Books Magazine
I am still thinking of Donna Tartt. The Goldfinch. All the ways her writing effects me long after I finish one of her novels. (And, I use Grammarly's plagiarism checker because the theft of someone's ideas is just as wrong as the theft of a famous painting.)One of the things that I love about Donna Tartt's writing is how she always opens doors to me. She has given me a whole new point of view on what it is to be a student in the classic languages of Latin and Greek. She has shown me the dark abyss of drug and alcohol abuse. She portrays Christmases which are less than merry and bright. She makes it more than okay to be an avid reader of classic literature such as The Idiot, to which Prince Myshkin is referenced in the last part of her latest book. In reading The Goldfinch she has not only brought to life a previously obscure-to-me painting, but music which I searched for on the spot. Once found, I immediately downloaded it.Quite possibly you have already heard of these composers. Quite possibly you already have them in queue on your iPod. As for me, I had not heard of either Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, nor Arvo Pärt. The former is an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music, and apparently the best known (ha!) 16th-century representative of the Roman School of music composition. You can listen to a selection here.Arvo Pärt is an Estonian composer of classical and sacred music. He was born in 1935, and he uses a self invented technique inspired by Gregorian chant. You can listen to his music here:
These are just two of the gifts that Tartt gave me while reading The Goldfinch. I hope they move you as much as they did me.
