Writes Dwight Garner in "Patricia Highsmith Lived Extravagantly, and Took Copious Notes" (NYT). The book he's reviewing is "Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995."
November 9, 2021
"She was always half-broke. When you date women, she joked, there’s no man to grab the check...."
"If you are made nostalgic by the mention of defunct Manhattan bars and restaurants, this book will be like reading the liner notes to a Billie Holiday or Frank Sinatra album at midnight through a glass of bourbon.... 'Sex, to me, should be a religion,' Highsmith wrote. 'I have no other.... As long as beautiful women exist, who can be really depressed?'... She was a powerful and systematic drinker... 'The world and its martinis are mine!... I wonder if any moment surpasses that of the second martini at lunch, when the waiters are attentive, when all life, the future, the world seems good and gilded (it matters not at all whom one is with, male or female, yes or no)'.... Writers drink because 'they must change their identities a million times in their writing... This is tiring, but drinking does it automatically for them. One moment they are a king, the next a murderer, a jaded dilettante, a passionate and forsaken lover; other people actually prefer to stay the same person, stay on the same plane, all the time.... Without liquor I would have married a dull clod, Roger, and had what is called a normal life.'... She kept snails as pets, and would smuggle them through customs in her bra."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
23 comments:
"She was a powerful and systematic drinker... "
That line was stolen from Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men." He said it about Huey Long: "He was a powerful and systematic eater." It's just one of those lines that stick in your head. Reading that stolen line was like finding a bone in your piece of fish, you just sort of lose your appetite for the rest.
SHE doesn't seem happy
If sex was her religion, I would have liked to have met her.
"As long as beautiful women exist, who can be really depressed?" A man who wrote that line would be a pathetic figure.
The entire post seems like it could be clipped from Amor Towles, "Rules of Civility", right down to the Manhattan bars and multiple martinis.
I tried to read one of her novels once and it gave me a headache. I had the same reaction to Graham Greene’s novels. I seem to have that reaction to the works of alcoholics, before I even know they are alcoholics. I should try to read them again and try to figure out why that is.
I googled "He was a powerful and systematic eater" without the quotes and the first result was
"Abnormalities in the EEG power spectrum in bulimia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, and obesity: A systematic review"
With quotes, your post here is the only instance of that sentence since the exact quote is "who was ...", not "he was ...".
Hollywood needs to find the perfect guy who can play Ripley in a Netflix or HBO series. Matt Damon and John Malcovich didn't cut it. Dennis Hopper (in Wim Wenders The American Friend) was too sinister.
Heh. My father-in-law is named Roger. He's a good guy, though.
Honestly, this sounds like desperation. Of course nothing surpasses the second martini at lunch, because the rest of the day becomes a meaningless haze. The part about not caring who's with you as long as there's alcohol seems like profound loneliness.
And sure enough, her Wikipedia entry describes a life of depression, anger, and alcoholism, perhaps connected with being a lesbian in an intolerant age.
David,
Until you found a snail in her bra.
I've checked out some of her books from the library during the pandemic and "Strangers on a Train" has been lying on my nightstand, partially read, for over a month. I find her books to be OK, but dated.
I remember enjoying the first Ripley book a couple of decades ago. Perhaps I should reread that.
I have often felt there is a whole category of writers who are interesting to read ABOUT, but whose books are not worth reading.
For example, I enjoy books about Henry James, but can barely force myself to get through his short stories, let alone his novels.
Having read Joan Schenkar's biography of Highsmith, I think she clearly falls into this category. It's a marvelous read (the biography, I mean) though one would never have wanted to meet Highsmith or read her books.
Half broke?
You either have money (even ten cents) or you have none.
If you have none you are broke...
If you have just ten cents you are poor, unless you're six years old.
Then the world is your oyster...
Is that a snail in your bra or should I just turn up the heat?
Btw, I did an image search.
Save yourself the trouble. She looks like an alcoholic lesbian.
She's like a proto-Fran Liebowitz...
"All the Kings Men" was one of the most beautifully written books I can remember reading, of course it was a long time ago, and my tastes may have changed while the judgement persists. I should read it again, and when I do, which might not be for a while, I have to get to "Enderby" first, I will cop to it if the quote is not in there. Of course it would be funny that the line was rattling around in my head since college, were it not there.
I also got a kick out of it when Sideshow Bob called Homer a "trencherman," single-handedly raising the aggregate SAT score by some tiny amount for a couple of years.
“My New Year’s Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envys, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle — may they never give me peace.”
That in her mid-20s. Plus depressions, plus seven martinis, plus lovers committing suicide, plus friends becoming acquaintances. All for art, no doubt. Gentlemen, count yourself lucky she was lesbian, mostly.
The movie with Damon, Law, Paltrow and an indescribably goof Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of my favorite all-time movies.
She sounds boring. Also has any man ever written that “when the waiters are attentive” as some kind of shining example of happiness in their life? No. Because strong, confident people expect people to do their jobs. Only histrionic, desperate women expect someone to ignore them to the point that when they do their job it is notable. Sad.
I've talked to older writers and editors who knew here back in the day. They all agreed that she was the most loathsome human being they had ever met.
>>Hollywood needs to find the perfect guy who can play Ripley
Alain Delon presumably is no longer available.
--gpm
Is there something about the nature of the entertainment business— to which writers and artists assuredly belong in spite of any pretensions otherwise— that attracts the most brittle, freakish, damaged, worthless people in society towards it? Or does it take in normal people, and make them that way?
Is the long "gay moment" making lesbians boring?
Or were they always boring?
Or does society pretend they are boring because they make society nervous?
Post a Comment