Bookshelf · Dark AcademiaPreview

Richard Papen.

The Secret History · 1992

Hampden College, Greek tragedy, and a murder on the page. Richard’s shelves are the foundational dark academia syllabus.

"Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it."

3 booksCurated · cited · cross-referenced

The shelf, decoded

Why this list.

Richard Papen narrates The Secret History through the books his classics professor has assigned him. The list below is the actual Hampden syllabus.

The reading list

3 books for Richard.

No. 01On screen
The Bacchae
Euripides
The play they are reenacting. Plot machinery as well as scripture.
CitationNovel, central
No. 02Character fit
A Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde
The aesthetic-corruption forerunner. Papen has read it twice.
CitationCharacter-fit
No. 03On screen
The Iliad
Homer
The Hampden Greek class is reading it cover-to-cover.
CitationNovel, multiple chapters

Closing note

Read at your own moral risk.

Theo Decker

Cover of The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Cover of The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Cover of The Recognitions by William Gaddis

Manhattan, Las Vegas, Amsterdam. Theo carries a stolen painting and a reading list of grief, art history, and Russian existentialism.

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If We Were VillainsSoon

Oliver Marks

Cover of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Cover of King Lear by William Shakespeare

Cover of The Tempest by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare conservatory, seven actors, one dead body. Oliver’s reading list is the entire First Folio plus the modern criticism that haunts him for ten years.

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Normal PeopleSoon