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!

It’s in my penguin 1993 edition.

The confusion of the OP reminds me of my GCSE English Lit exam on the Canterbury Tales, where I wrote about Chaucer implying that the pardoner was gay with the line “I trow he were a gelding or a mare”, then going to find the line in the text to reference it and finding it had been removed from the exam version! I didn’t have time to change it, and I was convinced I’d blown it and whoever marked my paper would judge me as some sort of weirdo pervert, and spent far too much time angsting about it until the results came out. Bloody exam board!

No you didn't- it wasn't published until 1992!

Nope. 1968. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Kestrel_for_a_Knave

A Kestrel for a Knave was published in 68 or 69, wasn’t it?

A Kestrel For A Knave was published in 1968.

Ken Loach's film is also well before 1992! Early 70s?

The film was 1969, I think.

If the book wasn't published until '92, Ken Loach must have had a tardis!

Oh, sorry- I just jumped back into the thread and assumed you were still talking about The Secret History- my bad!

Sorry, x-post on A Kestrel.

@Triselly and @IClaudine, I may be being unfair, as I was a graduate student with a hellish supervisor and in a permanent bad mood at the time, but I found her a weird combination of ostentatiously aloof and private, stressing that no one was allowed to ask basic biographical info, as though she was performing Literary Recluse, and at the same time dressed what amounted to a costume which would have made people stare at her on the street. She was wearing a pinstriped, doublebreasted trouser suit with a striped shirt, tie, cuff links and high-heeled laced boots, combined with a Louise Brooks bob, and looked slightly as if she was going to a cosplay event. Didn’t crack a smile, only wanted to talk about Catholicism.

I also felt slightly as if everyone in the room was being cast as dimwit Judy Pooveys, despite this being an audience of Oxford postgrads. It was a bit ‘Henry patronising the substitute teacher in perfect Attic Greek’.

I suppose I saw the side of her that hung out with Bret Easton Ellis and Jonathan Lethem at Bennington, and the persona would definitely have impressed Richard Papen!

Interesting insight @BBadCovers

No idea where the extra B in @BadCovers appeared from!

How nice to see a discussion about one of my favourite books. I read it first in the summer holidays right before starting uni and I've lost count of the number of times I reread it, but not for years now. I also loved The Goldfinch but hated The Little Friend and only read that once.

I always totally assumed Donna Tartt would be like that tbh!

As I said, I was probably being cranky for reasons unrelated to Donna Tartt, with or without her cuff links! Plus it was a long time ago. Late 1990s, probably. I may also have been cranky because her besuited persona and Catholicism reminded me of the legions of Jacob Rees-Mogg young fogeys who attended mass at the Oratory.

I often vaguely think of Henry in The Secret History as an American JR-M….

@nonevernotever Thank you! A first edition of Charlotte Sometimes is definitely on the wish list. I think I might have to do a lot of saving up though.

I wonder if the edition @Shortandfat read to her class without the letter was edited in an attempt to make the story more up to date - because Emily, who had been a child in the First World War, had a daughter in the Sixth Form in Charlotte’s present, which was becoming very far in the reader’s past.

@badcovers I was just reading a Vanity Fair interview from around the time TSH was coming out and it fits in with your impressions of her. On the other hand, she did an interview with Kirsty Wark when The Goldfinch came out and she seemed much more likeable. So like most of us, hopefully she has grown up a bit! But I do wonder how many ordinary people she knows.

This is such an interesting thread, thanks for starting it @badger2005

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/1992/09/donna-tartt-the-secret-history

I love this book. Mine is from 1993, and I've found the line on page 616 as others have said. I wonder why they edited it out?

@LuckyLerwick I've checked DD1's Penguin 30th anniversary copy and it DOESN'T have that line (p587) but my Viking trade paperback from 1992 does have it (p488) and the beautiful cover that@Needhelp101 posted above.

I have a pre publication American edition which I love mostly because Donna Tartt’s author photo is much less pretentious than the ones she went on to use. The quote is in this edition.

I remember reading about the film rights reverting back to Donn Tart for some reason and she’s shelved all movie plans. I believe she planned to be very hands on with the casting etc - maybe couldn’t agree with the studio?

But the quote refers to wallowing like a pig in a stye, it doesn't say that pigs are ignorant.

It’s in my 1993 edition.

This was my Mum’s originally and I clearly remember her buying it as it was incredibly rare for her to buy a new book due to the cost. This one was £5.99 which is the equivalent of £15.30 today.

That is really fascinating, thank you!

page 616 of my 1993 copy

@HamHand that's fascinating. For everyone else for comparison here's the photo from my 1992 UK edition. Same photoshoot but different photo.