Donna Tart
05/2018
Female Beautiful New-England Death
The dazzle of this fictive childhood- full of swimming pools and orange groves and dissolute, charming show-biz parents- has all but eclipsed the drab original. In fact, when I think about my real childhood I am unable to recall much about it at all except a sad jumble of objects: the sneakers I wore year-round; coloring books and comics from the supermarket; little of interest, less of beauty (7)
..It taught one to think in Greek. One's thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation (199)
'I think we're much more hypocritical about illness, and poverty, than were people in former ages,' I remember Julian saying once. 'In America, the rich man tries to pretend that the poor man is his equal in every respect but money, which is simply not true. Does anyone remember Plato's definition of Justice in the Republic? Justice, in a society, is when each level of a hierarchy works within its place and is content with it. A poor man who wishes to rise above his station is only making himself needlessly miserable. And the wise poor have always known this, the same as do the wise rich.' (210)
In a certain way, though, I know how my colleague feels. Not that everything 'went black,' nothing of the sort; only that the event itself is cloudy because of some primitve, numbing effect that obscured it at the time; the same effect, I suppose, that enables panicked mothers to swim icy rivers, or rush into burning houses, for a child; the effect that occasionally allows a deeply bereaved person to make it through a funeral without a single tear. Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things- naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror- are too terrible to really ever grasp at all. It is only later, in solitude, in memory, that the realization dawns; when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself- quite to one's surprise- in an entirely different world (278)
In the morning I woke up sore and disoriented to the sound of a loose shutter banging somewhere. The rain was falling harder than ever. It lashed in rhythmic waves against the windows of the light, brightly lit kitchen as we guests sat around the table and ate a silent, cheerless breakfast of coffee and Pop Tarts (408)
He went back to his work, sticking the shovel into the ground, stepping hard on one side of the blade with a khaki-gaitered foot. His suspenders made a black X across his back. 'Then can you give me a hand with these lettuces,' [Henry] said. 'There;s another spade in the toolshed' (431)
[Julian] 'Edmund was your friend. I too am very sorry that he is dead. But I think you are grieving yourself sick over this, and not only does that not help him, it hurts you. And besides, is death really so terrible a thing?'... 'It does not do to be frightened of things about which you know nothing,' he said. "You are like children. Afraid of the dark" (478)