book meme/ya lit meme : ten series or books [1/10] - The Secret History by Donna Tartt

“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.”  

_{It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.}

CHARACTER POSTERS - henry winter, the secret history

The third boy was the most e x o t i c of the set. Angular and e l e g a n t , he was precariously thin, with nervous hands and a shrewd albino face and a short, fiery mop of the reddest hair I had ever seen. I thought (erroneously) that he dressed like Alfred Douglas, or the Comte de Montesquiou: b e a u t i f u l  starchy shirts with French cuffs; m a g n i f i c e n t  neckties; a black greatcoat that billowed behind him as he walked and made him look like a cross between a  s t u d e n t  p r i n c e  and J a c k  t h e  R i p p e r . Once, to my d e l i g h t, I even saw him wearing pince-nez. (Later, I discovered that they weren’t real pince-nez, but only had glass in them, and that his eyes were a good deal sharper than my own.) F r a n c i s  A b e r n a t h y  was his name. Further inquiries elicited suspicion from male acquaintances, who wondered at my i n t e r e s t  in such a person.

[ listen here; a francis/richard playlist ]

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? 

The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tartt

I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.

books i read in 2016; march– the secret history by donna tartt

“Beauty is terror.”

very brilliant, very erratic, 

                           and enigmatic