Patricia Highsmith could be an unpleasant, even nasty, woman. She never had a lasting romantic relationship and died, in 1995, alone, after alienating some friends and many lovers. Neighbors tell tales of her rants in late life against Jews and other minorities. She fed her cats better than she did her house guests, and sometimes hinted at preferring the more silent company.
Her characters are similarly vicious. Her most famous creation, Tom Ripley, kills without compunction. Her books are populated, in fact, with murderers, some guilt-ridden, some not. The women don’t fare much better, often portrayed as flighty, promiscuous, or both. Her creatures of both sexes are a dangerous bunch, ensnaring the innocent and guilty alike.
Yet there remains something appealing both about Highsmith and her unsettling books. This comes shining through Joan Schenkar’s new biography, The Talented Miss Highsmith, though at times the author seems to have little fondness for either. “Everything human was alien to her,” Schenkar declares on the first page. It’s an odd thing to say about a woman who grappled with depression, rejection, and alienation in her life, and conscience, sin, and alienation in her art—especially since the evidence is all over this overlong book. If to be human is, in part, to wonder what it is to be human, Highsmith was always human. The question of identity—specifically, how much of an individual’s identity is a response to society and hence subject to breakdown—was at the heart of her criminal
