Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith

Publicity photo from 1966
Born Mary Patricia Plangman
(1921-01-19)January 19, 1921[1]
Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.
Died February 4, 1995(1995-02-04) (aged 74)
Locarno, Switzerland
Occupation Novelist
Nationality American
Period 1942–1995
Genre Suspense, psychological thriller, crime fiction, romance
Subjects Murder; violence; obsession; insanity
Literary movement Modernist literature
Notable works
Signature

Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for her psychological thrillers, which led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. Highsmith wrote 22 novels, including her series of five novels with Tom Ripley as protagonist, and many short stories. Michael Dirda observed, "Europeans honored her as a psychological novelist, part of an existentialist tradition represented by her own favorite writers, in particular Dostoyevsky, Conrad, Kafka, Gide, and Camus."[2]

Early life

Highsmith was born Mary Patricia Plangman in Fort Worth, Texas. She was the only child of artists Jay Bernard Plangman (1889–1975), who was of German descent,[3] and Mary Plangman (née Coates; September 13, 1895 – March 12, 1991). The couple divorced ten days before their daughter's birth.[4] In 1927, Highsmith, her mother and her adoptive stepfather, artist Stanley Highsmith, whom her mother had married in 1924, moved to New York City.[4] When she was 12 years old, Highsmith was sent to Fort Worth and lived with her grandmother for a year. She called this the "saddest year" of her life and felt "abandoned" by her mother. She returned to New York to continue living with her mother and stepfather, primarily in Manhattan, but also in Astoria, Queens.

According to Highsmith, her mother once told her that she had tried to abort her by drinking turpentine, although a biography of Highsmith indicates Jay Plangman tried to persuade his wife to have the abortion but she refused.[4] Highsmith never resolved this love–hate relationship, which reportedly haunted her for the rest of her life, and which she fictionalized in her short story "The Terrapin", about a young boy who stabs his mother to death.[4] Highsmith's mother predeceased her by four years, dying at the age of 95.

Highsmith's grandmother taught her to read at an early age, and she made good use of her grandmother's extensive library. At the age of nine, she found a resemblance to her own imaginative life in the case histories of The Human Mind by Karl Menninger, a popularizer of Freudian analysis.[4]

In 1942, Highsmith graduated from Barnard College, where she studied English composition, playwriting, and the short story.[4] After graduating from college, she applied without success for work at such magazines as Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, The New Yorker, Mademoiselle, and Good Housekeeping, offering "impressive" recommendations from "highly placed" professionals.[4]

Personal life

Highsmith endured cycles of depression, some of them deep, throughout her life. Despite literary success, she wrote in her diary of January 1970: "[I] am now cynical, fairly rich ... lonely, depressed, and totally pessimistic."[5] Over the years, Highsmith suffered from female hormone deficiency, anorexia nervosa,[6] chronic anemia, Buerger's disease, and lung cancer.[7]

According to her biographer Andrew Wilson, Highsmith's personal life was a "troubled one;" she was an alcoholic who, allegedly, never had an intimate relationship that lasted for more than a few years, and she was seen by some of her contemporaries and acquaintances as misanthropic and cruel.[8] She famously preferred the company of animals to that of people and once said, "My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people."[9] Her chronic alcoholism intensified as she grew older.[10]

Otto Penzler, who met Highsmith in 1983 and was chosen as her U.S. publisher through his Penzler Books imprint,[11] and four years later witnessed one of her theatrics at dinner tables intended to create havoc and shipwreck an evening,[12] said after her death that "[Highsmith] was a mean, cruel, hard, unlovable, unloving human being…I could never penetrate how any human being could be that relentlessly ugly…. But her books? Brilliant.”[13]

Other friends, publishers, and acquaintances held different views of Highsmith. Editor Gary Fisketjon, who published her later novels through Knopf, said that "She was very rough, very difficult...But she was also plainspoken, dryly funny, and great fun to be around."[13] Composer David Diamond met Highsmith in 1943 and described her as being "quite a depressed person—and I think people explain her by pulling out traits like cold and reserved, when in fact it all came from depression."[14] Phyllis Nagy, who adapted Highsmith's second novel The Price of Salt into the film Carol, said that Highsmith was "very sweet" and "encouraging" to her as a young writer, as well as "wonderfully funny".[15][16]

Highsmith loved cats, and she bred about three hundred snails in her garden at home in Suffolk, England.[17] Highsmith once attended a London cocktail party with a "gigantic handbag" that "contained a head of lettuce and a hundred snails" which she said were her "companions for the evening".[17]

She loved woodworking tools and made several pieces of furniture. Highsmith worked without stopping. In later life, her stance became stooped, with an osteoporotic hump.[4] Though her writing — 22 novels and 8 books of short stories — was highly acclaimed, especially outside of the United States, Highsmith preferred her personal life to remain private.[18]

Highsmith was a lifelong diarist. She left behind eight thousand pages of handwritten notebooks and diaries.[19]

Sexuality

Highsmith on the British television discussion programme After Dark in June 1988 - more here

Highsmith had sexual relationships primarily with women.[20] Although when younger she had occasionally engaged in sex with men she did not feel physical attraction for them and wrote in her diary that "the male face...isn't beautiful to me."[21][lower-alpha 1] In a 1970 letter to her stepfather Stanley, Highsmith described her sexual encounters with British novelist Marc Brandel as "steel wool in the face, a sensation of being raped in the wrong place—leading to a sensation of having to have, pretty soon, a boewl [sic] movement."[21] She never married or had children.

In 1943, Highsmith had an affair with artist Allela Cornell, who committed suicide in 1946 by drinking nitric acid.[8]

During her stay at the Yaddo artist's colony in 1948,[22] Highsmith met writer Marc Brandel (the son of J.D. Beresford) and entered into a short-lived relationship with him.[23] While she was working on Strangers on a Train, he convinced her to visit him in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he introduced her to painter Ann Smith, and the two became involved. After Smith left Provincetown, Highsmith felt she was "in prison" with Brandel and told him she was leaving. "[B]ecause of that I have to sleep with him, and only the fact that it is the last night strengthens me to bear it." Highsmith, who had never been sexually exclusive with Brandel, resented having sex with him.[21] Highsmith temporarily broke off the relationship with Brandel and continued to be involved with several women; reuniting after the well-received publication of his new novel. Beginning November 30, 1948, and continuing for the next six months, Highsmith underwent psychoanalysis in an effort "to regularize herself sexually" so she could marry Brandel. The analysis was brought to a stop by Highsmith, after which she ended her relationship with Brandel.[21]

To help pay for the twice-a-week therapy sessions, Highsmith had taken a sales job during Christmas rush season in the toy section of Bloomingdale's department store.[21] Ironically, it was during this attempt to 'cure' her homosexuality that Highsmith was inspired to write her semi-autobiographical novel The Price of Salt, in which two women meet in a department store and begin a passionate affair.[24]

In early September 1951, she began an affair with sociologist Ellen Blumenthal Hill, traveling back and forth to Europe to meet with her.[4] When Highsmith and Hill came to New York in early May 1953, their affair ostensibly "in a fragile state," Highsmith began an "impossible" affair with the German homosexual photographer Rolf Tietgens, who had played a "sporadic, intense, and unconsummated role in her emotional life since 1943."[4] She was reportedly attracted to Tietgens on account of his homosexuality, confiding that she felt with him "as if he is another girl, or a singularly innocent man." Tietgens shot several nude photographs of Highsmith, but only one has survived.[25] It has been torn in half at the waist so that only her upper body appears.[4] She dedicated The Two Faces of January (1964) to Tietgens.

Between 1959 and 1961, she fell in love with Marijane Meaker,[26] who wrote under the pseudonyms "Vin Packer" and "Ann Aldrich" and later wrote young adult fiction as "M.E. Kerr".[26][27] In the late 1980s, after 27 years of separation, Highsmith began corresponding with Meaker again, and one day showed up on Meaker's doorstep, slightly drunk and ranting bitterly. Meaker later said she was horrified at how Highsmith's personality had changed.[lower-alpha 2]

Religious and racial views

Highsmith was a "consummate" atheist. She was never comfortable with black people and she was outspokenly anti-semitic. When she was living in Switzerland in the 1980s, she used nearly 40 aliases when writing to various government bodies and newspapers deploring the state of Israel and the "influence" of the Jews. Nevertheless, some of her best friends were Jewish, such as authors Arthur Koestler[28] and Saul Bellow.[8] Her work was assessed as having a "misogynist streak,"[29] particularly after the publication of her short-stories collection Little Tales of Misogyny.[30][lower-alpha 3]

Politics

Highsmith believed in American democratic ideals and in "the promise" of U.S. history, but she was also highly critical of the reality of the country's 20th-century culture and foreign policy. Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes, her 1987 anthology of short stories, was notoriously anti-American, and she often cast her homeland in a deeply unflattering light. Beginning in 1963, she resided exclusively in Europe.[4] She retained her United States citizenship, despite the tax penalties, of which she complained bitterly while living for many years in France and Switzerland.

Death

Highsmith, aged 74, died from a combination of aplastic anemia and lung cancer at Carita hospital in Locarno, Switzerland, near the village where she had lived since 1982. She was cremated at the cemetery in Bellinzona, a memorial service was conducted in the Catholic Church in Tegna and her ashes interred in its columbarium.[31][32][33]

She left her estate, worth an estimated $3 million, and the promise of any future royalties to the Yaddo colony, where she spent two months in 1948 writing the draft of Strangers on a Train.[22][lower-alpha 4] Patricia Highsmith bequeathed her literary estate to the Swiss Literary Archives at the Swiss National Library in Bern, Switzerland.[35]

Writing career

Comic books

Before her short stories started appearing in print, Highsmith wrote for comic book publishers from 1942 and 1948, while she lived in New York City and Mexico. Answering an ad for "reporter/rewrite", she landed a job working for comic book publisher Ned Pines in a "bullpen" with four artists and three other writers. Initially scripting two comic-book stories a day for $55-a-week paychecks, Highsmith soon realized she could make more money by freelance writing for comics, a situation which enabled her to find time to work on her own short stories and live for a period in Mexico. The comic book scriptwriter job was the only long-term job Highsmith ever held.[4]

From 1942–43, for the Sangor-Pines shop (Better/Cinema/Pines/Standard/Nedor), Highsmith wrote "Sergeant Bill King" stories and contributed to Black Terror and Fighting Yank comics; and wrote profiles such as Catherine the Great, Barney Ross, and Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker for the "Real Life Comics" series. From 1943–1946, under editor Vincent Fago at Timely Comics, she contributed to its U.S.A. Comics wartime series, writing scenarios for comics such as Jap Buster Johnson and The Destroyer. During these same years she wrote for Fawcett Publications, scripting for Fawcett Comics characters "Crisco and Jasper" and others.[36] Highsmith also wrote for Western Comics from 1945 to 1947.

When Highsmith wrote the psychological thriller novel The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955), one of the title character's first victims is a comic-book artist named Reddington: "Tom had a hunch about Reddington. He was a comic-book artist. He probably didn't know whether he was coming or going."[37]

Novels and short stories

Highsmith's first novel was Strangers on a Train, published in 1950. The book proved modestly successful when it was published in 1950. Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 film adaptation of the novel strengthened Highsmith's reputation.

Highsmith's second novel, The Price of Salt, was published in 1952 under the nom de plume Claire Morgan.[38] Highsmith mined her personal life for the novel's content.[4] Its groundbreaking happy ending[27][lower-alpha 5] and departure from stereotypical conceptions about lesbians made it stand out in lesbian fiction.[39] In what BBC 2's "The Late Show" presenter Sarah Dunant described as a "literary coming out" after 38 years of disaffirmation,[40] Highsmith finally acknowledged authorship of the novel publicly when she agreed to the 1990 publication by Bloomsbury retitled Carol. Highsmith wrote in the "Afterword" to the new edition:

If I were to write a novel about a lesbian relationship, would I then be labelled a lesbian-book writer? That was a possibility, even though I might never be inspired to write another such book in my life. So I decided to offer the book under another name.

The appeal of The Price of Salt was that it had a happy ending for its two main characters, or at least they were going to try to have a future together. Prior to this book, homosexuals male and female in American novels had had to pay for their deviation by cutting their wrists, drowning themselves in a swimming pool, or by switching to heterosexuality (so it was stated), or by collapsing – alone and miserable and shunned – into a depression equal to hell.[41]

The paperback version of the novel sold nearly one million copies before its 1990 reissue.[42]

Her short stories appeared for the first time in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in the early 1950s.

Her last novel, Small g: a Summer Idyll, was rejected by Knopf, her usual publisher by then, a few months before her death in February 1995.[43] It was published in the UK a month after her death by Bloomsbury Publishing, and nine years later in the US by W.W. Norton.[44]

Awards

Bibliography

The Ripliad of Thomas "Tom" Ripley

Other Novels

Short-story collections

Collected works

Miscellaneous

Film, television, and radio adaptations

Several of Highsmith's works have been adapted for other media, some more than once.[45] There have been five adaptations of the Ripley novels, all independent of one another. In 1978, Highsmith was president of the jury at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival.[4][46]

Adaptations of Ripley Series

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Highsmith wrote: "What is so impossible, is that the male face doesn't attract me, isn't beautiful to me. Though I can imagine a familiarity with a man, which would...allow us to work and make us happy—and certainly sane...[t]he question is, whether men alone, their selves, don't get unbearably boring?"[21]
  2. ↑ Meaker recalled: "[Patricia] was a wonderful, giving, funny person when I [first] met her. I can always remember her smile and her laughter because that was so much a part of her. But when she came back she was despicable. I couldn't believe her hatred for blacks, for Jews in particular, but even for gay people. She hated everybody."[26]
  3. ↑ The book was first published in 1975 in German, under the title Kleine Geschichte für Weiberfeinde, appearing in English two years later. The German title means, literally, Little Tales For Misogynists. Nicholas Lezard remarked, "This is not a book to teach the misogynists a lesson: it's something you might give a misogynist on his birthday," but found the accusations of misogyny to be without foundation.[30]
  4. ↑ During her lifetime, Highsmith supported Yaddo with contributions she preferred to keep anonymous. One of these gifts created an endowed fund to underwrite an annual residency for a young creative artist working in any medium. At her request the residency is now known as the "Patricia Highsmith-Plangman Residency".[34]
  5. ↑ Meaker stated: "[The Price of Salt ] was for many years the only lesbian novel, in either hard or soft cover, with a happy ending."[27]

References

  1. ↑ "Mary P Highsmith in the United States Social Security Death Index, February 4, 1995
  2. ↑ Dirda, Michael (July 2, 2009). "This Woman Is Dangerous". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  3. ↑ Castle, Terry (November 10, 2003). "The Ick Factor". The New Republic. Archived from the original on September 22, 2015. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Schenkar, Joan (2009). The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith (1st ed.). St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312303754.
  5. ↑ Schenkar, Joan (2009). "The Real Romance of Objects (chap. 8)". The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith (1st ed.). St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312303754.
  6. ↑ Schenkar, Joan (2009). "La Mamma: Part 3 (chap. 3)". The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith (1st ed.). St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312303754.
  7. ↑ Schenkar, Joan (2009). "A Simple Act of Forgery (chap. 2)". The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith (1st ed.). St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312303754.
  8. 1 2 3 Wilson, Andrew (2003). Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith (1st ed.). Bloomsbury. ISBN 1582341982.
  9. ↑ Guinard, Mavis (August 17, 1991). "Patricia Highsmith: Alone With Ripley". The New York Times. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  10. ↑ Schenkar, Joan (2009). "Social Studies: Part 1 (chap. 6)". The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith (1st ed.). St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312303754.
  11. ↑ Wilson, Andrew (2003). "Work is more fun than play 1983-1986 (chap. 32)". Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith (1st ed.). Bloomsbury. ISBN 1582341982.
  12. ↑ Schenkar, Joan (2009). "The Cake That Was Shaped Like a Coffin (chap. 34)". The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith (1st ed.). St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312303754.
  13. 1 2 Fierman, Daniel (January 14, 2000). "Mystery Girl: Deceased mistress of suspense Patricia Highsmith is finding new fans with The Talented Mr. Ripley". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  14. ↑ Schenkar, Joan (2009). "Alter Ego: Part 3 (chap. 5)". The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith (1st ed.). St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312303754.
  15. ↑ Cocozza, Paula (November 12, 2015). "How Patricia Highsmith's Carol became a film: 'Lesbianism is not an issue. It's a state of normal'". The Guardian. Retrieved December 14, 2015.
  16. ↑ Emily (November 13, 2015). "Phyllis Nagy: On Screen Writing and CAROL". The Laughing Lesbian. Retrieved December 14, 2015.
  17. 1 2 Currey, Mason (2013). Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (1st ed.). Knopf. p. 12. ISBN 978-0307273604.
  18. ↑ Dawson, Jill (May 13, 2015). "Carol: the women behind Patricia Highsmith's lesbian novel". The Guardian. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  19. ↑ Schenkar, Joan (September 29, 2011). "After Patricia". The Paris Review. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  20. ↑ Schenkar, Joan (2009). "Les Girls (chap. 7)". The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith (1st ed.). St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312303754.
  21. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Schenkar, Joan (2009). "Social Studies Part 2 (chap. 6)". The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith (1st ed.). St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312303754.
  22. 1 2 Wilson, Andrew (2003). "Yaddo, shadow – shadow, Yaddo! (chap. 11)". Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith (1st ed.). Bloomsbury. ISBN 1582341982.
  23. ↑ Espana, Marco (May 6, 2015). "Famous First Words: Strangers on a Train". Late Night Library. Retrieved March 11, 2016.
  24. ↑ Hart, Kate (August 15, 2011). "In Which Patricia Highsmith Endures A Depression Equal To Hell". This Recording. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  25. ↑ Rolf Tietgens, portrait of the writer Patricia Highsmith at age 21 (1942) - Photos as ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world - The senses of literature
  26. 1 2 3 de Bertodano, Helena (June 16, 2003). "A passion that turned to poison". The Telegraph. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  27. 1 2 3 Meaker, Marijane (2003). Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950's (1st ed.). Cleis Press. ISBN 1573441716.
  28. ↑ Winterson, Jeanette (December 16, 2009). "Patricia Highsmith, Hiding in Plain Sight". The New York Times. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  29. ↑ Walter, Natasha (July 11, 2003). "A lover, not a liker". The Guardian. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  30. 1 2 Lezard, Nicholas (January 20, 2015). "Little Tales of Misogyny by Patricia Highsmith review – a mischievous look at the suburban American dream". The Guardian. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  31. ↑ Schenkar, Joan (2009). "Appendix 1: Just the Facts". The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith (1st ed.). St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312303754.
  32. ↑ Dupont, Joan (September 9, 1997). "A Writer's Legacy: Little Tales of Cats and Snails". The New York Times. Retrieved April 7, 2016.
  33. ↑ Kennedy, Randy (February 5, 1995). "Patricia Highsmith, Writer Of Crime Tales, Dies at 74". The New York Times. Retrieved April 7, 2016.
  34. ↑ Yaddo News (Spring 2004). "Yaddo Shadow" (PDF). Yaddo. pp. 14–17. Retrieved March 13, 2016.
  35. ↑ Swiss Literary Archives (March 7, 2006). "Patricia Highsmith at the Swiss National Library". Swiss National Library. Schweizerische Nationalbibliothek. Retrieved March 13, 2016.
  36. ↑ Schenkar, Joan (December 2009). "Patricia Highsmith & The Golden Age of American Comics". Alter Ego. TwoMorrows Publishing (90): 35–40.
  37. ↑ Highsmith, Patricia (2008). The Talented Mr. Ripley. W.W. Norton & Company. pp. 19–20. ISBN 9780393332148. Originally published by Coward-McCann, Inc., New York, 1955, LCCN 55010083.
  38. ↑ Jones, Nick (September 25, 2015). "Carol by Patricia Highsmith (Bloomsbury, 1990); Orig. The Price of Salt by Claire Morgan (Coward-McCann, 1952): Book Review". Existential Ennui. Retrieved March 12, 2016.
  39. ↑ Carlston, Erin G. (November 22, 2015). "Essay: Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt, The Lesbian Novel That's Now A Major Motion Picture". The National Book Review. Retrieved March 5, 2016.
  40. ↑ Wilson, Andrew (2003). "Art is not always healthy and why should it be? 1988-1992 (chap. 35)". Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith (1st ed.). Bloomsbury. ISBN 1582341982.
  41. ↑ Patricia Highsmith (November 11, 2015). "Happily ever after, at last: Patricia Highsmith on the inspiration for Carol". The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group Limited. Retrieved March 5, 2016.
  42. ↑ Rich, Frank (November 18, 2015). "Loving Carol". Vulture. New York. Retrieved March 5, 2016.
  43. ↑ Rich, Frank (December 12, 1999). "American pseudo". The New York Times. Retrieved November 27, 2015.
  44. ↑ Leavitt, David (June 20, 2004). "Strangers in a Bar". The New York Times. Retrieved November 27, 2015.
  45. ↑ Arn, Jackson (November 25, 2015). "Adaptation: Patricia Highsmith". Film Comment. Film Society of Lincoln Center. Retrieved March 11, 2016.
  46. ↑ "Berlinale 1978: Jury members".
  47. ↑ Wilson, Andrew (May 24, 2003). "Ripley's enduring allure". The Telegraph. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  48. ↑ Ebert, Roger (July 3, 1996). "Purple Noon". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  49. ↑ Gerald, Peary (Spring 1988). "Patricia Highsmith". geraldpeary.com. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  50. ↑ Ebert, Roger (April 9, 2006). "Ripley's Game". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  51. ↑ Peters, Fiona (2011). Anxiety and Evil in the Writings of Patricia Highsmith. Ashgate Publishing. pp. 17–18. ISBN 9781409423348.
  52. ↑ Hillerman, Tony; Herbert, Rosemary, eds. (2005). A New Omnibus of Crime. Oxford University Press. p. 194. ISBN 9780195182149.

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