BEAUTIFUL SHADOW: A LIFE OF PATRICIA HIGHSMITH by Andrew Wilson
About
25 years ago, I packed a copy of SLOWLY, SLOWLY IN THE WIND, a short
story collection by Patricia Highsmith, to read on vacation. Halfway
through the book, however, I had to stop reading--the sense of unease,
even dread, evoked by the stories was ruining my holiday. Eventually,
I got around to reading more of Highsmith's work--both short stories
and novels--and found her writing interesting and inventive, but it
never lost its power to ignite foreboding; I cannot say that I've ever
found Highsmith a comfortable writer. And
yet--there's something there, something that makes me keep reading,
keep wanting to discover what happens next, even when I know the
outcome will almost always be awful. Highsmith is a writer I can read only in daylight--never just before bedtime--and always with the lights on.
Andrew Wilson's BEAUTIFUL SHADOW (the title is the English translation of Belle Ombre,
the name of the fictional Tom Ripley's French home) is a warts-and-all
biography of the writer capable of creating that sense of disquiet. Making
great use of Highsmith's trove of letters, journals, and other material
that she collectively referred to as her "cahiers," Wilson
attempts to get to the heart of Highsmith, a woman of whom Otto Penzler
once observed, "She was a mean, hard, cruel, unlovable, unloving
person. I could never penetrate how any human being could be that relentlessly ugly."
In this book, Highsmith doesn't come across as a very
approachable person, but one certainly gains a better understanding of
why Highsmith was the way she was and why she wrote the way she did.
Born in Fort Worth in 1921, Highsmith's upbringing was tumultuous: Her
parents divorced before she was born, her mother remarried three years
later, and it was this husband, Stanley Highsmith, who gave Patricia the
last name she had for the rest of her life. Highsmith
never liked her step-father and never resolved the difficult
relationship she had with her mother (who would sometimes claim she
tried to abort Patricia by drinking turpentine during her pregnancy). The
cruelty of their love-hate dynamic expressed itself in a number of
Highsmith's dark stories of bad children and even worse parents. Frequently overlooked and unwanted, Highsmith was moved
from Texas to New York and back to Texas again, living first with her
mother and step-father and then with her grandmother. She was not a happy child, but she loved to read and made great use of her grandmother's library. She
was also a writer from an early age--even at eight years old she was
writing little sketches about the hidden lives of supposedly "normal"
friends and neighbors. This would be a major theme throughout all of her work: The juxtaposition of a person's public facade against their private desires.
After
graduating from Barnard College in 1942, Highsmith worked for comic
book syndicates (she was one of the first women to write for the comics)
while she spent her spare time writing and developing her own style. She eventually spent time at the Yaddo writer's colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. It
was here that Highsmith wrote STRANGERS ON A TRAIN which was published
in 1950 and provided her with her first major success, especially when
it was adapted for film by Alfred Hitchcock the following year. She was fortunate that success came early. This permitted her to spend the rest
of her life writing without needing an additional source of income.
Highsmith's
popularity grew (especially in Europe) and the Ripley novels (five in
all, published over a 36-year period) cemented her status. Tom
Ripley, outwardly charming, inwardly a cold-blooded killer without
conscience or compunction when it comes to protecting himself,
personifies Highsmith's theme of the hidden interior life of people who
appear quite affable on the surface. Highsmith herself was not immune from this dichotomy. She
presented herself as an animal lover, a gourmet cook, and a good
friend, when in actuality she alternately smothered and neglected her
cats, was an atrocious cook who rarely ate (she had a
drinking problem which only got worse as she aged and she always
preferred drinking to eating), and was a terrible friend. None
of her relationships (sexual or platonic, with men or with women)
lasted very long because of her rages, unwillingness to compromise, and
unreasonable demands.
If
I have one problem with this biography, it is that is takes more than
300 pages before there is any mention that Highsmith may have suffered
from undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome or another form of high-functioning
autism, and even then the comment is made in an offhand way by one of
Highsmith's acquaintances and is not really examined at all by Wilson. Having
an Asperger's child myself (hopefully one who has been giving a more
loving and secure home life than Highsmith received), and based on
evidence of Highsmith's inability to relate to others and her social
isolation, I think it's a very real possibility that Highsmith was
functionally autistic and that idea should have been considered and
explored much
earlier in the book. It's very
likely that someone with an autism spectrum disorder raised in the
dysfunction and emotional deprivation of Highsmith's early life might
easily evolve into the misanthropic and disassociative person that
Highsmith became. As one of her
friends observed, it was a good thing Highsmith could write, without
that outlet she might have been committed to a mental institution. That,
despite her alienating personality and worsening alcoholism, Highsmith
could continue to produce quality work is an indication of her
discipline (when it came to writing) and her undeniable talent--although
some of the odd, violent, and unpleasant imagery served up by that
talent may give one pause..
Highsmith's last years were plagued by ill-health and on-going self-imposed separation from those who wanted to help her. In
addition, her nasty vein of racial prejudice and an almost demented
anti-semtism began to disgust even the most tolerant of her
acquaintances. Highsmith died of
cancer in 1995 (outliving her mother by only four years), leaving the
bulk of her estate to the Yaddo writer's colony. Several years after her death, the film version of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" spiked renewed interest in her writing. She left behind a body of tense, uncomfortable, yet strangely
hypnotic work and enough ancillary material to allow Andrew Wilson to fashion this thorough and thoughtful biography.
Charlie Stella reviews the same book right here.
