I’ve just started a Tumblr as an homage to the novel The Secret History by Donna Tartt. You can view it here…

The Secret History was published in September 1992. I kept seeing it in bookstores, picking it up to admire the cover design and read a few lines, putting it down again. I was having a busy fall.

However, there was a weekend in January 1993 when I found myself at loose ends, exhausted and alone during a very chilly inter-session break on a university campus. I finally purchased The Secret History and took it home with me. I didn’t put it down for the next 36 hours, except to sleep a bit. I curled up under a blanket in the window-seat and ate microwave popcorn (the dining halls were closed) and just kept turning the pages. It might have been snowing outside.

If you’ve read the book, you’ll understand why that was the perfect atmosphere for reading this particular story.

I’ve returned to The Secret History many, many times since that winter vacation, and since I’m approaching my 20th anniversary of reading that first page for the first time, I thought I’d begin a small homage. Back in 1993, I might have cut pictures out of magazines and made a collage; today, we have Tumblr.

(Part One of My Tumblr Life is my ongoing salute to Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, here.)