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Patricia Highsmith

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Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 - February 4, 1995) was an American novelist who is known mainly for her psychological crime thrillers. She acquired world renown for Strangers on a Train, which has been adapted to the screen a number of times, most famously by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951, and for her Ripliad series of books on the character of Thomas Ripley. She also wrote many short stories, often macabre, satirical or tinged with black humour.

Early life

Born Mary Patricia Plangman in 1921 just outside Fort Worth, Texas, she was raised first by her maternal grandmother and later by her mother and stepfather, who were both commercial artists. Highsmith's childhood years were grim, as indicated by her mother's confession that she had once tried to abort her pregnancy by drinking turpentine. Highsmith's parents divorced five months before she was born, and she grew up hating her stepfather. She also had a difficult, love-hate relationship with her mother, which haunted her for the rest of her life. Such afflictions would later creep into the plots not only of the "weirdo" stories Highsmith wrote for her school magazine as a teenager but in her many novels. Though her writing shone brightly in the public spotlight, Highsmith preferred that her personal life remain a mystery.

Though Highsmith's young life was not filled with flowers and sunshine, it was certainly filled with the stuff of great fiction. Taught to read at the age of two by her grandmother, Highsmith discovered Karl Menninger's "The Human Mind" at age eight and was immediately fascinated by his case studies of patients afflicted with various mental disorders like pyromania and schizophrenia.

In 1942, Highsmith graduated from Barnard College, where she studied English composition, playwriting, and the short story. At the suggestion of Truman Capote, she rewrote her first novel, "Strangers on a Train", at the Yaddo writer's colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. When it was published in 1950, it proved modestly successful, but it was due to famed director Alfred Hitchcock and his 1951 film adaptation of "Strangers on a Train" that Highsmith's career and reputation catapulted. Soon she became known as a writer of ironic, disturbing psychological mysteries highlighted by stark, startling prose. Other filmmakers--primarily European--followed suit as several Highsmith novels, including "The Blunderer" (1954), "This Sweet Sickness" (1960), "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1955), and "Ripley's Game" (1974) were adapted for the silver screen.

She was a lifelong diarist, and developed her writing style as a child writing entries in which she fantasized that her neighbours had psychological problems and murderous personalities behind their facades of normality, a theme she would explore extensively in her novels.

Highsmith included homosexual overtones in many of her novels. The best example is The Price of Salt—rejected by her publishers, and especially controversial for its happy ending, theretofore unheard of in fiction concerning homosexuality—which concerned a lesbian relationship. It was eventually published under the pseudonym Claire Morgan in 1953 and sold almost a million copies. The inspiration of the book's main character, Carol, was a woman who Highsmith saw in Bloomingdales where she worked at the time. Highsmith found out her address from her credit card details, and on two occasions after the book was written (in June 1950 and January 1951) spied on the woman without the latter's knowledge.

Personal life

According to her biography, Beautiful Shadow, Highsmith's personal life was a troubled one; an alcoholic who never had a relationship that lasted for more than a few years, she was seen by many of her contemporaries and acquaintances as misanthropic and cruel. While she was often antisocial (she famously preferred the company of animals to that of people), many people close to her said she was shy and unhappy rather than mean-spirited. She was sometimes labelled antisemitic because of her support of the Palestinian cause (she dedicated two novels to their suffering and their efforts to regain part of their homeland). Her collection of short stories "Little Tales of Misogyny" was equally misinterpreted, gaining her the label of ... misogynist.

Though her writing--approximately 33 works in all--shone brightly in the public spotlight, Highsmith preferred that her personal life remain a mystery. It is said that she was stimulated by art and animals--not writers. She was painfully shy. "My imagination functions better when I don't have to speak to people," she once said to an interviewer.

She remained single throughout her lifetime, though she did privilege readers with a glimpse of her sexuality in her 1952 novel "The Price of Salt", which was written under the pseudonym "Claire Morgan" and depicts a love affair between two women. Highsmith herself had a number of lesbian affairs, but in 1949 she also become close to the novelist Marc Brandel. Between 1959 and 1961 Highsmith had a relationship with Marijane Meaker, who wrote under the pseudonym M.E. Kerr.

Highsmith also held a longtime disdain for American society and in 1963 moved to Europe, where she spent the rest of her life.

Novels

The protagonists in Highsmith's novels defy the accepted model in detective fiction of the tough-talking and honest, but also physically brutal and misogynist hero, featured in the works of authors such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler; the heroes in many of her novels are either morally compromised by circumstance or actively flouting the law. Many of her antiheros commit murder in fits of passion, or simply to extricate themselves from a bad situation. They are just as likely to be brought to justice as not.

Her recurring character Tom Ripley, an amoral, sexually ambiguous multiple murderer, was first introduced in 1955's The Talented Mr. Ripley. It was filmed by René Clément in 1960 as Plein Soleil (Purple Noon), starring Alain Delon, whom Highsmith praised as the ideal actor to portray Ripley. It was also adapted under its original title as a 1999 film by Anthony Minghella, starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and Cate Blanchett. A later Ripley novel, Ripley's Game, inspired Wim Wenders' 1977 film The American Friend and was filmed again in 2002 under its original title, starring John Malkovich and directed by Liliana Cavani. Ripley was featured in a total of five novels, known to fans as the Ripliad, written between 1955 and 1991.

Highsmith died in 1995 in Locarno, Switzerland. In gratitude to the place that helped inspire her writing career, she left her estate, worth an estimated $3 million, to the Yaddo artists' colony. Her last novel "Small g: a Summer Idyll", was published posthumously a month later.

Select Bibliography

Novels

Story collections

  • The Snail-Watcher and other stories (1970)
  • Eleven (1970)
  • Little Tales of Misogyny (1974)
  • The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder (1975)
  • Slowly, Slowly in the Wind (1979)
  • The Black House (1981)
  • Mermaids on the Golf Course (1985)
  • Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes (1987)
  • Trouble at the jade towers and other short stories (1988)
  • Nothing That Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories (2002)
  • Man's best friend and other stories (2004)

Awards

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