Donna Tartt

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Donna Tartt (born December 23, 1963 in Greenwood , Mississippi ) is an American writer. In addition to a few smaller works, Tartt has published three novels to date, each of which - which is currently very unusual in the literary scene in the United States - took around a decade to write. Tartt was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for her novel The Distelfink .

life and work

Donna Tartt was born the elder of two sisters. The mother, Taylor Tartt, b. Bousche was a secretary. The father, Don Tartt, owned a gas station and was temporarily President of the Board of Supervisors of Grenada County .

Tartt grew up in Grenada , Mississippi. She wrote poetry as a child and published the first at the age of 13. After attending Granada High School , she studied from 1981 at the University of Mississippi at Oxford , where the writer Willie Morris became aware of her and gave her access to a writing class from Barry Hannah . On the recommendation of her teachers, Tartt moved to the exclusive small Bennington College in Vermont in 1982 , where she studied creative writing and made friends with the young writers Bret Easton Ellis and Jill Eisenstadt .

During her sophomore year in Bennington, Tartt began work on her first novel, The Secret Story . The story it tells develops out of the extremely complicated relationships within a group of elite students and culminates in two murders. In June 1986 Tartt graduated, but continued working on the novel. Bret Easton Ellis brought Tartt together in 1989 with his literary agent Amanda "Binky" Urban . When the manuscript for The Secret Story was completed in 1991, Urban sparked a competition among publishers. The highest offer - $ 450,000 - came from the renowned button publishing house . Instead of the usual print run of 10,000 for first novels, Knopf had 75,000 copies printed. Even before the book even went on sale, Tartt was seen in the media as the new top literary star. After it was finally delivered on September 4, 1992, it stayed on the publisher's bestseller list for 13 weeks. The book has since been translated into 24 languages ​​and has sold more than 5 million copies.

Tartt's second novel, The Little Friend (2002), has been characterized by literary critics as an ambitious example of modern Southern Gothic. Tartt had worked on this work for 10 years. This effort, which is otherwise uncommon in the recent American literary scene, was generally commented on by the fact that in times of extraordinarily good authors such as Philip Roth and Jonathan Franzen the bar for literary quality was raised so high that good novels could hardly be written in a shorter time . Although the book reached a total circulation of 323,000 copies in the USA, it was received by readers and critics as a disappointment.

Tartt's third novel The Distelfink , published in 2013, is loosely based on the pattern of the classic educational novel . The focus is on the young Theodor Decker, who at the age of thirteen lost his mother when she was killed in a terrorist attack on the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art . Theo survived the explosion and thoughtlessly took the masterpiece of the Dutch painter Carel Fabritius - The Goldfinch - in the doomsday-like mess , which has since been considered lost. Theo will only gradually realize how much the small painting determines his future life. In 2014, Tartt was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Der Distelfink . The film adaptation of the novel was published in September 2019 .

Because of their classic narrative style and the exuberant richness of detail and imagery in their narration, Tartt's novels have repeatedly been compared with the work of Charles Dickens ; other reviewers, who classify Tartt's work as more sophisticated entertainment literature, have criticized this comparison because their prose ultimately fails to keep pace with the creative power of Dickens' descriptions and his delicate language.

Tartt lives in Mississippi and New York City and does not leak any details about her private life to the public.

Awards

The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius (1654)

Publications

literature

  • Tracy Hargreaves: Donna Tartt's "The Secret History". The Continuum International Publishing Group, New York / London 2001, ISBN 0-8264-5320-1 . (English)
  • Ilka Piepgras: The independent one . In: Zeit-Magazin , 14/27 March 2014, pp. 16–21. ( Online. Retrieved on May 5, 2014 . )

Web links

Commons : Donna Tartt  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Smart Tartt. Retrieved November 23, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Donna Tartt - On Childhood. Retrieved November 23, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Donna Tartt. Retrieved November 23, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Thomas Hüetlin: The woman from Jupiter. In: Der Spiegel , No. 11 v. March 10, 2014, p. 121.
  5. ↑ Donna Tartt Bio. Retrieved November 23, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Donna Tartt: the slow-burn literary giant. Retrieved November 23, 2015 . The Guardian , October 12, 2013; Donna Tartt to publish third novel two decades after The Secret History. Retrieved November 23, 2015 .
  7. ^ Incest, insanity and murder. Retrieved November 24, 2015 . The Telegraph, October 26, 2002
  8. ↑ The Little Friend by Donna Tartt. Retrieved November 24, 2015 . The Guardian, October 26, 2002
  9. ↑ Donna Tartt Leaves Button: Can Publishing Be Saved? Retrieved November 24, 2015 . ; It's Tartt — But Is It Art? Retrieved November 24, 2015 . Vanity Fair, June 30, 2014
  10. ↑ Felicitas von Lovenberg : To horror, to delight , FAZ , March 8, 2014, p. 9
  11. ↑ 2014 Pulitzer Prize Winners
  12. ↑ A Painting as Talisman, as Enduring as Loved Ones Are Not. Retrieved October 24, 2015 . New York Times, October 7, 2013; Flights of Fancy. Retrieved November 24, 2015 . New York Times, October 10, 2013; Q&A: Donna Tartt on 'The Goldfinch'. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on October 25, 2015 ; accessed on October 24, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Chicago Tribune, Oct. 27, 2013; Book Review: 'The Goldfinch,' by Donna Tartt. Retrieved October 24, 2015 . Washington Post, October 22, 2013; Donna Tartt: Is this the year of the Goldfinch? Retrieved October 24, 2015 . The Guardian , May 30, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / articles.chicagotribune.com
  13. ↑ It's Tartt — But Is It Art? Retrieved November 24, 2015 . Vanity Fair , June 30, 2014.
  14. ↑ Donna Tartt. Retrieved November 23, 2015 . ; Donna Tartt - Love. Retrieved November 23, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Tartt, Donna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 23, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Greenwood, Mississippi , United States