What is /lit/'s opinion on Donna Tartt? Let's talk about her novels.
>The Secret History
Read it 12 or 13 years ago. Very impressive novel, but a bit too long, hence it's losing its purpose in the second part.
Also it's extremely "American"--you get a lot of paper for your money. But although I enjoyed it much, I'm not sure it was useful for me in any way (like a Dostoevsky novel, or even like a Houellebecq novel, can be useful).
>The Little Friend
Boring as heck. Impossible to finish. What happened? Am I missing something?
>The Goldfinch
Didn't read yet. Is it more like TSH or like TLF?
>>8181509
>The Secret History
And just remember, when she wrote it, she was still hot. While EVERY WORD YOU READ was being fashioned, she had a moist young beautiful pussy. Every little shift in her chair, probably even every single keystroke made her pussy move and squish around just a little bit inside her, her boobs jiggle and sway and mush together sexily. You are reading something that caused a beautiful young woman's big fucking tits and hot wet pussy to move, constantly, endlessly, for hundreds if not thousands of hours. You are reading a manifesto of blood, sweat, and pussy juice. You're taking an engine of sustained pussy perturbation, turning it inside out, and painstakingly inscribing every single constituent letter of it onto the deepest regions of your mind, intimately associating the pleasure of reading it with the process of constant tit jiggling it created. You're practically making love to an eternally young Donna Tartt every time you turn a page of The Secret History. They say if you are truly careful, if you truly savour it, you can sometimes smell hints of her perfume, or feel her thigh brush against your hand.
>>8181519
She's still hot
>>8181519
>28 y/o when she wrote The Secret History
with every single page you turn, you can hear the light crunching sound of sand being rubbed together
>>8181519
10/10 post desu, will save it and read it again.
HOWEVER, this is a picture of Donna T. in 2015 and I still find her hot.
I've still only read The Secret History, a short story of hers ("A Christmas Pageant"), and her introduction to True Grit. It's strange that she hasn't written more short fiction in between her literary-event novels.
Really really liked The Secret History when I read it five or six years ago, haven't returned to it. It did get me more into learning Latin and Greek.
>>8181509
>Also it's extremely "American" --you get a lot of paper for your money.
Explain thyself.
one of the only tarts i don't want to eat
if u catch my drift
>>8181509
Read Secret History last year, great page-turner. She's clearly made her way through a significant portion of the western literary Canon.
But sadly that's all the novel really was, was a page-turner, albeit it a very elegant one. Nothing going on under the hood, though.
Bunny did nothing wrong.
I enjoyed The Little Friend but I seem to be in the minority with that opinion.
I thought it was written as a more class conscious To Kill a Mockingbird.
>>8181509
>Also it's extremely "American"--you get a lot of paper for your money
What the fuck is that even supposed to mean, you pseud?
>>8182004
I think it means she's hot.
>>8181608
>Explain thyself.
The "typical American novel" is thick, with:
>a lot of words to "wow" you
>up to hundreds of characters
>lots of emotional situations
>secondary plots
>fluff and filler stuff, etc.
It always looks like it want to give good value for your money ("good value" being simply quantitative, not qualitative).
Even the pages are thick in American books. Looks like it's a 1,000-page book, when it's only 400.
>>8182004
See above.
It's like:
>the "typical American meal" where you get extra-sized portions of everything
>the "typical American car" that's simply enormous
>the "typical American sport" where to end score needs to be 95-72 and not 1-0
America sure loves large quantities of everything, and that includes books who often verge on the XXL size (content and container).
Donna Tartt is no exception here.
>inb4 "muh Hemingway" or terrible /b/ "banter"
>>8181509
>useful
>>8181519
>And just remember, when she wrote it, she was still hot.
She looked even more like Nikolai Gogol when she was younger
>>8182099
Useful from the point of your literary development.
The Secret History felt good, but felt like mere entertainment in the end, not like something who makes you more "advanced".
I wonder if Donna Tartt could give me a stiff handjob with a latex glove if I asked her real nice and polite like. Remember, this is a woman who once has had a relationship with Bret "Cantaloupe" Easton Ellis.
>>8182133
>the moustacheless Gogol from USA
>>8182133
cannot unsee
>>8182133
jfc
>>8182156
Lol she has a mustache
>>8182060
you could be describing 19th cent russian of british works here, more fittingly
She is my favorite author.
>"American"
Her style reads like late Regency British writers tbqh
>Is [The Goldfinch] more like TSH or TLF?
More like The Secret History, though the plot is more sprawling and rambling, and there's less overt class-based social satire (where The Secret History had a lot of Donna Tartt poking fun at her own background). It's an aesthetic character study where the point is more the impressions the people she describes make in your head. It revives a lot of neo-romanticist tropes now out of favor: the main character is full of angst and guilt over one of the most victimless crimes in literature. Think the old romanticist story, I'll be damned to remember the other, about the man torn with guilt over forgery. It's absolutely readable with a lot of charming characters and some shocking moments. But characters are the main focus. Donna Tartt does the "too beautiful for this world" type of fish out of water character type really well and sells it here.
>>8182090
Americans invented literary minimalism, pseud
>>8182060
Try looking at the bookstore rack at an American airport newsstand. The books have the exact opposite of what you're describing:
>Short, choppy sentences ("He picked up the briefcase. He ran. The man chased him.")
>A few characters per word/sentence, none over three syllables.
>Emotional situations saved for end of book if at all, mostly focus on clichéd suspense scenes, clichéd dialogue, and dull action
>One or two secondary plots
>"Fluff and filler" is only in a few publishing genres like fantasy, and is actively avoided in mystery, westerns, and thrillers, where the style is expected to be short
What you're describing might be true of some American literary fiction, but it's not true of popular fiction that most Americans would read. Dan Brown and Dennis Lehane are exactly the opposite of what you're talking about. Even literary fiction is very short and apathetic in the United States. Tao Lin, Bret Easton Ellis, and Chuck Palahniuk go for the opposite style.
Donna Tartt is an exception, not a typical American novelist. In fact if it weren't for a few distinctly American terms, some of the language and content in The Secret History could easily be confused with an older British novel.
>>8182090
Americans liking big shit hasn't been true since the 80s, with a few exceptions like the gas guzzler automobile trend in the early 2000s. Overpriced cramped apartments and minimalist clothing styles are increasingly becoming a status symbol here.
>>8182133
I thought she looked more like Jane from Daria
The Secret History is fan-fiction of a fancy homosexual university experience she was barred from. It would work perfectly as a 300 episode long yaoi anime.
>>8183741
The story is indeed very gay, and also very lovely, emotive, and beautifully described.
>>8183667
Thanks for your comment.
To be fair, I once skimmed through the Goldfinch in a service station (yeah, yeah...), and I was appalled to see someone's haircut literally compared with Dragon Ball Z. Hopefully it was just a maladroit moment.
>>8183690
I was thinking of all these big books by the major American novelists you're exporting.
On top of my head: J. Safran Foer, Eugenides, Franzen, Pynchon, DeLillo, Richard Powers, Cormac McCarthy, John Irving, even GRRM, or among the dead authors, Dos Passos, John Kennedy Toole, Jim Harrison, DFW, etc.
All make pretty thick and rich books, as opposed to, say, the typical French-style novel that runs 150 pages, written really dryly, and that's it (Nothomb, Echenoz, Kundera, Modiano...).
>>8183636
That's true. I didn't say these features were particularly specific to current day America.
>>8183684
And I had a flaccid dick the day I wanted to fuck your ugly mom. Doesn't mean that I'm not a porn superstar on my usual days.
>>8183702
>big servings in restaurants
>huge fuckin' coke bottles
>huge fuckin' people
...I think the cliche still has a lot of truth.
