For those who follow promotional hype in the literary world, Donna Tartt is the newest young star around. In the middle of a time of severe belt-tightening among publishing houses, she received a $450,000 advance (for a first novel) from Knopf, and Knopf’s bold move was almost immediately justified by large foreign and film rights sales for the book, The Secret History. Touted by literary lights as diverse as Willie Morris and Bret Easton Ellis, Tartt has been hailed as a major talent, a classical, formal, “serious” novelist in an MTV world.

After having read Vanity Fair’s fulsome puff-piece (“Smart Tartt,” September 1992), in which Tartt reveals herself as an accomplished, if not very subtle, self-promoter, I was eager to get my hands on the book itself. For it is true that erudition and formality have become increasingly rare and valuable attributes in the novel, and if Tartt were all that she and Knopf’s publicists crack her up to be then we should be grateful for the advent of this new talent. Suspicions of pretentiousness, however, are inevitable (Tartt chats at length about her youthful precocity, classical scholarship, and wide learning), and they begin to be confirmed as early as the acknowledgments, for what is one to make of thanks “to Gary Fisketjon, il miglior fabbro”? It would be nice to give Tartt the benefit of the doubt and believe that she is simply making a joke, albeit an arcane one. But the