The Talented Miss Highsmith (94 page)

 

1948.
Pat meets Truman Capote during one of her visits to Leo Lerman's Sunday evening salons, and Capote recommends her to Yaddo, the artists' colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. Pat spends two months there, drinking heavily, flirting successfully, and doing serious work on
Strangers on a Train
. Chester Himes has the room across the hall, Flannery O'Connor is also in residence, and so is the British novelist Marc Brandel, who becomes Pat's on-again-off-again fiancé.

 

1948.
November: Pat enters psychoanalysis (her friend the composer David Diamond has recommended two analysts) for six months because of her homosexuality and her ambivalance about marrying Marc Brandel. Though Dr. Eva Klein's Freudian therapy presents her with some new perceptions (“I am acting out that with which my mother served me—the loving and leaving pattern, the basic heartlessness & lack of sympathy”), Pat soon rebels against Dr. Klein's conclusions, and when the doctor suggests that she join group therapy with some “married women who are latent homosexuals,” the end is near. Pat remarks of the married women: “Perhaps I shall amuse myself by seducing a couple of them.”

 

1948.
8 December: Mrs. E. R. Senn, wife of a wealthy executive from New Jersey, buys a doll from Pat, who is temporarily employed behind the toy counter at Bloomingdale's department store. This “two or three minute” meeting becomes the “germ” for
The Price of Salt
. Pat goes home, love-struck, and writes up the entire plot in one sitting, aided by a high fever and a case of chicken pox. She never meets Mrs. Senn again.

 

1949.
Spring: Pat sails to Europe, her first trip to London, Paris, Marseille, Italy. In London, Pat falls in love with Kathryn Hamill Cohen, the psychiatrist-wife of her London publisher, and manages several other adventures as well. In Marseille, she visits one of Mother Mary's young “protegés,” Jean David, called “Jeannot,” an aspiring artist-turned-cartoonist. A flirtation ensues. Jeannot had been a guest of the Highsmiths in New York, invited because, after seeing one of Mary's illustrations in a magazine, he wrote to Mary from France. Pat continues to be an
ami de maison
in Jeannot's family.

 

1950.
Pat works on the novel that will become
The Price of Salt
and writes the first of what will be many reviews and articles: a highly favorable critique of Theodora (Roosevelt) Keogh's
Meg,
a New York novel about a preadolescent girl who has many of Pat's own childhood characteristics—including a fascination with knives and a precocious interest in adults. Pat meets and befriends the Austrian Jewish émigré writer and adventurer Arthur Koestler.
    15 March:
Strangers on a Train
is published.

 

1951.
The Price of Salt
is rejected by Harper & Brothers, but published in May of 1952 by Coward-McCann. Pat goes to Paris, London, back to Paris, then Rome, then travels from Rome to Naples with Natalia Danesi Murray, Janet Flanner's lover, then to Florence and Venice—where, at Peggy Guggenheim's palace, Somerset Maugham mixes her a perfect martini. She goes on to Munich, where she polishes
The Price of Salt
for publication and works on her four-hundred-page “lost” novel, now called
The Sleepless Night,
but later titled
The Traffic of Jacob's Ladder.
    Alfred Hitchcock finishes his film of
Strangers on a Train
(he buys the book for $6,800 plus a bonus of $700), starring Farley Granger, Robert Walker, Ruth Roman, and his daughter, Patricia Hitchcock. (In 1958, Pat told her editor Joan Kahn that the Hitchcock contract for
Strangers on a Train
was lost, mistakenly thrown out by a cleaner at the A. S. Lyons office, where her agent Margot Johnson worked.) Hitchcock's version of the transaction: he disguised his name and voice when telephoning Margot Johnson so he could get the book for less money. But Margot Johnson's records indicate that she knew she was dealing with Alfred Hitchcock. Raymond Chandler, then Czenzi Ormonde, are Hitchcock's scriptwriters. Chandler finds the book's plot unworkable and says it drives him crazy. He is fired. Robert Walker, the actor who plays Bruno, dies shortly after the film is released.

 

1951.
Fall: Pat meets Ellen Blumenthal Hill in Munich and falls in love. Their affair lasts four years, and goes through many phases, during which they traverse much of Europe, some of America, and quite a bit of Mexico. Their quarrelling friendship lasts until 1988, and Pat moves to Switzerland in the early 1980s to be near Ellen Hill.

 

1952.
Ellen Hill attempts suicide after reading Pat's diary comments about her. The William Bradley Agency begins to represent Pat in Europe; the legendary Mme Jenny Bradley becomes her agent.

 

1952.
The Traffic of Jacob's Ladder
is rejected by both Harper & Brothers and Coward-McCann. The manuscript, except for ten final, awkwardly written pages, vanishes later in the 1950s: “Some have said,” Pat wrote, [it was rejected because of] the triteness of its ideas.”
    May.
The Price of Salt
is published by Coward-McCann. Pat insists on publishing it under a pseudonym, Claire Morgan.
    Summer: While travelling with Ellen Hill, Pat begins
The Blunderer
, based on her already “poisoned” relations with Ellen Hill. It circles around the theme of one man, Walter Stackhouse, who is inspired by the murderous act of another man. Like Pat, the novel's hero, Walter, takes notes on the unequal relations between pairs of male friends, one strong, one weak. Pat kills Ellen off fictionally—a suicide—in the character of Walter's wife.
    From the balcony of her room in the Albergo Mirimare in Positano, Italy, Pat sees, at six o'clock one morning, a young man “in shorts and sandals,” with black hair, walking on the beach. His separation from all context intrigues her, and he becomes one of the “germs” for Tom Ripley. She pays an unsatisfactory visit to W. H. Auden, who is staying near Positano, and eventually sends him a copy of
Strangers on a Train
. He writes her a not entirely favorable critique from his apartment on Cornelia Street in New York City.

 

1953.
July: Ellen Hill tries suicide again in Pat's presence, and Pat walks out of the apartment. Ellen survives and they separate. Pat finds several girlfriends in New York, amongst them a twenty-eight-year-old blonde, Lynn Roth, who wants to be an actress and is one of “Pat's types.”
    By September Pat is in Fort Worth, where she works on
The Blunderer
until January 1954. She stays first at her uncle Claude's apartment-hotel and then at her cousin Millie Alford's, and continues to work on
The Blunderer
. She is still calling the novel
The Man in the Queue
and
A Deadly Innocence
and gives it its final title in November 1953, when she finishes the first draft. She is drinking heavily.

 

1954–55.
Summer 1954: Pat rents a cottage from an undertaker in Lenox, Massachusetts. She begins
The Talented Mr. Ripley
—two of its early titles are
The Pursuit of Evil
and
The Thrill Boys
—reading Tocqueville's
Democracy in America
in preparation.
    September: She reunites with Ellen Hill and begins to write the second part of
Ripley
in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she lives with Ellen. December: Pat and Ellen and Ellen's French poodle (Pat kills a similarly named poodle in
A Dog's Ransom
) drive down through Mexico, arguing from El Paso to Acapulco and back again. Once again, her quarrelsome relations with Ellen produce the nerves of an excellent novel,
Deep Water
(published in 1958). “I want to explore the diseases produced by sexual repression,” Pat writes about
Deep Water
. She does so.
    Pat sends a copy of the manuscript version of
The Talented Mr. Ripley
to grandmother Willie Mae; Willie Mae dies on 5 February 1955 and the manuscript is lost. Before the end of 1955, Pat and Ellen separate, and Pat moves back to her apartment on East Fifty-sixth Street in Manhattan.
   
The Talented Mr. Ripley
is published by Coward-McCann in New York in December 1955. Pat will later make many remarks that allow her to be identified with Tom Ripley: “Pat H, alias Ripley,” “I often felt that Ripley was writing it,” etc.

 

1955.
She begins
The Dog in the Manger,
published as
Deep Water
in 1957. She shares with its pathological hero a fascination with snails.

 

1956.
June: Pat starts to make notes for
A Game for the Living.
She gives up her apartment at 356 East Fifty-sixth Street after thirteen years.

 

1956–58.
She falls in love with an advertising copywriter, Doris, and goes to live with her in Snedens Landing. They write a rhyming book for children,
Miranda the Panda Is on the Veranda,
a book which later makes Janet Flanner “wince.” Pat does the illustrations and dedicates the book to Mary Highsmith.

 

1957.
Le Grand Prix de la littérature policière is awarded to Pat for the French edition of
The Talented Mr. Ripley
, published by Calmann-Lévy. Pat publishes her first story in
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
, “The Perfect Alibi.”

 

1958.
Pat joins the choir of a small Presbyterian church in Palisades, New York. She has been writing fervently about Jesus Christ for most of her life—and she continues the argument she started with God when she was in her twenties.
    Summer: She begins, at Doris's suggestion, to draft a novel about “a man who creates a second character” and lives a second life. It will become
This Sweet Sickness
. While continuing to live with Doris, she begins a clandestine affair with Mary Ronin, a commercial artist who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with another woman. Her fantasies about Mary Ronin pour into her manuscript. Pat and Doris move to Sparkill, New York, in September, but by the end of the year their relationship is over. Pat moves back to New York alone, to 75 Irving Place, in December, just across the street from Pete's Tavern. She continues to see Mary Ronin.
    Special Award from the Mystery Writers of America for
The Talented Mr. Ripley
.

 

1958.
A Game for the Living,
her much revised and awkwardly constructed Mexican novel, is published by Harper & Brothers, In May, she suggests herself as the godmother for her friend Kingsley's daughter: “Let me know how you feel about my presenting the new first born with a Bible. After all, it
is
traditional.” Pat leaves Margot Johnson's literary agency (A. S. Lyons) and signs with Patricia Schartle (later Myrer), then a partner in Constance Smith Associates. Schartle represents her for the next twenty years.

 

1959.
Pat writes
This Sweet Sickness,
using her feelings for Mary Ronin as the inspiration for the psychopath David Kelsey's delusions about the married woman he wants to marry, the woman for whom he buys a house and constructs a second identity. Again, Pat dedicates the book to Mary Highsmith.
    Mme Jenny Bradley, Pat's European agent, sells the rights to
The Talented Mr. Ripley
to Robert and Raymond Hakim, who produce René Clément's classic film version
Plein Soleil,
starring Alain Delon, Marie Laforêt, and Maurice Ronet.
    Pat meets and begins a brief affair with pulp novelist Marijane Meaker, then goes to Europe on a publicity tour at the end of September with Mother Mary, who is recovering from a bad depression. Pat hopes to meet Mary Ronin in Greece, but Mary Ronin doesn't come. Mother Mary and Pat quarrel on the European trip; Mary impersonates Pat for two journalists in their Paris hotel lobby, intimating that her action was a joke. “I think a psychiatrist would put another meaning to it,” Pat writes to her cousin Dan. Pat continues her travels with her ex-lover Doris. She goes to Marseille, back to Paris, to Greece, and then to Crete.

 

1960.
February: Pat returns from Europe.
This Sweet Sickness
is published. In May she begins to take notes on the the idea of an American embezzler who travels to Greece, the start of a tortuous series of revisions which result in her novel
The Two Faces of January
. (Other titles for
January
:
The Power of Negative Thinking
,
Rydal's Folly.
) She rekindles her romance with Marijane Meaker and moves with her to a house on Old Ferry Road, seven miles outside New Hope, Pennsylvania, for a turbulent six-month relationship. During this time, she reworks
The Two Faces of January
and writes several short stories, amongst them “The Terrapin” (published in
EQMM
in 1961). “The Terrapin” wins the Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America. She produces many inadequate drafts of
The Two Faces of January
. Her editor at Harper & Brothers, Joan Kahn, reluctantly rejects all of them. In May 1962, the final Harper & Brothers reader's report submitted to Joan Kahn about
The Two Faces of January
contains this sentence: “A very unhealthy air hangs over it…and I finished it all with a strong sense of revulsion.”

 

1960.
Spring: She meets Alex Szogyi, a professor at Wesleyan University, who admires her work and becomes a close friend. When she leaves permanently for Europe in 1962, she gives him her writing desk. They continue a mostly epistolary friendship until the 1980s, when she becomes “possessive” over his growing friendship with Jeanne Moreau (to whom she introduced him) and their relations break off.