The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith

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Ripley series, The Blunderer, Strangers on a Train. Jan 13, Tony rated it really liked it Shelves: This is not an easy read, nor a short one. It took me a while to get through this page epic on the life of Miss Highsmith. Highsmith was born in in Fort Worth, Texas, and died in in Locarno. In between, she managed to write an astounding number of books: Even her love affairs were relatively short-lived.

She was a heavy drinker, but was able to stop cold turkey when doctors told her it was affecting her health — although she started up again after only three weeks on the wagon. She was also a heavy smoker. When diagnosed with lung cancer, she stopped out of fear — only to start again when she learned that the tumor was glandular and not caused by cigarettes.

She had a love of snails, and managed to amass quite a collection for herself that she kept as pets. She wrote snails into many of her plots. She seemed to be a collection of rebellious habits and a vigorous individualist. This will soon be corrected since I have a couple more of her novels on my pile to read. If you have a great deal of patience and a lot of time, I can recommend this well-written and exhaustively researched biography.

The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar

Sep 30, Jenny Yates rated it it was ok. By turns, this biography of Patricia Highsmith is fascinating and irritating. Highsmith was a true eccentric — impulsive, passionate, odd, and changeable - and the book is full of intriguing details. However, I was a bit irritated by the structure of the book. I felt that the author was trying to give you a sort of Highsmith flavor, and so she made the structure unique, uncomfortable, and unwieldy.

This means that chronological order is lost, and you have to keep checking the year and computing more or less how old Highsmith was when this or that happened, and putting it into order in your own mind. I would have been much happier if she had used this as a framework for the book. Mostly, the book remains interesting. Sometimes it becomes paralyzed by a dead weight of name-dropping. Sometimes these are admiring, sometimes judgmental, but they maintain the sense that we are always looking at Highsmith from the outside. I never really felt like I got inside her head.

She often came across rather like an exhibit in a museum of weird, unpleasant people. Dec 02, Kara rated it liked it Shelves: I don't know what I expected. In it, a portrait was painted of a woman writer in the s and '50s whose actions seemed as sociopathic as that of one of her most famous characters, the talented Mr. She was dark, dreamed up ugly murders for fun, wrote for comic books though she denied it , hated her mother, and slept with women and sometimes men -- sometimes for love but often for sport.

I wan I don't know what I expected. I wanted to read this bio, and so, true book nerd that I am, I first went and read the Ripley series and The Price of Salt pub. Thus prepped, I finally read this bio. In life, Patricia Highsmith was apparently very difficult to like. Author Joan Schenkar backs this up time and again with evidence of Highsmith's treachery, stubborness, oddities, and the like. I ended up frustrated and sometimes appalled with Highsmith's antics. Again, I don't know what I expected: Those antics are pretty much WHY I read the book, right?

I also grew frustrated with Schenkar's storytelling: Luckily, there's a chronological outline at the back of the book to help you figure out what happened when. Another beef with the book is Schenkar's repetition. Good lord, the same facts are repeated over and over. That aside, it's still an interesting albeit at times frustrating and confusing look at the s Manhattan lesbian scene, early comic books, and the many tiny heart-breaking ways events can shape an entire person's life.

Highsmith also authored the noir Tom Ripley series five books. This superb psychological thriller was made into a feature film, the first starring Matt Damon, the second, John Malkovich, and the third, Barry Pepper. This is a rare Did Not Finish book. I tried reading it two years ago, and just couldn't bear to continue. The author wrote about every stray piece of paper that had anything to do with Ms. Highsmith, speculated on how events might or might not have influenced her books, her life, her family relationships.

I tried again, and give up -- not because Ms. Highsmith was a hard-to-like person she was , and not because of her chaotic personal life, or her sometimes just downright meanness. The writing is disjointed, and for me was a dreaded chore to read. I gave up again at page What a shame that this biography of such a famous, intriguing, and troubled author is so poorly written and put together.

Jan 09, Lucia Olson added it. Schenkar seems like she has one mission: Jun 03, Louise Chambers rated it did not like it Shelves: The nasty dynamics between Patricia and her mother were just too grueling for me to continue reading. Jun 18, Morgan rated it really liked it. I enjoyed the vicarious glee that Schenkar seems to take in Highsmith's emotional and sexual twistedness. I would recommend this over the earlier and more conventional biography that lacks a lot of the lurid but fascinating anecdote present in Schenkar's work.

She is a great researcher but the way this was written and edited is an absolute nightmare, I didn't even try to read it straight through, just dipped in looking for parts that interested me of which I found plenty. Here are my notes about I enjoyed the vicarious glee that Schenkar seems to take in Highsmith's emotional and sexual twistedness. Here are my notes about Highsmith's sexuality: Patricia Highsmith, according to Schenkar, "from an early age Twice I tried to sleep with Lewis—masochistic failure.

If god puts us together, I will be the man! According to Schenkar a photograph exists taken by Rolf which was a full body nude portrait of Patricia, but as it exists now has been "torn in half at the waist so that Patricia's genitalia and lower body are missing. Her attitude was kind of a trespass on my body, rather like a man examining me I couldn't understand it really, it was of no importance whatsoever.

Am I a psychopath?

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Feb 11, MountainShelby rated it really liked it. Reading this book was an absolutely fascinating yet exhausting experience. I can only imagine the energy and fortitude required to research and write the biography, let alone "live with" Highsmith for so many years. I scribbled many comments in the margins concerning Highsmith as well as the often caustic narrative as others have commented. Schenkar's approach to biography is a bit puzzling, so much snark, really quite surprising even if the biographer grows to dislike the subject, as many do, Reading this book was an absolutely fascinating yet exhausting experience.

Schenkar's approach to biography is a bit puzzling, so much snark, really quite surprising even if the biographer grows to dislike the subject, as many do, and no surprise with Highsmith, who strikes me as more of a troubled soul than anything else. That she had some sort of OCD, paranoia, and depression is obvious, although not thoroughly explored in context of the time period.

She wasn't eccentric--she was truly troubled, and I'm looking at her from the perspective of someone who lives a similar life alone and untethered. I would have liked to read more about this aspect of Highsmith rather than her next bed partner.

I was fine with the events presented out of chronology, although I grew weary of the cavalcade of love affairs. Jul 31, Benjamin Robinson rated it liked it. The only reason this book gets three stars is because of all the independent research done by the author. This resulted in a wealth of information that was previously unavailable. The book was fine as long as the author stuck to the facts. As soon as she tried to be coy, interpret the motives behind Patricia Highsmith's actions, or even give much of an interpretation of Highsmith's works, the book became an incredibly frustrating read.

I get the impression that the author decided who Patricia Hi The only reason this book gets three stars is because of all the independent research done by the author. I get the impression that the author decided who Patricia Highsmith was before she sat down to write this book and read every scrap of information she found through those filters.

Then she, quite painfully, tried to stretch the available information far enough for the reader to come to the same conclusions even when the text she was quoting seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with the image of Highsmith she was trying to force. Overall, I think the author should have done the research and then given the information to someone else who could actually write the book well.

Aug 30, Sara Habein rated it it was amazing. What a feat of a book. Patricia Highsmith might be the very definition of talented-but-unlikeable, and even though she was fairly terrible to most people especially at the end of her life , she still remains one of my favorite authors. She was queer in both sexuality and in the sense that she was odd , gender nonconforming before we ever really had the term, survived an attempt at conversion therapy, and otherwise made her way through life by self-medicating her undiagnosed mental illnesses.

T What a feat of a book. This biography is thorough, especially for die-hards like me who love all sorts of details about a person's life, and reads fairly. It is neither gushing nor accusatory. This was well worth the library fines I've incurred by keeping the book over a week late. Jul 20, Beth Boylan rated it liked it. Highsmith was clearly as dark and eccentric as many of the characters she created, and I now know more than I ever thought possible about this queen of suspense.

Near pages long, though, I could have done with a lot less repetition and detail. Kudos to Schenkar for her research, but she should have left the writing to someone else. It also seemed like the copy editor might have fallen asleep, or just given up, about halfway through this tome. Nevertheless, reading this bio has absolutely whe Highsmith was clearly as dark and eccentric as many of the characters she created, and I now know more than I ever thought possible about this queen of suspense.

Oct 11, Beverly rated it did not like it. Please don't read this, I'm begging you.

Jul 01, Dave rated it it was amazing. Tremendously insightful and detailed analysis of the life and work of Highsmith, which shows how her personal 'damage' created artful work and fraught relationships throughout her career. Feb 20, Book Calendar rated it really liked it. Joan Schenkar draws from interviews, books, and the 38 Cahiers spiral bound notebooks and 18 Diaries of Patricia Highsmith kept at the Swiss Literary Archives. The book itself is pages long with notes, bibliography, index, a map of where she went in Manhattan, diagrams, a timeline of her life, and two extensive sections of black and whit The Talented Miss Highsmith The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar This is a very in depth biography of Patricia Highsmith.

The book itself is pages long with notes, bibliography, index, a map of where she went in Manhattan, diagrams, a timeline of her life, and two extensive sections of black and white photography. It has a feeling of completeness to it. Patricia Highsmith is best known for her suspense novels and short stories. The most prominent of these is The Talented Mr. She also had many of her books turned into films. The most famous film based on her stories is Stranger on a Train directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

She won numerous awards both in the United States and internationally. This book exposes many parts of her life that are not that well known. Patricia Highsmith also wrote the lesbian novel, A Taste of Salt. This book describe Highsmith's many affairs with women both married and unmarried.

JOAN SCHENKAR

She was quite passionate and ended up moving from one relationship to the next in short order. Joan Schenkar describes Patricia Highsmith as a driven woman with a predilection for strong drink, younger women, tight control of her money, cats, and odd habits. One of my favorites parts of the book is the description of Patricia Highsmith as a comic book script writer. Patricia Highsmith tried to hide this all her life. She wanted to be a writer for Vogue and other fashion magazines, or literary magazines like the New Yorker.

What she ended up following was the classic path of the mystery writer. Then she started writing for the pulps in her case, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine , then she started writing mystery novels. This is the same pattern which Mickey Spillane followed whom she met and did not like.

There are points where this book feels a little bit too revealing. Her family life is one of constant fighting with her mother, Patricia Highsmith has strong prejudices, and her personal habits can be quite unsettling.

She keeps snails, loves cats, hates dogs enough to describe them being killed in her novels, and has a strange sense of humor which is often macabre. Even when Joan Schenkar describes Patricia Highsmith's success it is not one to be envied. She has left her native country, the United States and dies in Switzerland. Her travels have a brooding up and down feeling to them. Even her professional life is fraught with intrigue and arguing. She jumps from agent to agent always trying to get the best money possible, eventually moving her rights to Europe.

I cannot say I liked all the parts of the book. There were points where the descriptions became a little unsettling. However, the majority of the book was well written and quite intriguing. This is a very complete and very dark biography of a quirky, talented, and interesting writer with a unique view of the world.

Nor did Pat herself usually look further than her immediate environment for props to implement her artistic motives. And when she did, she got into artistic trouble. Perhaps suggestion 3 in "Little Crimes for Little Tots," "the setting of careful fires, so that someone else will get the blame if possible" is the most disturbing; implying, as it does, both the double vision which produced her most interesting fiction a single crime, but the culpability floats between two characters, as in her novel The Blunderer and the kind of premeditation that might get those "Little Tots" sent straight up the river to the "Big House.

And because her own childhood was the only childhood which ever truly interested her, there is one final smoke ring that rises mockingly above the rest: That's the little Patsy Plangman who grew up to be no one's "patsy" and who, as Patricia Highsmith, presented herself and her best characters as orphans-with-parents and adults-with-double-lives.

There is a good Highsmith story coiled behind this question, as well as a crucial Highsmith history. To find them, we shall have to go back to her desk in Moncourt. Questions concerning Highsmith's life are usually best answered in the vicinity of one of her desks. As a child, Pat lay seething with resentment on couch-beds in living rooms of too-small apartments in Manhattan and Queens listening to the raised voices of her mother and step-father. As an adult, she demanded and secured a series of fiercely- defended private spaces which allowed her imagination to intensify its own interests.

It was in houses they were never quite the homes she'd hoped for where she finally arranged the privacy she needed more than she needed anything else. And the most important physical feature of that privacy was always, always a room with a desk. Here in the village of Moncourt, Pat and her desk are tucked up under the eaves in the second-floor bedroom of her house first-floor in France , an hour's train ride from Paris. Although she sits in front of the scrolled roll-top like a snail in front of its shell, her posture is deceptive; she is not unshelled.

The house itself is in a hameau, a tiny hamlet within the village of Moncourt, entirely encircled by a protective stone wall.

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It is two months and three days before her fifty-third birthday. Eleven months ago, she began a poem: Still, here in this house, as in every other place she has ever lived, she has made sure that there are at least two layers of solid material house walls and a stone wall, in this case between her and the rest of the world. The desk she is sitting at provides a kind of catalogue of her working habits. Sheaves of printed stationery, filched during her literary sojourns at Europe's better hotels her publishers pay for these trips , are stacked in its cubbyholes.

Matchbooks, acquired by the same means, are secreted in its drawers. Even the rinsed-out receptacle holding her pencils once had another life as a jam jar. Nothing is wasted in her household. A Gauloise jaune smoulders away in a half-filled ashtray beside her. A glass of cheap scotch is within easy reach. Somewhere in the room there is a forgotten tumbler of milk and a cup of cooling coffee. Two bottles of Valstar beer, both empty, are on the floor under the desk. At twenty, when she was a junior at Barnard College living at home in New York City -- and just as liable to falling through the crust of the world as she is now -- Pat first wrote about thin ice: Suppose our food suddenly did not digest in our stomachs.

Suppose it lay like a lump of dough inside us and poisoned us. France, the culinary center of the Western World, means nothing to her: She thinks America's "Nixon" problem is gastric: Her idea of an attractive name for a cookbook is "Desperate Measures.

At this moment, she has put down her pen and begun to type on the coffee-colored Olympia Portable Deluxe typewriter that has accompanied her on all her restless travels since Its hardshell carrying case is pasted over with shipping labels from European countries.

Her typing style is distinctive: She uses only four or five fingers to strike the keys, she strikes them hard, and she strikes from above, like someone attacking the keyboard of a musical instrument. Her fingers appear to limp a little and their rhythm is syncopated. She could be playing a harpsichord. Search WorldCat Find items in libraries near you. Advanced Search Find a Library. Your list has reached the maximum number of items. Please create a new list with a new name; move some items to a new or existing list; or delete some items.

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