Donna Tartt’s “Tam-O’-Shanter”

From The New Yorker's archive: Tartt's first short story, published in the magazine in 1993.  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   View in browser | Update your preferences     Fiction "Tam-O'-Shanter" An aging former actor visits a young fan of his films at the Children's Hospital, in this short story from 1993. By Donna Tartt The novelist Donna Tartt has a beguiling, lyrical command of language. She has published three novels, including "The Little Friend" and "The Goldfinch," which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was later adapted into a film starring Nicole Kidman. One of my favorite novels by Tartt is her gripping début, "The Secret History," about the mysterious affairs of an eclectic group of friends at a small liberal-arts college in Vermont (supposedly modelled on Bennington College, which Tartt attended in the same graduating class as Jonathan Lethem and Bret Easton Ellis). In its review, the Times described "The Secret History" as an amalgam of Dostoyevsky, Euripides, Easton Ellis, and Evelyn Waugh. It's the kind of novel that one returns to, and, if you read it at a certain age, remains lodged in your consciousness, forever tied to the experiences of your own youth. In 1993, nearly a year after it came out, Tartt published her first short story, "Tam-O'-Shanter," in The New Yorker. The tale offers a deceptively simple premise: a former child actor, Gordon Burns, known for the popular roles of his youth, visits a children's hospital in order to cheer up a young fan. He has made these sorts of visits before, but instead of feeling grateful that he can provide some measure of comfort, Burns fixates on the disappointment in the young patients' faces when they realize he's no longer the boy from his films. With her portrait of Burns, Tartt reveals a circumscribed life suffused with regret. But, just when we think we know where the tale is heading, there's a twist. "He nudged the door open," Tartt writes. "He glanced up. Everywhere he looked, his own lost face stared back at him, from rain-swept piers and rocky landscapes, from the thundery dark of the artificial skies: magical, defiant, impossibly young." Tartt crafts an account of a jaded, indifferent misanthrope and then flips the script, upending our sense of Burns and his inner nature. (It's par for the course for a writer who, as a cheerleader in high school, was concurrently obsessed with the novel "1984.") Tartt's cerebral, methodical approach lures the reader in, appearing to promise a straightforward dénouement. While we're busy looking the other way, she constructs unforeseen avenues and resonant arcs, leading us down an ever more evocative, tantalizing path.   —Erin Overbey, archive editor More from the Archive     Books The New Curiosity Shop From 2013: Donna Tartt's "The Goldfinch." By James Wood     Fiction "View From a Headlock" From 2003: "Dylan wanted to read Mingus Rude like a language, wanted to know if the new kid had changed Dean Street or only changed Dylan himself by arriving here." By Jonathan Lethem You're receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the New Yorker Classics newsletter. Was this e-mail forwarded to you? Sign up.   Unsubscribe | Manage your e-mail preferences | Send newsletter feedback | View our privacy policy    Copyright © Condé Nast 2021. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.