The Glass Cell

Hello Gentle Reader

Patricia Highsmith the granddame of the psychological thriller wrote the novel that I have just finished called “The Glass Cell.” Patricia Highsmith never gained any real recognition or real readership in her life time, in her homeland or native country of the Unite States of America. Partly because this author did not write thriller fiction, to show how justice prevails. In fact, Patricia Highsmith broke all the rules of the suspense fiction in genre of books. In fact here was an author who said:

“I find the public passion for justice quite boring and artificial.” – Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith did not look around the world, and see crime being done, then justice being served. Patricia Highsmith saw crime being committed, and a good portion of the criminals getting away with their slimy deeds. She even saw some of the people, committing the crimes where really those that were part of the supposed “justice,” system. The world was terribly flawed to Patricia Highsmith. A place of such flaws, and human indecencies that it was hard for anyone to live in the world without some form of mental damage to be have been done to anyone. Patricia Highsmith herself even lived with the ideal thought of murder. Her father abandoned her, and her mother before Patricia Highsmith was born. She utterly hated her stepfather Stanley, and she had a very (to put it lightly) relationship with her mother Mary Highsmith – a relationship that Patricia could never quite sever entirely and yet hated keeping.

Patricia Highsmith is a complicated psychological character, much like her characters in her stories and books – or that is what I presume. She was an entirely original writer in the twentieth century for her prose that scoffed at the idea of justice, and found the entire idea of being passionate about the justice system artificial and a complete bore. Her murderous anti-hero or criminal-hero Tom Ripley (“The Talented Mr. Ripley,” and the other books in the “Ripliad.”) got away with all his crimes, and showed just how much crime paid. For Patricia Highsmith the world really was built on the foundation of crime. So and so stole or legally swindled the land from the other so and so; John’s wife has been having an affair with Mr. Jones, and so on. All this was natural and quite normal to Patricia Highsmith.

Graham Greene (an author I don’t plan on reading for his over catholic zealotry quite boring and trite) had even described this underrated and horrifying author as a:

"Writer who has created a world of her own - a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger." – Graham Greene.

Mr. Greene was not far off either. The world was full of dangers. Children could murder their parents, by leaving a roller skate decisively hidden at the top of the stairs and the unknowing victim could fall down the stairs and break his or her neck. Husbands could discover that their wives are having an affair and one night in a fit of rage, just murderer the lover of the wife.

Patricia Highsmith though not as popular in her homeland of the United States o America, was immensely popular in her soon adopted homeland of Europe. The very place she died was also in Europe. To be exact Locarno Switzerland. Exact details are something that Patricia Highsmith’s novel “The Glass Cell,” can be riddled with at times, and at other times lacking.

“The Glass Cell,” is a character study of a man sent to prison. Presumably innocent. And for all we know Phillip Carter may be innocent. In fact for the purpose of this blog we’ll take the assumption that Phillip Carter is innocent – but incredibly naïve, which explains how he got into his present predicament of six years of prison. When we first meet Mr. Philip Carter, he is in prison. We are given a very faint backstory of how he got into his present predicament. Something to do with a fraud, which our main character Phillip Carter, is blamed for. The trail follows after the blame is pinned on him, and then Philip Carter is sent to jail.

Ms. Highsmith wastes no time in showing the very dark and disgusting nature of human beings, and their deficiencies and the abuse of power that people, often show when placed in a position of considerable power. Right away Philip Carter, is doing a simple task. His cell mate a man by the name of “Hanky,” who we know is on quite good terms with the prison guards. Philip Carter and Hanky do not have the best of relationships that one would have in prison. Philip Carter, at first we find out has great faith in the justice system. He expects that after a few days (if memory serves correct ninety days) that he will get his retrial, and soon be leaving the state penitentiary and the real convicts like “Hanky,” behind. If only Carter were to be so lucky.

Carter is denied retrial. His lawyer and friend David Sullivan and his wife Hazel have yet to give up hope however. Hazel hires another lawyer – a criminal lawyer; who I seem to have forgotten the name of (apparently he did not have much of a big part in this book – upon quick scanning of the book the lawyers name is M agran) and decides to help Carter help, him to ask the Supreme Court for help on his wrongly justified case.

But before even all that happens, Carter experiences, a painful lesson in Prison, in the first chapter. He is strung up in the prison in the “hole,” by his thumbs – for forty eight hours. Every time he comes close to passing out, the sadistic guards laugh and jeer at his pain, and throw cold water on him to keep him awake. This is just the first step into the metamorphosis that Carter will undergo. His thumbs are out of their joints, and are forever swollen and enlarge. There is nothing that the prison doctor – Doctor Cassini; can do expect administer morphine for the pain, for Carters thumbs. So begins another step in Carters metamorphosis and so degradation into becoming just like the other prisoners and convicts that he once thought he was not one of them.

The novel then continues. Things start to look up for Carter, now that he works in the medical wing of the state penitentiary. He has access to morphine now on a constant basis – it is not only hinted by quite openly stated that Doctor Cassini is also a morphine addict. Though Carter did try to get off the “dope,” once but failed. Carter starts to read more often, he also starts to take judo lessons from another inmate by the name of Alex, but his grossly large thumbs hinder him from doing a lot of throws and tosses and joint holds.

It should be stated that in all of Patricia Highsmith’s works there are homosexual undertones. Those undertones however did get to be openly stated in one of Patricia Highsmith’s other novels “The Price of Salt,” – which she wrote under the pseudonym of Claire Morgan. “The Price of Salt,” was once again (in Patricia Highsmith fashion) quite original and broke the rules of Lesbian fiction, for its happy ending. Patricia Highsmith herself was also a lesbian. However according to research Patricia Highsmith’s posthumous novel “Small g: a Summer Idyll,” also dealt directly with themes of homosexuality.

This can also plainly be seen in the novel “The Glass Cell,” Carter meets another inmate by the name of Max – Max Samson I think. He’s a man who speaks French, and this what first gets the two inmates together. Max and Carter both speak French, and for twenty-five minutes a day they meet, and speak to each other. Hazel Carter’s wife is ironically resentful of this new friend that Carter has. Carter is also quite suspicious of the relationship that David Sullivan and Hazel have.

When Carter is denied a second time for a request by the Supreme Court, he immediately tells his friend Max about this. Carter even openly shows his emotions about this and weeps in front of Max. Max does push his shoulder on Max’s bed, and tells him to lie down or get some rest. One of the two. This act of homosexual tension is what is known in Patricia Highsmith’s work, but other than the words exchanged, and the gesture exchanged, no feelings or actions were made upon the two.

The last part of Carter’s prison metamorphosis is when a prison riot happens, and for three days the prisoners, take hold of the state penitentiary for three days. Max is killed in this ensuring riot. Before that, Max and his cellmate a large “Negro,” as described, are given another cell mate by the name of “Squib,” or something like that (I do confess the names are so abnormal for the most part that I have a bit of trouble remembering the names.) who has made it clear that he dislikes Max and Carter. Carter suspects the new cell mate was the one that killed Max. Upon finding Max’s dead body, lifeless, and covered in blood, Carter loses control and kills another man while in prison. Eventually things fall into natural order for Carter once again. Max is gone – his salvation had easily come and had easily gone.

Weaning himself off of morphine, and soon released from prison Carter is now forced to come to terms with the concept that faces his life now: “what now?” – he goes home, his son is cold and distant to him – though that is to be suspected; finding a job becomes difficult though they are well off (Carter is an engineer); and the suspicions of David Sullivan and Hazel having an affair while Carter was in the “clink,” becomes ever present on the mind the new Carter. A man, who pops pills, craves morphine and lost weight and has a general cold demeanour to him.

Though Patricia Highsmith was a lesbian herself, she experienced emotions in a rather two spectrum of extremes. As much as she loved woman, she could only handle them for such periods of times; that were considerably short. It is no wonder that woman are often presented in vicious and not so positive and flattering light in her works of fiction.

We learn that Hazel has been having an affair with David Sullivan. At first she claims it was for three or four weeks. It becomes apparent that she lied. When David Sullivan is confronted he only gives the same speech that Hazel gave. Carter learns that Hazel and David Sullivan have been having an affair (possibly) before he was incarcerated, and definitely after his release, that continued on.

Carter is a man who has just got out of prison. The world is a bit strange and alien to him. His wife has been sleeping another man. He’s suffering from a morphine addiction – a disease that lurks around the edges of his psyche like a shark on the prowls by shallow water; his son is more fond of David Sullivan then he is of his own father (Carter); and to top it all off, when Hazel was confronted by the fact that Carter knew she was having an intimate affair with David Sullivan, and when asked if she was going to stop – all she could do is reply with a “I don’t know.”

Things really change for Carter however when the affair business gets to him after a while, and he commits his second act of murder on David Sullivan. David Sullivan however has helped Carter find a job, seems to have taken care of his household, and wife. Yet in some ways or another there is such bent up anger towards David Sullivan that Carter just cannot control himself and kills him. So begins the classic Highsmith game of cat and mouse, and the showing that not all criminals really do pay – and sometimes the innocent and naïve do pay, and become the criminals themselves.

There are a few things that I would change about this personally. I would make it longer. Part of me cannot help but wonder, what kind of book Patricia Highsmith could have created if she wrote a bit more on it. If she would have shown the reader the life of Philip Carter beforehand, then the jail then his release. It would have been a lot more interesting in my opinion, to see the complete change and control of the character, from naivety to incarceration, to his sudden and slow pit fall into the depths of depression, drug abuse, and murder.

The other thing that I find personally is that, some of the book just look like a bunch of coincidental events, all smashed and placed together in the chapters, and the paragraphs. It was hard to decipher personally what day it was (Sundays were the easiest because that is when Hazel would visit) what month, season, et cetera – this in my own personal opinion would help make the novel kind of come along, as the reader counts the days off, the holidays and the seasons along with Carter. Some slight deeper characterizations would not hurt either.

Patricia Highsmith wrote an interesting psychological thriller with “The Glass Cell.” Even though it was published back in ninety-sixty four, the concept and its plot, and the dark metamorphosis of an innocent man into a cold shell of someone else, is still something that people, I think are interested in to this day but also fear.

Michael Dirda a critic had observed that: Europeans honoured her as a psychological novelist, part of an existentialist tradition represented by her own favourite writers, in particular Dostoevsky, Conrad, Kafka, Gide, and Camus."

Which to me is true. Patricia Highsmith was a psychological novelist and thriller writer. She was more than interested in psychology, and enjoyed filling her stories with murder and death. She probed the dark abscess of the world around us. She went deep into the minds of her characters, no matter how dark. Wherever she went she saw murder, and murderous events just waiting around the corner – from preschools to suburbia to the city; murder was lurking in the corners of everyone’s mind. Her novel “The Glass Cell,” is an expert example of her psychological study skills rather than her thriller skills really. She trains her microscope to watch the slow unfolding of the metamorphosis of a very dark and mutated moth.

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
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M. Mary