Donna Tartt’s Style Evolution, From Ole Miss to Bennington to Today – TownandCountrymag.com

Donna Tartt, a subject of my new podcast, Once Upon a Time at Bennington College, attended Bennington from the fall of 1982 to the spring of 1986. (Sweating in the spotlight alongside her, shielding their eyes from the glare, are Bret Easton Ellis and Jonathan Lethem, also novelists, also class of 86.) It was at Bennington that she first lived a version of and then began a draft of the book thats defined the undergraduate experience for several generations of readers: The Secret History, a modern classic and our countrys Brideshead Revisited.

The Secret History, however, was not Tartts sole literary creation during her Bennington years, or even necessarily her most impressive. Theres also her literary self-creation, i.e., her persona, every bit as deliberate, every bit as theatrical, every bit as polished, every bit as ingenious as her fiction. In fact, Brideshead Revisited, written by Evelyn Waugh, an acknowledged influence on Tartt, about privileged (male) youths being passed at Oxford University just after World War I, was perhaps the model there, too. With her sleek bob, vivid ties and cravats, nattily tailored mens suits that emphasize the narrowness of her hips, the flatness of her chest, Tartt seems to have designed herself according to the specifications of a character in Waughs novel: Sebastian Flyte but without the British accent; a Bright Young Thing only with dark hair.

They dont make celebrity writers anymore, and yet Donna Tartt is one. She seized our attention back in 1992, when The Secret History was published, and hasnt loosened her grip since. (A public figure who ventures out in it sparingly, she may have misgivings about fame, but she sure is good at being famousadroit, you might say, expert even.) Donna Tartt is a literary icon, obviously and without doubt. She is also, though, an icon of style and glamour, of sexual sophistication and gender ambiguity. Dont forget, in 2014, the year she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, she was named to Vanity Fairs International Best-Dressed List, the first twofer of its kind.

But Donna Tartt didnt start out as Donna Tartt, or, rather, as Donna Tartt, personage.

Before she remade herself as a starched and ruffled dandy from 1920s London, she was a shy-eyed bookworm from 1970s Mississippi. This is the oral and auralthe voices of the Bennington people are so full of intelligence and freshness and urgency and juice that I feel you ought to hear them as well as see themhistory of her evolution: from Donna Tartt to Donna Tartt.

LILI ANOLIK

Before we begin, though, I should, in the spirit of full disclosure, tell you that when, in the opening paragraph, I called Tartt my subject, I left out a key modifier: reluctant. She is my reluctant subject. (See this Page Six item if you want to know how reluctant.)

Donna Tartt was born on December 23, 1963 in Greenwood, Mississippi; raised in Grenada, Mississippi, a hill town in the north central part of the state. Her mother, Taylor, was a secretary. Her father, Don, ran a Southland Service Station before switching to local politics. Tartt was educated at a segregation academy, that is, a school founded in response to the integration of public schools, called Kirk.

Jan Gray Walton, a childhood friend and classmate of Tartts, recalls how Kirk kids got their kicks: