Dear Eve,

I’m most thankful for your prompt reply. Your advice is also greatly appreciated – the phenomenon of queerbaiting in reality television often incenses me, so maybe a swift elbow strike to the air will do the trick.

So much has happened since we last corresponded! I’ve been in Kenmare, walking alpacas (there is a selfie, but it’s private), and staring agape at the price of “handcrafted” jewellery in the local cultural centre. Your sage Kierkegaardian contemplations and Flannery fanmail were equally received with much gratitude – I’ve been running low on “people baths” recently, so vicarious reflections on people, places and things are key.

“My ‘dark academia’ aesthetic is betrayed by my unfashionable shame-buying of Crystal Bars”

In that vein, I did attempt to rip a leaf out of Søren’s book and take a leap of faith: into the audiobook universe. In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, one fraction of many unhappy tomes of summer reading I’m only just now touching, he quite pithily describes the titular character’s “yoke of necessity,” albeit in a much more unpleasant context than my own. Driven to rage by the requirement to read books for my English degree, I instead turned to, cue groans, Donna Tartt’s audiobook recording of The Secret History: a book that, up to now, I’ve refused to touch on principle. That “principle” may be in large part due to Varsity’s surprisingly extensive, overall negative, discussion of Tartt’s debut novel. Either that, or the fact that any delusions I might have about my own ‘dark academia’ aesthetic are swiftly betrayed by my unfashionable shame-buying of Crystal Bars and that, until very recently, I consistently mixed up Senator Joseph McCarthy and Cormac McCarthy of Southern Gothic literary fame.

Something about Tartt’s brassy monophthongs and talent for acting out the voice of her nasal/asthmatic character, Bunny, had me hooked. I initially felt like my approach to the audiobook was disciplined, too – two hours of listening a day while performing the mindless tasks that the August-September lull demands of you. And yet this was, as the start of book heralds, my fatal flaw: Tartt’s quirks of pronunciation have quickly become involuntary verbal cues. It started simple, the harsh a in now appealing, but eventually I found myself washing a plate almost leaping at the sound of words like ‘eaves’ or ‘teacup’ with a manic glee. Suffice it to say, I have absolutely nothing intelligent to say about this book, other than that its author’s voice has taken rapid control of my life, something I’m still wrestling with as I write. Maybe another elbow strike to the air.

“I’ve never felt more isolated than when in secret congress with Tartt’s tripping tongue”

Some lines of John Ashbery, who will be the Hollywood star of one of my two (argh!) dissertations this year, have provided a semblance of comfort. His 1979 short poem ‘Tapestry’ lays out how, (badly quoted), if “something has the form of a blanket, that is because / we’re eager to be wound in it: / This must be the good of not experiencing it”. A decorated art critic and prolific translator, Ashbery’s aesthetically distanced lens is one I should absolutely have applied to what I’m now calling Tartt-gate, and yet here we are. Ashbery also did some awesome collage work, quite funny work actually – your comments around “all-demanding eyes” recall one of my favourites of his, ‘A Dream of Heroes’; I think you’d enjoy it. He loves to lay out ‘stuff’: outlining a sensation not unlike my ecstasy in hearing Tartt’s wacky vowels, John Yau’s review of Ashbery’s Vermont Notebook describes delight in “his lips spell[ing] out the words: shale, cow turds, spread, udder, mumps.” A deeply, deeply weird collection, I should gloss, but also definitely worth a cursory glance.

Donne famously said that “no man is an island”. And that’s so true, yet I’ve perhaps never felt more isolated than I was when in secret congress with Tartt’s tripping tongue. That’s probably what this column is for. Definitely take your Søren-style leaps of faith, but proceed with caution.

Perniciously,

Joe

P.S. Immediately after penning this letter, Spotify informed me my free audiobook minutes have elapsed. Perhaps the curse has been lifted.