The Talented Miss Highsmith
The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith
Published on 4. January 2011
Book
Paperback/Softback
704 pages
978-0-312-36381-9 (ISBN)
Description
Patricia Highsmith, one of the greatest writers of 20th Century American fiction, had a life as darkly compelling as that of her favourite "hero-criminal," the talented Tom Ripley. Joan Schenkar maps out this richly bizarre life from her birth in Texas to Hitchcock's filming of her first novel, "Strangers On a Train", to her long, strange, self-exile in Europe. We see her as a secret writer for the comics, a brilliant creator of disturbing fictions, and an erotic predator with dozens of women (and a few good men) on her love list. "The Talented Miss Highsmith" is the first literary biography with access to Highsmith's whole story: her closest friends, her oeuvre, her archives. It's a compulsive page-turner unlike any other, a book worthy of Highsmith herself.
Reviews / Votes
"This is a biography of clarity and style. A model of its kind.... Schenkar's writing is witty, sharp and light-handed." - The New York Times Book Review "Both dazzling and definitive... A volume as original as its contemptible, miserable, irresistible subject." - Los Angeles Times"More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 226 mm
Width: 153 mm
Thickness: 50 mm
Weight
968 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-312-36381-9 (9780312363819)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Joan Schenkar is the author of Truly Wilde: The Unsettling Story of Dolly Wilde as well as a collection of plays, Signs of Life: 6 Comedies of Menace. She lives in Paris and Greenwich Village.