A Lovely Bit of Writing About Autumn

Liam in San Francisco called us to share a favorite quotation from Donna Tartt’s 1992 novel, The Secret History. And the line that Liam shared with us is wonderful in itself, but it’s part of a longer passage that I think is worth reading in full.

Now, to set it up, The Secret History is set in a fictional college in Vermont, and the narrator is transferred from a college in California. And in this passage, he’s describing some of the things that he sees and feels as he’s walking around this idyllic campus.

And it goes in part, a group of red-cheeked girls playing soccer, ponytails flying, their shouts and laughter carrying faintly over the velvety twilight field. Trees creaking with apples, fallen apples red on the grass beneath. The heavy, sweet smell of apples rotting on the ground and the steady thrumming of wasps around them. Commons clock tower, ivied brick, white spire, spellbound in the hazy distance. The shock of first seeing a birch tree at night, rising up in the dark as cool and slim as a ghost. And the nights, bigger than imagining, black and gusty and enormous, disordered and wild with stars.

Is that sensuous or what? Yeah, it’s the last part that Liam particularly wanted to bring to our attention about the night. Right, black and gusty and enormous. That’s what you see in rural Vermont.

We love it when you share beautiful passages of writing from what you’ve been reading. Send them to us in email, words@waywordradio.org.