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Once Upon a Time at Bennington College: Where Legends Were Born

make this video in 2024 but its a good one

Once upon a time in the 1980s, Bennington College became ground zero for a literary explosion. This video dives deep into the myth, reality, and messy brilliance of the years when Bret Easton Ellis, Donna Tartt, and Jonathan Lethem were students on the same campus. We explore the friendships, feuds, privilege, excess, and pure creative fire that shaped a generation of fiction—and the cult of literary personality that followed.

🎓 Topics covered:

  • The real-life inspirations behind The Secret History

  • Bret Easton Ellis and the Less Than Zero years

  • What made Bennington such a strange creative incubator

  • 1980s elitism, art school chaos, and coming-of-age through literature

  • The fine line between brilliance and breakdown

This isn’t a glamorized retelling—it’s part nostalgia, part critique, and all literary obsession. If you're fascinated by the myth of the tortured genius, the golden age of MFA programs, or how institutions create (and destroy) creative icons, you're in the right place.

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