Donna Tartt was threatened by her lawyer in October when she sent an ultimatum to the podcast creator Bennington College – Once Upon A TimeThis perversely encouraged interest in the series’ 14 parts. How could this scandalously confessional novel author have managed to do it? The Secret History have left to hide about her undergraduate career?
Lili Anolik actually has the details about Tartt, but also two of her 1986 classmates Bret Easton and Bret Ellis.It is less than zero, American PsychoJonathan Lethem (Brooklyn’s Motherless). In her insightful portrait of the changing media landscape and how academia has facilitated new storytelling methods, she weaves together decades of hot gossip.
Anolik began his story as an assignment. Esquire, but podcast listeners hear the project evolve in real time—early interviews are marred with café noise and interruptions, later tapes are polished—making the podcast itself a chronicle of our own chaotic media moment and an example of the sprawling, compelling storytelling that is newly possible.