The Talented Miss Highsmith
Page 85
52. Joan Juliet Buck, “A Terrifying Talent,” Observer Magazine, 20 Nov. 1977.
53. Bettina Berch interview with PH, 1987.
54. Diary 2, Feb. 7, 1942.
55. Ibid., Feb. 17, 1942.
56. Ibid., Apr. 5, 1942.
57. MCH letter to Marijane Meaker, undated (Collection Marijane Meaker).
58. Diary 1, July 23, 1941.
59. Diary 9, July 22, 1948.
60. Diary 8, 27 May 1947.
61. Diary 4, 24/6/43.
62. PH reading list from 1950.
63. Cahier 16, 9/4/47.
64. Cahier 33, 1/12/74.
65. PH personal library. The Art of Loving is inscribed from her parents for her birthday, 19 Jan. 1967.
66. PH letter to BKS, 13 Sept. 1983.
67. Cahier 24, 3/25/56.
68. After Dark, Channel 4, 18 June 1988.
69. Diary 4, 7/18/43.
70. Ibid., 28/6/43.
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid., 22/8/43
73. Diary 5, 7/11/43.
74. Ibid., Oct. 1943.
75. Ibid., 8/11/43.
13. Alter Ego: Part 4
1. Diary 5, 8/11/43.
2. Sybille Bedford, A Visit to Don Otavio (New York: Counterpoint, 2003), p. 286.
3. “I Got a Scheme,” interview of Saul Bellow by Philip Roth, New Yorker, 15 Apr. 2005.
4. Bedford, A Visit to Don Otavio, p. 286.
5. Ibid., p. 282.
6. Diary 9 (Mexico Diary), Dec. 1943.
7. Ibid., Dec. 1943–9 Mar. 1944.
8. Ibid., p. 27.
9. Ibid., 19 Jan. 1943.
10. Ibid., Dec. 1943–9 March 1944.
11. Ibid., Mar. 11, 1944.
12. PH, “In the Plaza,” Nothing That Meets the Eye. First draft written in April 1944.
13. PH, “The Car,” ibid. First draft written in March 1945, revised in December 1962.
14. Joan Kahn, PH’s editor at Harper & Brothers, suggested many such changes to her.
15. Cahier 23, 6/26/54 and 6/30/54.
16. Don Swaim interview of PH, Book Notes, CBS-Radio, New York, Oct. 1987.
17. Cahier 11, 3/25/44.
18. Ibid., 4/16/44.
19. Ibid., 4/14/44.
20. Ibid.
21. Cahier 8, 9/25/42.
22. Cahier 11, 4/14/44.
23. Francis Wyndham, “Sick of Psychopaths,” Sunday Times (London), 4 Nov. 1965.
24. Diary 2, Jan. 1942.
25. Cahier 9, Jan. 1, 1943.
26. Ibid., p. 1.
27. Dickie Greenleaf’s signet ring—the ring Tom pulls over his “scuffed knuckle” after he murders him and then wears forever after—is green. Pat knew about Oscar Wilde’s “great green scarab ring” from reading Frank Harris’s books about Oscar.
28. Cahier 11, 12/24/43.
29. In this extract from Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, written at exactly the same time she was asserting the contrary to Francis Wyndham, Pat admitted: The theme I have used over and over again in my novels is the relationship between two men, usually quite different in make-up, sometimes obviously the good and the evil…. [I]t was a friend, a newspaperman, who pointed it out to me…a man who had seen the manuscript of my first effort at twenty-two [The Click of the Shutting], the book that was never finished. This was about a rich, spoiled boy and a poor boy who wanted to be a painter. They were fifteen years old in the book. As if that weren’t enough, there were two minor characters, a tough athletic boy who seldom attended school (and then only to shock the school with things like the bloated corpse of a drowned dog…) and a puny clever boy who giggled a great deal and adored him and was always in his company. (p. 145)
30. Interview with E. L. Doctorow, Time, Feb. 26, 2006.
31. Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (New York: Viking Press, 1959), p. 1.
32. Cahier 8, 9/25/42.
33. Cahier 9, 12/19/42.
34. Ibid., 11/30/42.
35. Ibid., 12/29/42. “Gregory often amused himself before falling asleep, by finding the brief, fleeting sensations of being another person—someone of course he did not know—a face which was entirely out of his own mind.”
36. Margaretta K. Mitchell, Ruth Bernhard: Between Art & Life (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000), p. 75.
37. PH, The Click of the Shutting, manuscript, p. 138.
38. Ibid., p. 134.
39. Ibid., p. 170.
40. Ibid., p. 5.
41. Ibid., p. 4.
42. Ibid., p. 5.
43. Cahier 34, 12/17/76.
44. Ibid., 7/15/78.
45. Cahier 9, 11/23/42.
46. Ibid., 12/29/42.
47. PH, The Click of the Shutting, manuscript, p. 144.
48. Ibid., p. 67.
49. Ibid., p. 70.
50. Ibid., p. 217.
51. Ibid., p. 139.
52. Diary 9 (Mexico Diary), Wednesday, Mar. 15, 1944.
53. Ibid., Mar. 11, 1944.
54. Ibid., Monday, Mar. 13, 1944.
55. Ibid., Monday, Mar. 20, 1944.
56. Ibid.
57. Diary 2, Feb. 23, 1942.
58. PH letter to KKS, 12 May 1944.
59. Ibid.
60. CWA Dan Walton Coates, 22 Nov. 2003.
61. Cahier 1, undated 1938.
62. CWA Dan Walton Coates, 22 Nov. 2003.
63. Cahier 11, Sept. 29, 1944.
14. Alter Ego: Part 5
1. Jap Buster Johnson appeared in USA Comics nos. 6–15; All Select Comics nos. 2, 8, and 9; Complete Comics no. 2; and Kid Komics nos. 6 and 8–10. (Information provided by Dr. Michael J. Vassallo.)
2. CWA Vince Fago, 30 Nov. 2001.
3. Ibid., 28 Nov. 2001.
4. CWA Stan Lee via Roy Thomas, Nov. 29, 2001.
5. Jim Amash letter to the author, 10 April 2009, quoting his 2005 interview with the late Leon Lazarus.
6. CWA Will Eisner, 23 Dec. 2002.
7. The Whip first appeared in Flash Comics no. 1, in 1940.
8. CWA William Woolfolk, 15 Dec. 2001.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. PH letter to SH, 1 Sept. 1970.
12. CWA Elizabeth Hardwick, 12 Apr. 2002.
13. Roy Thomas, editor of Alter Ego, cites this as a letter to the editor by Pierce Rice, appearing in a mid-nineties issue of Robin Snyder’s The Comics, p. 56.
14. Ibid.
15. A remark made by Mickey Spillane to a British interviewer. When the interviewer asked if that’s how Spillane treated his wife, he replied: “We’re talking about fiction” (“Obituary, Mickey Spillane,” Guardian, 18 July 2006).
16. Ibid.
17. Cahier 22, 6/12/53.
18. CWA Vince Fago, 28 Nov. 2001.
19. Ibid., 30 Nov. 2001.
20. Ibid.
21. Who’s Who of American Comic Books, volume 2 (1974), is the volume that first mentions Patricia Highsmith.
22. PH letter to SH, 1 Sept. 1970.
23. PH letter to Anita Bryant, 13 May 1978.
24. CWA Jerry Bails, 3 Dec. 2002.
25. Ibid.; also see Who’s Who of American Comic Books.
15. Social Studies: Part 1
1. Cahier 3, 12/23/40. “Unfortunately, [Proust] wrote of an age just past, as an historian rather than a prophet…. A writer like Steinbeck…can write in the present, of the present, of people’s passions.”
2. Cahier 12, 4/6/45.
3. Ibid., 3/26/45.
4. Chart made by PH and inserted by her in Cahier 12, Apr. 1945.
5. Cahier 19, 11/23/49.
6. Ibid.
7. Cahier 4, 9/2/40.
8. Cahier 29, 7/17/68.
9. Ibid.
10. MCH telegram to PH (Collection Annebelle Potin).
11. SH letter to PH, 23 Aug. 1970.
12. PH letter to SH, 29 Aug. 1970.
13. Don Swaim interviews PH, Book Notes.
14. Cahier 13, 9/8/45.
15. Cahier 3, 10/30/1940.
&nb
sp; 16. Diary 4, May 31–June 6, 1943.
17. Cahier 9, PH transcription of high school notebooks, Oct. 18, 1937.
18. Diary 2, Wed. Apr. 8, 1942.
19. Eugene Walter, Milking the Moon (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001), p. 86.
20. Francis King, Oldie, “Angry Old Woman,” Sept. 2003.
21. Betty Curry letter to PH, 5 Nov. 1977.
22. CWA Betty Curry, 26 Aug. 2003.
23. Liz Smith, Natural Blonde (New York: Hyperion, 2000), p. 117.
24. Patricia Schartle Myrer letter to the author, 17 Feb. 2003.
25. Ibid.
26. CWA Caroline Besterman, 6 Nov. 2003.
27. Ibid., 19 Dec. 2003.
28. CWA Camilla Butterfield, 17 Dec. 2003.
29. Ibid.
30. Diary 8, Feb. 27, 1949.
31. CWA Karl Bissinger, 3 Dec. 2004.
32. Diary 2: Vendredi le 13 juin, 1941, “Berenice Abbot m’a invité à une soirée chez elle le vendredi prochain.”
33. Mitchell, Ruth Bernhard, p. 57.
34. Diary 2, Jan. 22, 1942.
35. Diary 1, summer and fall of 1941; diary 2, winter of 1942.
36. PH, The Talented Mr. Ripley, pp. 245–47.
37. Cahier 9, PH transcription of high school notebooks, Sept. 1938.
38. Ibid., 21 Dec. 1938.
39. Ibid., Aug. 24, 1939.
40. Anatole Broyard, Kafka Was the Rage (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), pp. 7–8.
41. Diary 1, June 13, 1941.
42. Mitchell, Ruth Bernard, p. 57.
43. Diary 3, 9 Aug. 1942.
44. Ibid.
45. Cahier 8, 11/11/1942.
46. Diary 5, May 26–27, 1943.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid., July 28, 1941.
49. Diary 1, July 6, 1941.
50. CWA Ruth Bernhard, 14 Feb. 2003.
51. PH letter to Bettina Berch, 22 Dec. 1991.
52. CWA Donald Windham, 30 June 2004.
53. Buffie Johnson interviewed by Romy Ashby, Goodie no. 3.
54. CWA Buffie Johnson, 14–16 Nov., 29 Nov., 1 Dec., 13 Dec. 2001; and 26 Apr., 30 Apr., 24 Dec. 2002; 26 Aug. 2003; and undated memoirs.
55. Diary 1, July 5, 1941.
56. Diary 2, June 30, 1942.
57. Ibid., Feb. 9, 1942.
58. CWA Sybille Bedford, 16 June 2005.
59. Sybille Bedford, Quicksands: A Memoir (New York: Counterpoint, 2005), p. 124.
60. CWA Daniel Bell, 18 Aug. 2003.
61. MCH letter to Marijane Meaker, “Friday AM, 11th” (no other date).
62. MCH letter to PH, dated “Tues AM.”
63. Diary 4, Aug. 16–22, 1943.
64. Diary 2, Jan. 10, 1942.
65. Ibid., Feb. 3, 1942.
66. PH letter to SH, 1 Sept. 1970.
67. Diary 8, Oct. 1947.
68. Hortense Calisher, 26 Feb. 2003, at the Yaddo benefit honoring PH.
69. Diary 2, Feb. 10, 1942.
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid., June 4, 1942.
72. Ibid., June 6, 1942.
73. CWA Dorothy Wheelock Edson, 7 June 2004.
74. Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched with Fire (New York: Free Press, 1993), p. 36.
75. CWA Phillip Lloyd Powell, 8 Feb. 2003.
76. Ibid.
77. CWA Heather Chasen, 22 Sept. 2002.
78. Ibid.
79. Christian Gonzalez, “Jeanne Moreau: La Vie Me Nourris,” Figaro Madame, July 2004.
80. CWA Phyllis Nagy, 26 June 2002.
81. PH letter to DOC, 14 Oct. 1977.
82. CWA Vivien De Bernardi, 15 Aug. 2002.
83. CWA Don Coates, 9 Dec. 2005.
84. Shirley Jackson, The Lottery—or, The Adventures of James Harris (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1949).
85. Diary 4, June 24, 1943.
86. Diary 8, Mar. 17, 1949.
87. Author’s note: Before her death in 2001, I saw Fanny Brennan’s entire current oeuvre, perhaps sixty or seventy paintings, hanging in her coat closet in New York. The paintings were so small that they fit comfortably in the tiny closet, which had been kitted out as a miniature art gallery.
88. PH letter to Lee Israel, 19 Mar. 1974.
89. Cahier 36, 5/16/88.
90. Ibid.
91. CWA Christa Maerker, 27 July 2004.
92. Ibid.
93. CWA Betty Comden, 25 Aug. 2003.
94. Cahier 16, 12/9/47.
95. Ibid., 12/28/47.
96. Diary 8, May 14, 1947.
97. Diary 10, May 8, 1950.
98. Diary 8, May 27, 1947.
99. PH letter to Millicent Dillon, 5 June 1977 (HRC).
100. Diary 8, 5/27/47.
101. Drawing of Jane Bowles by PH, undated.
102. Diary 10, Wed., Nov. 1950.
103. PH letter to Millicent Dillon, 5 June 1977 (HRC).
104. Ibid.
105. Ibid.
106. Diary 8, May 13, 1947.
107. Diary 10, August 16, 1950.
108. Diary 8, May 15–16, 1947.
109. Nancy Mitford letter to Evelyn Waugh, 3 Dec. 1962. Quoted in The Letters of Nancy Mitford & Evelyn Waugh, ed. Charlotte Mosley (London: Sceptre, 1997), p. 469.
110. Leo Lerman, The Grand Surprise (New York: Knopf, 2007), pp. 425–6.
111. Ibid., p. 329.
112. Ibid., p. 202.
113. Grey Foy, speaking about Leo Lerman’s salon in Truman Capote, George Plimpton, ed. (New York: Anchor Books, 1997) p. 44.
114. PH letter to Millicent Dillon, 5 June 1977 (HRC).
115. Diary 10, Mar. 17, 1950.
116. Diary 8, Jan. 25, 1948.
117. Ibid., Feb. 13, 1948.
118. Ibid., Feb. 21, 1948.
119. Ibid., Feb. 26, 1948.
120. Ibid., Feb. 29, 1948.
121. Diary 9, 11/3/48.
122. Gerald Clarke, ed., Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 53.
123. CWA Donald Windham, 30 June 2004.
124. Truman Capote letter to Elizabeth Ames, 2 Mar. 1948 (NYPL).
125. Diary 9, 5/2/48.
126. PH, Proposed Snail Interview (with Herself), undated.
127. Diary 8, Mar. 6, 1948.
128. PH letter to KKS, 2 June 1948.
129. PH letter to KKS, 30 June 1964.
16. Social Studies: Part 2
1. MCH letter to Miss Townsend, 27 Apr. 1948.
2. PH letter to KKS, 2 June 1948.
3. Diary 8, May 11–30, 1948.
4. Ibid., May 11, 1948.
5. There is no evidence in Pat’s Yaddo file that she applied to Yaddo again, but Pat writes in her diary that both she and Marc Brandel had their applications for another residency rejected. She thought her public use of alcohol and their sleeping together had something to do with the rejections.
6. Cahier 15, 16/6/48.
7. Diary 8, July 5, 1948.
8. Letter PH to KKS, 2 June 1948.
9. CWA Phyllis Nagy, 13 Oct. 2002.
10. Cahier 17, 6/21/48.
11. Cahier 17, 5/19/48.
12. CWA Ruda Brandel Dauphin, 31 Jan. 2009.
13. Cahier 17, 19/5/48.
14. Diary 8, June 17, 1948.
15. Ibid., Dec. 22, 1947.
16. Cahier 17, 7/25/48.
17. PH, Strangers on a Train, p. 181.
18. Ibid., p. 180.
19. Ibid., p. 274.
20. Bruno, who reads only comic books and detective stories and is obsessed with creating “perfect crimes,” enters Guy Haines’s nightmares as a creature who looks a lot like the Superhero Batman. Guy dreams of Bruno as “a tall figure in a great cape like a bat’s wing” who climbs up the side of his house and “springs” into his room. Before trying to throttle him, Guy asks, “‘Who are you?’ ‘You,’ Bruno answer[s] finally” (PH, Strangers on a Train, p. 181).
And Bruno imagines himself joined to Guy, two heroes flying through the sky: “He longed for Guy to be with him now. He would cl
asp Guy’s hand, and to hell with the rest of the world! Their feats were unparalleled! Like a sweep across the sky! Like two streaks of red fire that came and disappeared so fast, everybody stood wondering if they really had seen them” (ibid., p. 167).
“Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s Superman” is the catchphrase that Bruno’s fantasy would have suggested to many mid-century Americans—no matter how sophisticated their literary tastes. Beginning in 1940, that phrase introduced the radio program taken from the Superman comic books (and then was used in the comic books themselves), and it was as widespread and accessible as the phrase “Ripley’s Believe It or Not”—another locution from America’s popular culture which would find its way into a Highsmith novel.
21. PH, Strangers on a Train (New York: Bantam Books, 1951), p. 257.
22. Diary 9, Feb. 21–28, 1949.
23. Ibid., May–June 1948.
24. PH letter to SH, 1 Sept. 1970.
25. Ibid.
26. Diary 9, Sept. 30, 1948.
27. Ibid., Nov. 14–25, 1948.
28. Pat, exercising a bit of poetic license in the Afterword she finally wrote for The Price of Salt, telescoped the time frame of the effects of meeting Kathleen Senn, the woman who inspired the plot of The Price of Salt, and the outbreak of chicken pox she suffered while making her first notes for that novel. In fact, she met Senn on 8 December and didn’t come down with chicken pox until ten or twelve days later. And it’s not entirely clear when she actually scribbled the plot of The Price of Salt down in her notes; perhaps it wasn’t the precise day she met Mrs. Senn. But the high-fever part was true—and her inspiration for the novel came about, metaphorically at least, just as she said.
29. Diary 9, Dec. 22–29, 1948.
30. Edmund Bergler, “The Myth of a New National Disease: Homosexuality and the Kinsey Report,” Psychiatric Quarterly 22 (January 1948).
31. Diary 9, Dec. 22, 1948.
32. PH letter to SH, 29 Aug. 1970.
33. Diary 9, Jan. 11, 1949.
34. PH letter to SH, 29 Aug. 1970.
35. Diary 9, Jan. 27, 1949 (fourteenth visit to psychoanalyst).
36. Ibid., Mar. 1, 1949.
37. Ibid., Feb. 22 and 24, 1949.
38. Ibid., 1949 (twenty-second, twenty-fourth, twenty-ninth visits).
39. Ibid., May 3, 1949.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., May 6, 1949.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., May 18, 1949 (forty-fifth visit).
44. Ibid., May 24, 1949 (forty-seventh visit).
17. Les Girls: Part 1
1. “A heavy rain dissolved yesterday most of the 4-inch snowfall of Wednesday and left many slushy thoroughfares here and in the suburbs.” “The Weather Bureau,” New York Times, 12–17 Dec. 1948.