogues.

Are people saying the sentence, in Greek, was not formulated as an original thought by the character but that Henry was quoting some existing Greek text? For which the publisher failed to acquire permission to reproduce the English translation?

That would undermine his advanced language skills though, if he had only memorized the sentence.

This is possible. It seems a bit clunky to me, stuck on the end of the summarised account of the new teacher's arrival - but that might be because I'm used to the book without it.

Socrates actually says to Alcibiades

"And indeed what you say is quite true. For it is a mad scheme this, that you meditate, my excellent friend—of teaching things that you do not know, since you have taken no care to learn them"
Which feels like it's related given the context of where it appears in the novel.

Yes that’s the theory.

Yes it would undermine his excellent language skills but maybe Donna Tartt’s own Greek wasn’t good enough for her to formulate it herself so she nicked a quote.

I stick by my US/UK theory but have another thought.

This is the kind of novel that attracts classicists.

Perhaps an ancient Greek scholar read the book and pointed out to Tartt's publishers/ Tartt herself that there is no way that phrase could be rendered in 'perfect' Attic Greek?

Strikes me Tartt would remove that, mortified at having been rumbled for something when the whole text is about supercilious know it alls...

What a bizarre take.

We knew pigs were intelligent back in 1992 and in fact, long before that. Why do you think Orwell made them the driving force in Animal Farm? I suppose you were born after 1992, given your apparent belief that we didn’t know things before then.

Plus, as another pp says, why would that stop the author putting the words into a character’s mouth? The character is also quoting someone else… as I say, bizarre take.

I think I will pencil that line in my copy.

I hope they never make a film of the book. It would be impossible to capture the atmosphere of it. Plus, I fear they might sanitise Charles and Camilla's relationship.

Very amusing to think that it's been removed due to changing pig attitudes!!! (Also because the actual quote doesn't say pigs are ignorant, it says they wallow in a sty. Metaphor schema is humans=pigs, ignorance=sty).

I think it's more likely to either have been a copyright quote or something to do with pacing of the scene. Or pagination of later editions??

I was very excited to see the original post because I absolutely remember the quote and would have been able to place where it occurred so I was thrilled to think it might be a Mandela effect...!

I think Tartt is intelligent enough to know that pigs are intelligent!

Glad you found it.

i had something similar with the ending of Charlotte Sometimes which confused me by changing.

This thread has made me want to reread TSH to see if it’s still as good! I remember all the grown ups reading it on the beach when I was a young teenager so I borrowed my dad’s copy. It was the first grown up newly released novel I read and I absolutely loved it.

I understand why the PP might ask a librarian. The one at my work is ex-publishing and from speaking to her it’s a v small world. If I really wanted to find out why the quote was missing she would be a great person to ask. She’d probably be able to text a friend/contact (who worked at the publisher or was otherwise connected to Donna Tartt) and they might know, particularly if there was an interesting reason. Anyway, I imagine she would be far more likely to get a response than a random calling or emailing out of the blue.

I vaguely remember wondering why it wasn’t printed in Greek. It would have been in a British literary novel.

I've got the same edition! I feel part of a select club now that I know I've got the disappearing quote.

I had a whole fantasy cast too! But I also think a film could never do it justice.