this is what happens when I have no chocolate

[lauralh]

I finished The Secret History last night, which is about a group of eccentric Classics students who try to reproduce a bacchanalia and succeed so well they kill a man. And then what they have to do to cover it up. It's amazingly bad - it's supposed to take place in the late 80s but you couldn't tell until one of the characters mentions "slam-dancing." And of course the requisite "bad novel, just add incest." I mean, the story is really about the narrator trying to fit in with these misfits, and all the murder stuff just kind of gets in the way. Totally melodramatic but would "make a great movie."

Comments

[mcsnee.livejournal.com]

That's one of my favorite books ever. I've read it at least ten times.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

for real?

[mcsnee.livejournal.com]

Yep. Of course, I was a classics major, and I first read it in college.

I understand why people don't like it, but I thought it was great. I love the way she writes.

[katyakoshka.livejournal.com]

I think my dallying with Latin, and Attic Greek to a lesser extent, plus my abiding affection for Tam Lin (Pamela Dean) all led to my liking The Secret History. My lay classics geekery led me to it.

[mcsnee.livejournal.com]

I loved Tam Lin, not least because I was at Carleton (which is the college that the one the book is based on) when I read it.

[katyakoshka.livejournal.com]

The biggest downside to my graduating a year early was having my college choices reduced to UCI & UCSD (application-wise). Got into both, but I would have had more options farther away if I'd been 18 instead of 17.

As it is, my first few years post-BA involved many a web-browse of Carleton and other similar institutions.

*sigh*

[asiangoddess4.livejournal.com]

so bad books can make good movies. hmm I what examples are there of bad books turning into good movies....

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382625/

[perich.livejournal.com]

The Godfather

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

that was actually a pitch turned book turned movie.

[perich.livejournal.com]

Shows what I know ... except that the novel isn't as good as the movie, which I knew already.

[perich.livejournal.com]

Late 80s? I thought 70s. Shows what I know. Then again, I guess that's kind of the point: the kids live in this cloistered little world, so far removed from any semblance of reality, that they think they're beyond the laws which govern everyone else. Sure we killed a guy, but it was an accident. Come on.

And yeah, it's not great.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

seriously if not for the slam-dancing reference I would have guessed 50s

till the drug nonsense of course

agreed, and...

[lara7.livejournal.com]

the book on tape is even worse, because they allowed the author to narrate it. You haven't lived til you've heard a 25 year old chick from Mississippi try to do male New england prep school accents. for 12+ tapes.

[danguyf.livejournal.com]

I am shocked that you didn't like TSH. This rocks my whole conception of who you *are*. Heh.

There wasn't incest so much as rumored twincest.

It is perhaps a book better loved by Classics misfits who thought themselves refined but after college realized that their college experience was not so meritful?

whereas I have a Comp Sci degree

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed it, it was just unbelievable and trashy.

as was I, though I doubled in Cultural Anthro.

[danguyf.livejournal.com]

I find it neither. It's one of my favorite books. It is analogous to my college experience to a 'T'.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

well yeah, if she'd stayed with the alienated college youths instead of making them kill people, that would have been a great book.

[danguyf.livejournal.com]

My friends and I totally killed people in fits of bacchanalia. Metaphorically speaking, of course.