There’s something quite startlingly about the way that ‘Kill Your Darlings’ connects with dark academia, but with one really stark difference: the murder that frames the story doesn’t destroy a single one of the perpetrator’s lives.
In ‘The Secret History’ we see Bunny’s murder fatally destroy Henry, his friendship with Francis, Charles, Camilla and Richard, and fracture the mentality of each character. We know from the outset of the novel that this murder is the pivotal moment of both the story, but with ‘Kill Your Darlings’ it very much feels like a little road bump, a part of their origin story, and an integral part of shaping their writing and work which would make them famous and the founders of one of the most famous sub-genres of literature, the Beat Generation.
