T H E P E R F E C T C O U R T .

T H E  ‘ P E R F E C T ’   C O U R T .

hot take but the murder clique would regard all of us with cool superiority and not much else i’m pretty sure

The Secret Reading List: Books mentioned in The Secret History

If you want to be as erudite and elite as the Classics Clique, you’d better add these books to your reading pile…

Specific prose/poetry/plays mentioned:

Untimely Meditations by Friedrich Nietzsche, Epigraph Republic, Book II by Plato, Epigraph Tom Swift by Victor Appleton, 6 Paradise Lost by John Milton, 8, 91 Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth, 33 The New Testament, 36 Agamemnon by Aeschylus, 40 Oresteia by Aeschylus, 40 Inferno by Dante, 41, 115 Poetics by Aristotle, 41 The Iliad by Homer, 41, 627 The Bacchae by Euripides, 42, 204 Parmenides by Plato, 67 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, 85 Rover Boys by Edward Stratemeyer, 85 Journey from Chester to London by Thomas Pennant, 85 The Club History of London by ?, 85 The Pirates of Penzance by W.S. Gilbert, 85 Bobbsey Twins by Laura Lee Hope, 85 Marino Faliero by Lord Byron, 85 The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, 89 Sherlock Homes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 92, 622 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, 94 Mémoires by Duc de Saint-Simon, 103 Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, 110 Othello by Shakespeare, 115 The World Book Encyclopedia, 117 Men of Thought and Deed by E. Tipton Chatsford Invisible Man by H.G. Wells Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up by J. M. Barrie, 180 The Divine Comedy by Dante, 184 Superman Comics, 417 The Upanishads, 441, 466 Perry Mason Novels by Erle Stanley Gardner, 442 With Rue my Heart is Laden by A.E. Housman, 466 Lycidas by John Milton, 466 The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson, 466 In Flanders Fields by John McCrae, 466 Corpus of Mycenaean Inscriptions from Knossos, 481 Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, 554 The Malcontent by John Marston, 615 The White Devil by John Webster, 615 The Broken Heart by John Ford, epilogue epigraph, 615 Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, 616 The Revenger’s Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur, 616 Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens, 619

Authors mentioned:

J.R.R. Tolkien, 6 Ezra Pound, 16 T.S. Eliot, 16 Alfred Douglas, 18 Robert de Montesquiou, 18 Plato, 22, 36 Homer, 23, 36, 49, 509 Dante, 33 Virgil, 33 Plotinus, 37 Marie Corelli, 85 Shakespeare, 91, 615 Alexander Pope, 103 John Donne, 117 Rupert Brooke, 120 Edgar Allen Poe, 132, 200 Hegel, 139 Raymond Chandler, 153 Gregory of Tours, 481 Thomas Aquinas, 509 P.G. Wodehouse, 538 George Orwell, 576-7 Harold Acton, 577 Salman Rushdie, 582 Agatha Christie, 587 Proust, 612 John Webster, 615 Thomas Middleton, 615 Cyril Tourneur, 615 John Ford, 615 Christopher Marlowe, 615 Walter Raleigh, 615 Thomas Nashe, 615

NB: page numbers correspond to the Popular Penguin Edition.

Stumbled upon @dukeofbookingham nytimes book review! Wow!

Hi! I just finished reading iwwv and I loved it! I found out about it through recommendations for those who have read the secret history, but honestly? I see so many differences, between the two. Obviously, they are the same genre with similar plots. Still, I know books in this style aren’t generally representing any marginalized groups, so thank you for being different in that!! Do you know if any of your other books will be published and sold soon?

In this genre (macabre campus novel) comparisons to The Secret History are somewhat inevitable. It’s a sensible tactic on the publisher’s part, as TSH was one of the only books in this genre to really approach the mainstream. But I agree, the similarities are superficial, and a lot of what I tried to do in this book was actually reactionary; I love campus novels but I’m often frustrated by the tropes, especially that “boys’ club” feeling so many of them have, TSH included. So writing marginalized people and more than one woman was hugely important to me, and I’m so glad to hear it pleasantly surprised you! (If you’re looking for a few more books in this vein that break the rules, you’ll find a few recs here, and I’d put special emphasis on Catton’s The Rehearsal.)

As for future work: this is a very common question, so you’ll find a lot of information about it already under the WIP tag. Short version is, we’re working on it but we don’t know anything for certain yet. Following me here and on other social media and subscribing to my website mailing list are the best ways to stay in the loop.

Thanks so much for reading!

Moral of the secret history is to stay in ur fuckin lane Richard shoulda just let them conjugate their greek verbs incorrectly tbh