Donna Tartt Shrine

My most recent literary obsession is "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt. After staying up for nights on end turning pages until my sleepy lids finally overcame the excitement and mild terror stirring inside me, I began to read about the author herself. Much like the characters in her book she is slightly eccentric and was a precocious child. She was sick during her youth and recalls spending hazy days in bed devouring books.

She unintentionally created a sort of literary persona for herself, creating even more intrigue behind the haunting stories she writes. She is 4 feet 10 weighs 95 pounds, and can drink most men under the table. She studied classics on the side "for fun", and can quote T.S Eliot and countless others from memory. In college she started wearing only men's suits and now is usually seen in a black suit of some kind. It is thought that many of the characters in her books are based on close friends but she refuses to indulge any of these suggestions that there are connections between her own life and the lives in her books. This is an entertaining yet thorough article about her.

She is known for pouring over each word she chooses and spends years writing a book. In the last 20 years she has published only 2 books, each hugely successful. So, when I heard that she has written short stories and small works of non-fiction for periodicals and journals, I started searching. My search ended very shortly when I found this glorious page with many of these works, aptly named Donna Tartt Shrine.

Right now I'm reading Heaven on a hummingbird's wing: Donna Tartt on the abiding power of a childhood memory - The Guardian - October 2, 2004, which fits quite well with the theme of childhood found in my recent pictures. Here is a quote from the article:

"Of course, it's not at all remarkable that children are captivated by new things, because to children everything is new. But what is remarkable is how fleeting impressions of childhood delight can linger and change and vanish and re-appear unexpectedly over the years, winking like fireflies throughout the arduous and complicated darks of a lifetime."

It's short and I highly recommend it. You can find it here.

Donna Tartt I salute thee. You are a master of your craft.

Oh....and please come to D.C sometime and do an interview or book reading so I can stand in line, get really nervous and then awkwardly ask you a bad question and get your autograph. Well, hopefully it wouldn't happen like that but anyway....