The Talented Miss Highsmith (104 page)

5) Intellectual laziness. Unwilling to challenge self to utmost for the sheer joy of it on any puzzle or game, though she continually escapes life via games. Veers away from controversial matter once I broach it for mutual discussion.

6) Thought patterns that are rigid—on the Negro question; homosexuality; “respect for elders” people I call dull, etc. etc.

11.
CWA Marijane Meaker, 1 Feb. 2003.

12.
Diary 4, 7/31/43.

13.
Cahier 29, 11/1/67.

14.
Rolf Tietgens letter to PH, 7 Aug. 1969. Also see photographs of PH by Rolf Tietgens in illustrations.

15.
Diary 4, 6/21/43.

16.
Ibid., May 20, 1943.

17.
According to Fawcett comics expert Paul Hamerlinck, this dialect was later removed by Fawcett's executive editor, Will Lieberson. The only
Jasper
comic I have seen, a late one published in 1948, was couched in the president's, if not the King's, English.

18.
“Invitation to Death,” “Jap Buster Johnson,”
USA Comics
, no. 14, Fall 1944.

19.
“Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey,” Leslie Fiedler,
Partisan Review
15, June 1948.

20.
Desert Island Discs,
BBC4, 21 Apr. 1979.

21.
PH letters to Bettina Berch, 7 Jan. and 25 Sept. 1987.

22.
Diary 4, 8/19/43. Also 8/22/43.

23.
Ibid., 5/30/43.

24.
Ibid., 6/21/43.

25.
Ibid., 1/7/43.

26.
Cahier 9, PH transcription of high school journals.

27.
Diary 4, 6/13/43.

28.
Diary 5, 10/15/43.

29.
Diary 4, 6/6/43.

30.
Diary 5, 10/11/43.

31.
Ibid., 10/10–11/43.

32.
Diary 4, 6/6/43.

33.
Diary 5, 9/30/43.

34.
Ibid., 10/18/43.

35.
Diary 4, 9/19/43.

36.
Diary 5, 10/27/43.

37.
Ibid., Oct. 29–30, 1943.

38.
Ibid., 10/27/43.

39.
Ibid., 10/27/43.

40.
Diary 5, 10/15/43.

41.
Ibid., 10/25/43.

42.
Diary 5, various entries, fall 1943.

43.
Ibid., Oct. 11–17, 1943.

44.
Ibid., 11/13/43.

45.
Ibid., Oct. 11–17, 1943.

46.
CWA David Diamond, 18 Dec. 2004.

47.
Ibid.

48.
Ibid.

49.
Ethel Sturtevant letter no. 5, undated letters, 1962–68.

50.
PH, “My Life with Greta Garbo,” 1990.

51.
Ibid.

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.)