There are books I read again and again, and I’m always amazed that I still learn from those books at every age I’ve read them, from high school to middle age. The main book I re-read is The Secret History, which riveted me with its story of college students trying to bring on ancient Greek bacchanalia, and end up killing first a stranger, then a friend, and trying to cover up the crimes. Plus there’s class warfare and elitist social climbing. As a high school student I lapped this stuff up. I wanted to join this elitist, social posturing game and live a decadent life, that was half-way to ruin and ennui. All terribly romantic. I remember reading it again in college, and feeling sad that I was so bad at languages, especially Greek, so I’d never read Homer in its original form. And that no one wanted to participate in Bacchanalia.
The year after graduating college I read The Secret History a third time, while I floated around Dublin, trying to find a job, trying to figure out my life. I noted that all the main characters sort of fizzled out after college, and that worried me greatly. I’d already experienced so many extremes in college, failing classes, falling in love, hurting people and being hurt. Was the after-college period just a miasma of boring, minimum wage jobs and settling?
But things picked up in grad school. I had my son, found a wonderful partner, actually felt like I might have a career after all. I know I must’ve picked up the Secret History from time to time, and read my favorite sections: the scenes where the characters spend weekends at a country house getting drunk, being poetic and wanton; the funeral where social climbing families are horrible to each in the name of social climbing. But the characters were starting to seem a little vapid, not as romantic and poignant. Maybe they were not people to emulate and lust after.
Finally, as I hit my thirties I read the Secret History as a how-not-to manual: how not to be morally deficient, flaky and paranoid. How not to place value on romanticism (my partner was not the romantic sort, and this relieved me greatly).
Now in my forties, what jumps out to me is how dated everything is. No one has cell phones, there’s lot of running around trying to find phone booths or people who can’t be located because they don’t have a phone. The book’s cutting attitude towards homosexuality is almost embarassing, when as a high school student I thought it was incredibly progressive. Yet the writing is still wonderful, rich and evocative. I know I’ll keep re-reading it and maybe at some point I’ll have outgrown it but want to remember how I used to be.
— siobhan
The year after graduating college I read The Secret History a third time, while I floated around Dublin, trying to find a job, trying to figure out my life. I noted that all the main characters sort of fizzled out after college, and that worried me greatly. I’d already experienced so many extremes in college, failing classes, falling in love, hurting people and being hurt. Was the after-college period just a miasma of boring, minimum wage jobs and settling?
But things picked up in grad school. I had my son, found a wonderful partner, actually felt like I might have a career after all. I know I must’ve picked up the Secret History from time to time, and read my favorite sections: the scenes where the characters spend weekends at a country house getting drunk, being poetic and wanton; the funeral where social climbing families are horrible to each in the name of social climbing. But the characters were starting to seem a little vapid, not as romantic and poignant. Maybe they were not people to emulate and lust after.
Finally, as I hit my thirties I read the Secret History as a how-not-to manual: how not to be morally deficient, flaky and paranoid. How not to place value on romanticism (my partner was not the romantic sort, and this relieved me greatly).
Now in my forties, what jumps out to me is how dated everything is. No one has cell phones, there’s lot of running around trying to find phone booths or people who can’t be located because they don’t have a phone. The book’s cutting attitude towards homosexuality is almost embarassing, when as a high school student I thought it was incredibly progressive. Yet the writing is still wonderful, rich and evocative. I know I’ll keep re-reading it and maybe at some point I’ll have outgrown it but want to remember how I used to be.
— siobhan
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