Hello
Gentle Reader
Today
marks the 100th birthday of Patricia Highsmith (January 19 1921 –
February 4 1995). Throughout her life Patricia Highsmith was known as a
contrarian individual. She once reflected to herself in one of her diaries,
that she learned to live with the murderous rage at an early age, when her
stepfather, Stanley Highsmith corrected her pronunciation of the term: “Open Sesame.”
Her childhood was riddled with the usual turbulence of all unhappy childhoods.
Highsmith’s biological father (Jay Bernard Plangman) divorced her mother Mary
Plangman (née, Coates, future Highsmith) ten days before Patricia was born.
Even before her birth, Patricia Highsmith’s life was marked with foreboding violence. It
is rumoured that Jay Plangman encouraged Mary to have an abortion; while other
sources state that Mary Plangman attempted to abort the yet unborn Patricia
with turpentine, which she is said to have mocked Patricia with in later years for
enjoying the smell of. These incidents would only foreshadow an otherwise
complicated and unhappy view on marriage, family life, and human
relationships. At the age of twelve Highsmith’s mother and stepfather left her
in the care of a parenteral grandmother, while they jetted off to New York, to
get settled before bringing the young Patricia up to join them. Highsmith
described this year as the saddest one of her childhood, when she viewed that
her mother had all but abandoned her. Regardless her grandmother had taught her
to read at an early age, and Highsmith took full advantage of her grandmothers’
library, reading with a ravenous appetite. After this sad year, Highsmith would
rejoin her mother and stepfather in New York, but their relationship was
riddled with complications. Highsmith noted that Stanley and Mary would
often engage in extreme fights, leaving Highsmith to wonder if divorce was
on the horizon. At times her mother would pack their belongings and leave
somewhere else; before returning to Stanley once again. Perhaps this is why
Patricia Highsmith herself would never show any inclination towards the
conventional concept of marriage and family; well that and the fact that she
was a lesbian, which she held in contempt and discomfort; viewing her sexuality
as a blemish of embarrassment rather than a natural component of herself.
In
her youth, Highsmith even attended psychoanalysis therapy in order to rid
herself of her sexual orientation, in order to become more conditioned for
marriage. To no surprise the therapy did not work, and Highsmith never married. Though
ironically in one of her many journals, Highsmith did note the following
notion:
“Persistently,
I have the vision of a house in the country with the blonde wife whom I love,
with the children whom I adore, on the land and with the trees I do adore [ . .
. ] My God and my beloved, it can never be!’”
An
otherwise odd reflection from a writer who was adamantly misanthropic, who once
stated she could not write when the cleaning woman was in the house, and
proclaimed her imagination functioned far better when she didn’t have to
converse with others. To imagine Highsmith living some suburban ideal conventional
and compromised life is not only laughable, its degrading. This being stated
Patricia Highsmith would not be considered a bohemian, though in her youth she
did have her unconventional moments, before her writing career had taken off in
its entirety. Before, Highsmith became the Godmother of the Psychological
Thriller, she first began her writing career after she graduated from Barnard
College, writing scripts and scenarios for comic books. This fact was made a
secret throughout Patricia Highsmith’s life and career, perhaps because the
author herself did not view comic books as anything of merit or literary
venture, but a mere commercial enterprise. Regardless of the authors own views on the matter, her
time writing for comic books, both as an employee and freelance, were her
longest stints of full-time employment before the author began to support
herself off her writing alone.
Halfway
through the 20th century, Highsmith finally made her claim in the
world with the publication of the novel: “Strangers on a Train.” The novel did
moderately well for a debut, but with Hitchcock’s film adaption, Patricia
Highsmith’s reputation grew, especially amongst European readers. Throughout
her initial literary success Highsmith’s character had already matured. These
characterizes included a resentful distaste and general disgust for food,
preferring in its stead the pleasures of cigarettes and the inebriation of
cheap liquor. Misanthropy was becoming a common feature of the writer, which
would later be known as a hallmark trait. She viewed people with no fascination
and a general tiresome disinterest. To go out in the evening, be it for dinner,
socializing or drinks, would not rank high on Highsmith’s plans for an
enjoyable outing. Her work ethic was also in full swing, producing in her
lifetime a total of 22 novels and 8 collections of short stories, which
appeared variously in magazines. Yet, after the dark tour of the almost mundane
darkness that lurks within the human mind, expertly explored in “Strangers on
the Train,” Patricia Highsmith wrote one of the most groundbreaking novels of
the 20th Century, “The Price of Salt,” also republished as, “Carol.”
This novel was a noted lesbian story that ended with a revolutionary happy
ending. The novel would not be published under Highsmith’s own name. The novel
itself was riddled with the exploits of the authors own tumultuous love life
with various women. Still, Highsmith refused to acknowledge the novel until the
early 90’s, when it was republished under the title “Carol,” under her own name
with an afterward. Perhaps it did her more service to disregard the novel,
leaving it orphaned in the bookshelves, because afterwards Highsmith had begun
to pen her most well-known literary creation, the talented sociopathic
chameleon: Tom Ripley. Tom Ripley became the literary alter ego of Patricia
Highsmith. Ripley was the literary vessel of all of Highsmith’s darker
ambitions. At the time, Ripley was a groundbreaking character, a dark antihero
who characters feared and abjectly admired. His ability to charm and con his
way into high society was both deprived and marvelous. His ability to kill and
get away with it even more allude justice, tantalized and horrified the reading
public. Compromised morals or rather amorality was her favourite tropes to
explore, and Ripley represented them all, with all the rewards, prestige and
enjoyment life had to offer.
As
for Patricia Highsmith, however, she was not as superficially charming as her
famed antihero. As she aged and secluded herself into further isolation,
fortified with cigarettes and alcoholism, Highsmith would unleash a torrent of
horrors upon those who dared to get to close. Her prejudices became more
vitriolic, acerbic and vocal. Lovers were disposed of unceremoniously, and
viciously murdered in her novels. She ripped into anyone who dared to get too
close to her, and those who either through a masochistic virtue or stupidity
continued to seek her company, received greater punishment. One of the most
famous stories of Highsmith’s vicious vitriol was a dinner New York, when she
met with her then editor and publisher Otto Penzler. Penzler took her out to
eat at an anonymous restraint in New York, where the waiter is said to make
painstaking steps to ensure that Highsmith received the best cut steak on
offer. In usual flare, Highsmith berated the waiter, in a theatrical display of
venom and only wanted beer. Penzler is said to have recalled the event with a
disgust, and is quoted to have found Patricia Highsmith a truly:
“[
. . . ] mean, cruel, hard, unlovable, unloving human being. I could never
penetrate how any human being could be that relentlessly ugly . . . but her
books? Brilliant.”
As
in due course, Penzler dropped Highsmith as a writer. When asked about it years
later, Highsmith hissed at the reporter that it was due to him being a Jew,
advertising her already well-known antisemitism. This was only an aspect of a
myriad of horrible perspectives which included racism, homophobia, misogyny,
which were all wrapped up in her general disgust towards other people and
slumped together as: misanthropy. Despite these otherwise disturbingly
grotesque characteristics which were wielded like weapons, those who were able
to swath through her otherwise demented views, found a writer who was both
dryly funny, plainspoken and in her own way even charming. Though these finer
features of Highsmith, only came out after a relentlessly torrent of bitterness
had been unleashed, and such a pearl of character could only be offered to
those who braved the current to weather her tirades. Of course, one only got
lashed with her venomous vitriol when they disturbed someone who retained an
air of guarded privacy. Highsmith was known as being as reclusive as the snails
she kept as company and often thwarted interviews with cat like indifference.
On the more preserve and even ironic side of the situation, Patricia Highsmith
was a profilic chronicler of her interior life. Through a collection of
journals and cahiers, Highsmith unabashedly recounted her most intimate,
darkest and personal thoughts. These journals are riddled with her bitter brew
of her vicious character, where she described having sex with a man like “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 bowel movement.”
These
diaries and cahiers were included in Highsmith’s archive, with it were appear
to be in both spite and resentment she bequeathed to the Swiss Literary
Archives at the Swiss National Library in Bern, rather than any American
institution considering how her work never appealed or appetized the American
reading public, in their repugnant indignation cling to their morals of
justice, like a nun clutches her rosary as she faces hell. These diaries and
cahiers have been reviewed and poured over by biographers and academics, who
have often described them as a sojourn into the most unpleasant aspects of the
most irrational and idiosyncratic mind—to be blunt: it was far from pleasant.
But the research did provide a thorough understanding of their subject’s
personality, perspective and psyche. Now these same diaries and cahiers are set
to be released this year (2021), when the reading public will be able become
acquainted with the cruel, ruthless and well fermented character of Highsmith,
who it said meticulously documented, her life through a dark lens.
As
a reader, I’ve never found Patricia Highsmith’s novels all that compelling,
interesting true, but not as a compelling as the legendary misanthropy of the
writer herself, and with the publication of her diaries and cahiers, those
brave enough, curious enough and depraved enough will be able to get acquainted
with the writer in her own words; not the distilled perspective of her tireless
biographers who have painted a fair and honest portrait of the author. I for
one cannot wait to be able to review the diaries and cahiers themselves, to
read them with horror and delight, ensuring it becomes a tonic to ensure that
one does not become equally as vicious, cruel, ugly and unbecoming. No matter
how bad life will get, its best not to retrace the path already etched in the
ice by Highsmith.
Happy
Birthday Patricia Highsmith; Rest In Peace All The Same.
Thank-you
For Reading Gentle Reader
Take
Care
And
As Always
Stay
Well Read
M.
Mary
