The Talented Miss Highsmith (103 page)

100.
CWA Marion Aboudaram, 23 Sept. 2002.

101.
PH letter to Elby Skattebol, 9 Jan. 1983.

102.
Cahier 11, 10/18/42.

103.
Cahier 8, 9/25/42.

104.
Cahier 23, 2/14/55.

105.
Diary 6, 28 Dec. 1944.

106.
Cahier 18, 8/27/49.

107.
PH letter to KKS, 14 June 1952.

108.
Ibid.

109.
PH,
The Talented Mr. Ripley
(New York: Vintage, 1992), p. 290.

110.
CWA Everett Ray Kinstler, 10 July 2004.

111.
Ibid., 20 Sept. 2004.

11. Alter Ego: Part 2

1.
CWA Marijane Meaker, 5 Dec. 2001.

2.
CWA Everett Ray Kinstler, 10 July 2004.

3.
PH letter to “Elby,” 15 June 1969.

4.
Ibid.

5.
CWA Barbara Roett, 18 May 2003.

6.
PH letter to “Elby,” 15 June 1969.

7.
Cahier 27, 7/14/63.

8.
Jim Amash letter to the author, 4 Dec. 2004.

9.
CWA Gerard Albert, 15 Jan. 2005.

10.
Diary 4, 24/8/43.

11.
CWA Kingsley Skattebol, 20 May 2002.

12.
CWA Gerald Albert, 15 Jan. 2002.

13.
Ibid.

14.
Ibid.

15.
Diary entries, June 1949.

16.
Diary entries, Oct. 1949.

17.
CWA Jim Amash, 25 Feb. 2007.

18.
Trina Robbins's influential book,
The Great Women Cartoonists
, traces the women who made a career in the business.

19.
Gerard Jones,
Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book
(New York: Basic, Books, 2004), p. 57, and CWA, Michael Feldman, comics historian and a source for
Men of Tomorrow,
20 Sept. 2004.

20.
James R. Mellow,
Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company
(New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974), p. 393.

21.
Arie Kaplan, “How the Jews Created the Comic Book Industry,”
Reform Judaism Magazine
32, no. 1. (Fall 2003).

22.
CWA Jim Amash.

23.
Gerard Jones,
Men of Tomorrow
, p. 237. Figures provided by Michael Feldman.

24.
CWA Jim Amash.

25.
Will Murray letter to the author, 6 Aug. 2002.

26.
Cahier 30, 12/16/68.

27.
CWA Jim Amash, also Steven Rowe, 4 Dec. 2001.

28.
Along these same lines is the disappearance of the workbooks of Pat's Sangor-Pines shop editor, Richard E. Hughes, workbooks whose information would make an important addition to the history of the comics and to this biography. In his workbooks, Hughes meticulously registered both the assignments he gave and the artists and writers who carried them out. On his death, Hughes's widow passed the workbooks on to his alma mater in New Jersey. In an episode Highsmith herself might have imagined, the university library became a “sick building” and the institution “deaccessioned” many of its holdings—including Hughes's workbooks, which were sold to a man who does not live in the United States and did not acknowledge to the author his ownership of the workbooks. The history of the American comic book continues to be plagued by incidents like this one.

29.
Comics companies changed their names as frequently as they churned out different Superheroes; thus, Mr. Hughes might be editing comics for Cinema, Better/Standard, or ACG, amongst others, all under the umbrella of the Sangor-Pines shop, which provided the various companies with complete, camera-ready art.

30.
Kaplan, “How the Jews Created the Comic Book Industry.”

31.
Ibid.

32.
Don Swaim interviews PH,
Book Notes
, WCBS-Radio, New York, Oct. 1987.

33.
Angelo S. Rappoport,
The Folklore of the Jews
(London: Soncino Press, 1937), pp. 195–203.

34.
Kaplan, “How the Jews Created the Comic Book Industry.”

35.
Jules Feiffer, quoted in the exhibition
Masters of American Comics
, at the Jewish Museum, New York City, Sept. 15, 2006–Jan. 28, 2007.

36.
Umberto Eco's useful term in his foreword to Will Eisner's last book,
The Plot: the Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2005).

37.
Diary 10, Friday, 6/16/50.

38.
Cahier 23, 10/1/54.

39.
Cahier 23, 2/14/55.

40.
Ripley's triumph is the opposite of the destiny of Raskolnikov, Dostoyevsky's surly graduate student with a Napoleonic complex, whose
acte gratuite
in
Crime and Punishment
was one of Pat's favorite crimes. But Raskolnikov's murders do not transform him into the superman of his dreams; they lead to the pursuit, the confession, and the Christian redemption which Dostoyevsky insisted was his real point in writing
Crime and Punishment
. Modern readers of
Crime and Punishment
usually overlook the Christian themes in the novel because the suspenseful deployment of Raskolnikov's guilt (Pat thought Dostoyevsky should be considered a suspense writer) is so much more compellingly written than the sullen student's eight-year conversion to Christianity in dreary Siberia by Sonia, the faithful prostitute with the golden heart.
Pat also made Ripley's fate the reverse of Lambert Strether's, the “ambassador” in Henry James's eponymous novel. Strether must take nothing for himself, must “fail” as an ambassador, in order to do the right thing, while Ripley escapes failure by only doing the wrong thing. Ripley's operating principle—winner take all—is Pat's version of Strether's famous advice to Little Bilham: “Live all you can.”

41.
Diary 4, 6/28/43.

42.
Diary, Apr. 14, 1949.

43.
All of these, according to her multiple diary entries, were Superhero titles Pat wrote for in the 1940s.

44.
Bettina Berch interview with PH, 1984, unpublished.

45.
Ibid.

46.
Don Swaim interviews PH,
Book Notes
, WCBS-Radio, Oct. 1987.

47.
“Uncertain Treasure,”
Home and Food
vol. 6, no. 21 (August 1943).

48.
Diary 4, 3/25/1943.

49.
Gerard Jones,
Men of Tomorrow
, p. 237.

50.
PH, “Primroses Are Pink” published in the Fall 1937 issue of the Julia Richman High School literary magazine, the
Bluebird.

51.
Cahier 4, 8/25/40.

52.
Don Swaim interviews PH,
Book Notes
, WCBS-Radio, New York, Oct. 1987.

53.
Cahier 9, 12/19/42.

54.
Real Life Comics
no. 13.

55.
Real Life Comics
no. 18.

56.
PH's personal library at SLA; translations from the Russian are by Constance Garnett.

57.
Diary 3, 6 Jan. 1943.

58.
Note from
Real Life Comics
editor “CSS,” 1/2/46, pasted into Diary 6.

59.
Letter from “LHS,” 5/13/46, pasted into Diary 7.

60.
Diary 4, May 14, 1943.

61.
Interview with Bob Oksner by Jim Amash, 4 Dec. 2004 (Collection Jim Amash).

62.
CWA Gerald Albert, 15 Jan. 2002.

63.
Cahier 11, 10/2/44.

64.
Cahier 17, 2/17/48.

65.
Diary 17, Nov. 25, 1990.

66.
CWA KKS, 11 June 2004.

67.
CWA KKS, 21 Apr. 2002.

68.
Diary 2, Jan.–Aug. 1942.

69.
Diary 4, 7/8/43.

70.
Diary 3, Jan. 1943.

71.
Ibid., Jan. 8, 1943.

72.
Numerous diary entries, 1940s.

73.
Terry Gross interviews Stan Lee,
Fresh Air,
NPR, 4 June 2002.

74.
All these items can be seen in the Highsmith Archives at the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern, Switzerland.

75.
Notebook and two lists, undated, private collection.

76.
Cahier 1, Aug. 21, 1939.

77.
Drawing of “Golden Arrow,” private collection.

78.
PH letter to Lil Picard, 20 Feb. 1969 (UIL).

79.
Andrew Wilson,
Beautiful Shadow
(London: Bloomsbury, 2003), p. 286.

80.
CWA Heather Chasen, 22 Sept. 2002.

81.
Cahier 14, 12/18/46.

82.
Many comics writers had been pulp writers themselves “and liked the comics even less than they liked the pulps, but needed the comics work because pulps were dying” (CWA Jim Amash).

83.
Diary 9, Apr. 7, 1948.

12. Alter Ego: Part 3

1.
Westchester County Surrogate Court, adoption papers for Mary Patricia Plangman, filed November 1946.

2.
Ibid.

3.
CWA Everett Ray Kinstler, 10 July 2004.

4.
Diary 2, Jan. 3, 1942.

5.
CWA Don Coates, 20 Apr. 2002.

6.
MCH letter to PH, undated.

7.
Diary 10, Aug. 10, 1950.

8.
Ibid.

9.
Ibid.

10.
Ibid.

1) Constant self-consciousness—visual and mental—“What does the world—my relatives, etc. etc. think of me?”

2) Uncoordinated attitudes—M[ary] B[aker] Eddy and spirituality vs. love of show, e.g. when she goes to Texas, she intends to “look like the money.” Yet she will ridicule anyone who avowedly sets his standards by money.

3) Blank, vague expression when she flatly says something palliative about a situation I know fully—the economic situation at home.
Refusal to face facts
—to speak forthrightly and seriously on matters both of us know about.

4) Wrongly placed consideration for others—carrying dishes 2 ft. further toward kitchen at the Minots.