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The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith
From the late mistress of suspense and noir fiction comes a chilling anthology of short fiction, featuring works from five of her classic short story collections combined into a single anthology. By the author of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Reader's Guide available.
726 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 2001
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2687 people want to read
About the author
Patricia Highsmith
488 books5,042 followersPatricia Highsmith was an American novelist who is known mainly for her psychological crime thrillers which have led to more than two dozen film adaptations over the years.
She lived with her grandmother, mother and later step-father (her mother divorced her natural father six months before 'Patsy' was born and married Stanley Highsmith) in Fort Worth before moving with her parents to New York in 1927 but returned to live with her grandmother for a year in 1933. Returning to her parents in New York, she attended public schools in New York City and later graduated from Barnard College in 1942.
Shortly after graduation her short story 'The Heroine' was published in the Harper's Bazaar magazine and it was selected as one of the 22 best stories that appeared in American magazines in 1945 and it won the O Henry award for short stories in 1946. She continued to write short stories, many of them comic book stories, and regularly earned herself a weekly $55 pay-check. During this period of her life she lived variously in New York and Mexico.
Her first suspense novel 'Strangers on a Train' published in 1950 was an immediate success with public and critics alike. The novel has been adapted for the screen three times, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951.
In 1955 her anti-hero Tom Ripley appeared in the splendid 'The Talented Mr Ripley', a book that was awarded the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere as the best foreign mystery novel translated into French in 1957. This book, too, has been the subject of a number of film versions. Ripley appeared again in 'Ripley Under Ground' in 1970, in 'Ripley's Game' in 1974, 'The boy who Followed Ripley' in 1980 and in 'Ripley Under Water' in 1991.
Along with her acclaimed series about Ripley, she wrote 22 novels and eight short story collections plus many other short stories, often macabre, satirical or tinged with black humour. She also wrote one novel, non-mystery, under the name Claire Morgan , plus a work of non-fiction 'Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction' and a co-written book of children's verse, 'Miranda the Panda Is on the Veranda'.
She latterly lived in England and France and was more popular in England than in her native United States. Her novel 'Deep Water', 1957, was called by the Sunday Times one of the "most brilliant analyses of psychosis in America" and Julian Symons once wrote of her "Miss Highsmith is the writer who fuses character and plot most successfully ... the most important crime novelist at present in practice." In addition, Michael Dirda observed "Europeans honoured her as a psychological novelist, part of an existentialist tradition represented by her own favorite writers, in particular Dostoevsky, Conrad, Kafka, Gide, and Camus."
She died of leukemia in Locarno, Switzerland on 4 February 1995 and her last novel, 'Small g: a Summer Idyll', was published posthumously a month later.
Gerry Wolstenholme
July 2010
She lived with her grandmother, mother and later step-father (her mother divorced her natural father six months before 'Patsy' was born and married Stanley Highsmith) in Fort Worth before moving with her parents to New York in 1927 but returned to live with her grandmother for a year in 1933. Returning to her parents in New York, she attended public schools in New York City and later graduated from Barnard College in 1942.
Shortly after graduation her short story 'The Heroine' was published in the Harper's Bazaar magazine and it was selected as one of the 22 best stories that appeared in American magazines in 1945 and it won the O Henry award for short stories in 1946. She continued to write short stories, many of them comic book stories, and regularly earned herself a weekly $55 pay-check. During this period of her life she lived variously in New York and Mexico.
Her first suspense novel 'Strangers on a Train' published in 1950 was an immediate success with public and critics alike. The novel has been adapted for the screen three times, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951.
In 1955 her anti-hero Tom Ripley appeared in the splendid 'The Talented Mr Ripley', a book that was awarded the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere as the best foreign mystery novel translated into French in 1957. This book, too, has been the subject of a number of film versions. Ripley appeared again in 'Ripley Under Ground' in 1970, in 'Ripley's Game' in 1974, 'The boy who Followed Ripley' in 1980 and in 'Ripley Under Water' in 1991.
Along with her acclaimed series about Ripley, she wrote 22 novels and eight short story collections plus many other short stories, often macabre, satirical or tinged with black humour. She also wrote one novel, non-mystery, under the name Claire Morgan , plus a work of non-fiction 'Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction' and a co-written book of children's verse, 'Miranda the Panda Is on the Veranda'.
She latterly lived in England and France and was more popular in England than in her native United States. Her novel 'Deep Water', 1957, was called by the Sunday Times one of the "most brilliant analyses of psychosis in America" and Julian Symons once wrote of her "Miss Highsmith is the writer who fuses character and plot most successfully ... the most important crime novelist at present in practice." In addition, Michael Dirda observed "Europeans honoured her as a psychological novelist, part of an existentialist tradition represented by her own favorite writers, in particular Dostoevsky, Conrad, Kafka, Gide, and Camus."
She died of leukemia in Locarno, Switzerland on 4 February 1995 and her last novel, 'Small g: a Summer Idyll', was published posthumously a month later.
Gerry Wolstenholme
July 2010
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June 16, 2020
Any list of the greatest or most influential American writers that leaves off Patricia Highsmith is not to be trusted.
Those that know of Highsmith likely do because of the perfectly cast film adaptation of her best known work, "The Talented Mr. Ripley," though it may come as a surprise to learn that Hitchcock has adapted her too, in his 1951 film, "Strangers on a Train." More recent film adaptations have featured Viggo Mortensen and Oscar Issac ("The Two Faces of January") and Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara ("Carol" from Highsmith's "The Price of Salt").
And yet I can't help but feel that Highsmith is criminally underrated. What other author has contributed the source material for so many notable, acclaimed films, and yet remains so underread?
Despite being born in the US (in Texas), it seems that Highsmith never made much of a splash stateside, instead receiving much of her critical acclaim (and awards) as well as the devoted readership that she most certainly deserved, overseas, primarily in Europe.
If anyone needs to be convinced of what a crushingly good author Highsmith is, point them no further than this extraordinary collection of short stories. There really is something here for everyone, and everything here will appeal to lovers of fine prose and riveting storytelling.
I would finish a story, praising it as the best I'd ever read, but just as soon start on the next, and soon be praising that one as the best I'd ever read.
What I love about Highsmith is how effortlessly she plumbs the depths of the human psyche. She is, perhaps more than any other author, deeply in touch with the darker side of human nature, and reading her is a "guilty pleasure" not because doing so and admitting it to a learned audience would be an embarrassment, but because her stories tickle some dark part of ourselves, they tease our inhibitions and satisfy that part within us that wants, in some previously unexpressed — or certainly unconfessed — way to see evil prevail.
Her villains give more pleasure than any heroes and heroines you can find, because while we admire literature's heroes — men like Atticus Finch and women like Jo March — we recognized that they aren't altogether like us, they're too pure, too saintly. When we look into the mirror, it's not them we see, but instead conflicted and often murderous characters like Tom Ripley.
We most love those who remind us of ourselves, flaws and all, and no one writes flaws and all better than Highsmith.
This collection is divided into five parts. The first part, "The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder" is all about animals getting comeuppance on (mostly) abusive humans. The 13 stories within this part run the gamut from a circus elephant taking revenge on a cruel trainer to a camel with a vendetta against a former master. The enjoyment I took in this part was generally linked to the sympathy/revulsion I felt for the animal in question, which is to say that I enjoyed the ones with the camel, elephant, and horse perhaps the most, and the ones with the rat and the cockroach the least, though they're all brilliantly done.
The second part, "Little Tales of Misogyny" are just that — 17 short, at times almost vignettes, of women fighting against the misogyny of the outside world.
The third part, "Slowly, Slowly in the Wind" featured 12 of my favorite tales of the entire collection, villainous tales featuring murderous deeds and deliciously dark characters. The title story of this collection, about a man's rivalry with a stubborn neighbor, is a standout, as is "Woodrow Wilson's Necktie" about a series of murders that take place in a wax museum.
The 11 stories that comprise the fourth part, "The Black House," are also favorites, and alternate between tales of whimsy and psychological horror. The title story is one of the finest short stories I've read in some time, the kind of thing you find yourself thinking about for days afterward, and I perhaps recognized far more of myself in the darkly calculating characters of "Not One of Us" than I care to admit.
The fifth part, "Mermaids on the Golf Course," is less murderous and more psychotic, as these 11 stories poke at the insecurities and mental issues afflicting human society. "The Button" was riveting in its exploration of how a man turns his feeling of familial helplessness against the world at large while "Where the Action Is" had something of the creepiness that I recall from the Jake Gyllenhaal thriller "Nightcrawler."
I would love to go into more detail about these stories and what I loved about them, but with 64 of them here, I think it's a far better use of your time to actually just pick up this incomparable collection and start reading.
As I read, I found myself constantly thinking that this is exactly how I would have wanted this story written, and caught off guard by how familiar these characters and their actions felt to me, as though I'd lived these stories in some part of me before.
It's like a perfectly calibrated season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" where you laugh because this is exactly what you would have done in Larry's position, except here the similarity to the actions taken by Highsmith's characters is deeply unsettling.
This is the essential Highsmith, representing some of her very best work. It's a fascinating, eerie ride through your own mind, and a testament to all that fiction is capable of. I'm still trying to peel my jaw off the floor.
Those that know of Highsmith likely do because of the perfectly cast film adaptation of her best known work, "The Talented Mr. Ripley," though it may come as a surprise to learn that Hitchcock has adapted her too, in his 1951 film, "Strangers on a Train." More recent film adaptations have featured Viggo Mortensen and Oscar Issac ("The Two Faces of January") and Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara ("Carol" from Highsmith's "The Price of Salt").
And yet I can't help but feel that Highsmith is criminally underrated. What other author has contributed the source material for so many notable, acclaimed films, and yet remains so underread?
Despite being born in the US (in Texas), it seems that Highsmith never made much of a splash stateside, instead receiving much of her critical acclaim (and awards) as well as the devoted readership that she most certainly deserved, overseas, primarily in Europe.
If anyone needs to be convinced of what a crushingly good author Highsmith is, point them no further than this extraordinary collection of short stories. There really is something here for everyone, and everything here will appeal to lovers of fine prose and riveting storytelling.
I would finish a story, praising it as the best I'd ever read, but just as soon start on the next, and soon be praising that one as the best I'd ever read.
What I love about Highsmith is how effortlessly she plumbs the depths of the human psyche. She is, perhaps more than any other author, deeply in touch with the darker side of human nature, and reading her is a "guilty pleasure" not because doing so and admitting it to a learned audience would be an embarrassment, but because her stories tickle some dark part of ourselves, they tease our inhibitions and satisfy that part within us that wants, in some previously unexpressed — or certainly unconfessed — way to see evil prevail.
Her villains give more pleasure than any heroes and heroines you can find, because while we admire literature's heroes — men like Atticus Finch and women like Jo March — we recognized that they aren't altogether like us, they're too pure, too saintly. When we look into the mirror, it's not them we see, but instead conflicted and often murderous characters like Tom Ripley.
We most love those who remind us of ourselves, flaws and all, and no one writes flaws and all better than Highsmith.
This collection is divided into five parts. The first part, "The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder" is all about animals getting comeuppance on (mostly) abusive humans. The 13 stories within this part run the gamut from a circus elephant taking revenge on a cruel trainer to a camel with a vendetta against a former master. The enjoyment I took in this part was generally linked to the sympathy/revulsion I felt for the animal in question, which is to say that I enjoyed the ones with the camel, elephant, and horse perhaps the most, and the ones with the rat and the cockroach the least, though they're all brilliantly done.
The second part, "Little Tales of Misogyny" are just that — 17 short, at times almost vignettes, of women fighting against the misogyny of the outside world.
The third part, "Slowly, Slowly in the Wind" featured 12 of my favorite tales of the entire collection, villainous tales featuring murderous deeds and deliciously dark characters. The title story of this collection, about a man's rivalry with a stubborn neighbor, is a standout, as is "Woodrow Wilson's Necktie" about a series of murders that take place in a wax museum.
The 11 stories that comprise the fourth part, "The Black House," are also favorites, and alternate between tales of whimsy and psychological horror. The title story is one of the finest short stories I've read in some time, the kind of thing you find yourself thinking about for days afterward, and I perhaps recognized far more of myself in the darkly calculating characters of "Not One of Us" than I care to admit.
The fifth part, "Mermaids on the Golf Course," is less murderous and more psychotic, as these 11 stories poke at the insecurities and mental issues afflicting human society. "The Button" was riveting in its exploration of how a man turns his feeling of familial helplessness against the world at large while "Where the Action Is" had something of the creepiness that I recall from the Jake Gyllenhaal thriller "Nightcrawler."
I would love to go into more detail about these stories and what I loved about them, but with 64 of them here, I think it's a far better use of your time to actually just pick up this incomparable collection and start reading.
As I read, I found myself constantly thinking that this is exactly how I would have wanted this story written, and caught off guard by how familiar these characters and their actions felt to me, as though I'd lived these stories in some part of me before.
It's like a perfectly calibrated season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" where you laugh because this is exactly what you would have done in Larry's position, except here the similarity to the actions taken by Highsmith's characters is deeply unsettling.
This is the essential Highsmith, representing some of her very best work. It's a fascinating, eerie ride through your own mind, and a testament to all that fiction is capable of. I'm still trying to peel my jaw off the floor.
February 13, 2009
DEPRAVED, DISTURBING, AND ODDLY DELECTABLE
This book contains roughly sixty stories, representing five previously published collections, spanning Highsmith’s career.
Normally I try to resist the whole "the author's life is the key to the work" argument, because it's so obviously rubbish in many, if not most, cases. There are perfect monsters who wrote like angels, and virtue in one's private life is a worthless predictor of literary talent. However, it's hard to watch the parade of pathologically depraved characters presented in these stories and not be reminded that they were written by someone whose mother once told her she'd tried to abort her by drinking turpentine. The stories in this collection were written over the course of several decades, but one feature is a constant throughout – Ms. Highsmith’s unwavering misanthropy. Her interest in the aberrant and antisocial side of human behavior was an early development -- at the age of eight, she discovered Karl Menninger's The Human Mind and was particularly fascinated by the case studies of schizophrenics, pyromaniacs, and those with other mental disorders. (Wikipedia)
Exploration of transgressive behavior is the defining characteristic of Highsmith’s work. From the early “Strangers on a train”, through the various Ripley novels, and in each of the roughly sixty stories in this collection, her (human) characters are variously depicted as amoral, manipulative, shallow, or weak, prisoners of their most venal impulses. In contrast, the portrayal of the animal characters that populate the first dozen stories (taken from “The Animal-Lover’s Book of Beastly Murder”) is infinitely more sympathetic. Most of these stories are told from the animal’s point of view, and it’s quite clear who Highsmith favors in the ongoing battle of man versus beast. Circus elephants, ferrets, horses, rats and truffle-hunting pigs all exact vengeance in these stories. Highsmith wastes little sympathy on their human victims. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect is her skill in manipulating the reader’s sympathies. In stories like “Hamsters versus Websters” and “The Bravest Rat in Venice”, you may find yourself rooting for those homicidal hamsters, or caring more about the survival of the rat than the fate of the baby.
Stories from the second collection, “Little Tales of Misogyny”, are less successful. At an average length of under 3 pages, character development is not an option, so that everything rests on the cleverness of a given story's central conceit. But with titles like “The Fully Licensed Whore, or, the Wife”, “The Mobile Bed Object”, and “The Breeder”, subtlety and genuine wit are in short supply.
Highsmith ups the ante in later stories, and the best stories in the book are all taken from the last three collections. There is a fair amount of death and dismemberment, usually with a macabre twist. The best stories are those where she explores her characters' demons without actually having them erupt in homicidal fury, as she does in “The Terrors of Basketweaving”, for my money the best story in the book.
Not all of the stories work. Highsmith’s focus on transgressive behavior, her predilection for writing about those on the fringe – often antisocial, amoral, and outlawed – doesn’t necessarily lend itself to the short story form. Sometimes the characters are simply too repulsive to be interesting, a problem which might be fixed in a full-length novel, but not within a short story. In general, though this work is impressive, I don't think it's as strong as the Ripley novels. But, even taking the weaker stories into account, it is still well worth reading, and many of the later stories in particular are outstanding.
Be warned, though. These are tales of the macabre; reading too many of them in one sitting might jaundice your view of the human species permanently.
This book contains roughly sixty stories, representing five previously published collections, spanning Highsmith’s career.
Normally I try to resist the whole "the author's life is the key to the work" argument, because it's so obviously rubbish in many, if not most, cases. There are perfect monsters who wrote like angels, and virtue in one's private life is a worthless predictor of literary talent. However, it's hard to watch the parade of pathologically depraved characters presented in these stories and not be reminded that they were written by someone whose mother once told her she'd tried to abort her by drinking turpentine. The stories in this collection were written over the course of several decades, but one feature is a constant throughout – Ms. Highsmith’s unwavering misanthropy. Her interest in the aberrant and antisocial side of human behavior was an early development -- at the age of eight, she discovered Karl Menninger's The Human Mind and was particularly fascinated by the case studies of schizophrenics, pyromaniacs, and those with other mental disorders. (Wikipedia)
Exploration of transgressive behavior is the defining characteristic of Highsmith’s work. From the early “Strangers on a train”, through the various Ripley novels, and in each of the roughly sixty stories in this collection, her (human) characters are variously depicted as amoral, manipulative, shallow, or weak, prisoners of their most venal impulses. In contrast, the portrayal of the animal characters that populate the first dozen stories (taken from “The Animal-Lover’s Book of Beastly Murder”) is infinitely more sympathetic. Most of these stories are told from the animal’s point of view, and it’s quite clear who Highsmith favors in the ongoing battle of man versus beast. Circus elephants, ferrets, horses, rats and truffle-hunting pigs all exact vengeance in these stories. Highsmith wastes little sympathy on their human victims. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect is her skill in manipulating the reader’s sympathies. In stories like “Hamsters versus Websters” and “The Bravest Rat in Venice”, you may find yourself rooting for those homicidal hamsters, or caring more about the survival of the rat than the fate of the baby.
Stories from the second collection, “Little Tales of Misogyny”, are less successful. At an average length of under 3 pages, character development is not an option, so that everything rests on the cleverness of a given story's central conceit. But with titles like “The Fully Licensed Whore, or, the Wife”, “The Mobile Bed Object”, and “The Breeder”, subtlety and genuine wit are in short supply.
Highsmith ups the ante in later stories, and the best stories in the book are all taken from the last three collections. There is a fair amount of death and dismemberment, usually with a macabre twist. The best stories are those where she explores her characters' demons without actually having them erupt in homicidal fury, as she does in “The Terrors of Basketweaving”, for my money the best story in the book.
Not all of the stories work. Highsmith’s focus on transgressive behavior, her predilection for writing about those on the fringe – often antisocial, amoral, and outlawed – doesn’t necessarily lend itself to the short story form. Sometimes the characters are simply too repulsive to be interesting, a problem which might be fixed in a full-length novel, but not within a short story. In general, though this work is impressive, I don't think it's as strong as the Ripley novels. But, even taking the weaker stories into account, it is still well worth reading, and many of the later stories in particular are outstanding.
Be warned, though. These are tales of the macabre; reading too many of them in one sitting might jaundice your view of the human species permanently.
February 14, 2024
Halway read and stopped! Just couldn't go on. I've been struggling over it's pages for weeks and decided to drop it, something that i don't usually do. The stories were well written but not at all interesting or gripping. There was nothing to hold on to. So bye bye to Patricia and her short story collection and barely 2 stars, even though i like her work and writing a great deal, only not this one!
March 4, 2022
Finally done! Love Highsmith. Some collections better than others but some great standout stories throughout. “Those Awful Dawns” and “Old Folks at Home” are my favourites.
Worth a read!
Worth a read!
November 2, 2022
Ultimately a 3.5 read, all things considered.
5 short story collections gathered together in one whopping, exhausting / frustrating volume. One of the collections - 'The Black House' - I had already read, so I didn't re-read those stories this time out.
It's maybe a better idea to not read so many collections in basically one go - though that's not exactly the way I read these stories. I used them as 'break time' material while I'd undertaken another large volume, 'Blackwater'.
How you feel about these tales will most likely depend on how familiar with Highsmith you already are. If you aren't that familiar with her work, these stories won't go out of their way in encouraging you to read the novels. On the other hand, if you're rather familiar with the novels, these stories may feel like a real come-down.
~ mainly because... while it's fairly clear that, overall, Highsmith appears to be entertaining herself immensely throughout (and is intermittently more-than-engaging), she's less concerned with the reader's enjoyment than I would say she is in the novels.
The first two collections (stories from the POV of animals and other creatures; other tales told with an emphasis on brevity as the source of wit, I suppose) come off as somewhat admirable exercises but aren't all that satisfying. In the subsequent batches, many stories that start off well appear to then be sabotaged. It's especially disappointing when a particular story's psychology can't really 'breathe' in the same way it would in a much-longer work.
I think the only story that I enjoyed completely (start-middle-finish) was the 3rd collection's 'Something You Have To Live With' (detailing a home invasion and its aftermath). Very gripping and memorable for its logical conclusion.
I also largely appreciated the author's leaps into genres like sci-fi ('The Pond', 'Please Don't Shoot the Trees') and supernatural horror ('Not in This Life, Maybe the Next').
But if you're talking about a very mixed bag, this is a representative tome for 'mixed'.
5 short story collections gathered together in one whopping, exhausting / frustrating volume. One of the collections - 'The Black House' - I had already read, so I didn't re-read those stories this time out.
It's maybe a better idea to not read so many collections in basically one go - though that's not exactly the way I read these stories. I used them as 'break time' material while I'd undertaken another large volume, 'Blackwater'.
How you feel about these tales will most likely depend on how familiar with Highsmith you already are. If you aren't that familiar with her work, these stories won't go out of their way in encouraging you to read the novels. On the other hand, if you're rather familiar with the novels, these stories may feel like a real come-down.
~ mainly because... while it's fairly clear that, overall, Highsmith appears to be entertaining herself immensely throughout (and is intermittently more-than-engaging), she's less concerned with the reader's enjoyment than I would say she is in the novels.
The first two collections (stories from the POV of animals and other creatures; other tales told with an emphasis on brevity as the source of wit, I suppose) come off as somewhat admirable exercises but aren't all that satisfying. In the subsequent batches, many stories that start off well appear to then be sabotaged. It's especially disappointing when a particular story's psychology can't really 'breathe' in the same way it would in a much-longer work.
I think the only story that I enjoyed completely (start-middle-finish) was the 3rd collection's 'Something You Have To Live With' (detailing a home invasion and its aftermath). Very gripping and memorable for its logical conclusion.
I also largely appreciated the author's leaps into genres like sci-fi ('The Pond', 'Please Don't Shoot the Trees') and supernatural horror ('Not in This Life, Maybe the Next').
But if you're talking about a very mixed bag, this is a representative tome for 'mixed'.
July 18, 2009
Terribly, terribly funny stories. I relished the stories that weren't about psycho- or sociopaths, but average people who are driven to extremes (usually but not always violent) by otherwise minor irritants that begin to assume major proportions: being married to somebody who insists on eating with a baby spoon; being married to somebody who taxidermies her pets and arranges them in the garden--these are stories from the last three collections. They deflate the glamor of pathological villains; they revel in banality. I really enjoyed "Little Tales of Misogyny"--it's amazing how much variety and humor Highsmith could elicit from a collection of fables about (mostly) unlikeable women meeting (mostly) violent ends. Re: the whole humor thing, you'll probably find these stories funny and compelling if you also like Flannery O'Connor, whose stories were superior but covered similar territory. Maybe people are so disturbed by Highsmith's work because it honors the crime convention that somebody has to die....but it removes the moralistic conventions that people who die deserve it, and that killers are abnormal, and that death is somehow removed from the banality and ludicrousness of everyday life.
And that leads me to the ethics question. Highsmith has a reputation as a chilling misanthropist--which is somewhat deserved--she's been quoted on that whole justice thing--but not all her stories support that reputation. She was capable of great tenderness and expressions of outrage against injustice. "The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder" fairly shrieks with outrage against people who abuse animals (it's impossible not to love and root for the kitten of "Engine Horse" or Eddie of "Eddie and the Monkey Robberies"). Highsmith was also highly indignant toward adults who abuse, neglect, or just misunderstand good-hearted children. She has great sympathy: for animals who just want to do their harmless animal thing; for children who just want to do their harmless childhood thing--even for trees that just want to be left alone. The problem with most adult humans is that they just can't leave well enough alone. If they have to go and act like jerks, and get killed for their pains--well, she's not crying.
Maybe where some readers get tripped up is in the fact that in Highsmith's world, innocence and goodness don't protect you. You're just as likely--perhaps more likely--to be abused or murdered for it. That doesn't mean that she doesn't believe in innocence and goodness.
And that leads me to the ethics question. Highsmith has a reputation as a chilling misanthropist--which is somewhat deserved--she's been quoted on that whole justice thing--but not all her stories support that reputation. She was capable of great tenderness and expressions of outrage against injustice. "The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder" fairly shrieks with outrage against people who abuse animals (it's impossible not to love and root for the kitten of "Engine Horse" or Eddie of "Eddie and the Monkey Robberies"). Highsmith was also highly indignant toward adults who abuse, neglect, or just misunderstand good-hearted children. She has great sympathy: for animals who just want to do their harmless animal thing; for children who just want to do their harmless childhood thing--even for trees that just want to be left alone. The problem with most adult humans is that they just can't leave well enough alone. If they have to go and act like jerks, and get killed for their pains--well, she's not crying.
Maybe where some readers get tripped up is in the fact that in Highsmith's world, innocence and goodness don't protect you. You're just as likely--perhaps more likely--to be abused or murdered for it. That doesn't mean that she doesn't believe in innocence and goodness.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 3, 2009
Anthology containing:
The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder: YES!!!
Little Tales of Misogyny: Quite unsettling and completely accurate look at humanity.
Slowly Slowly in the Wind: Title story may make you lose sleep.
The Black House
Mermaids on the Golf Course
The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder: YES!!!
Little Tales of Misogyny: Quite unsettling and completely accurate look at humanity.
Slowly Slowly in the Wind: Title story may make you lose sleep.
The Black House
Mermaids on the Golf Course
February 27, 2009
Of use to me only for the first section, a collection of stories about 'murderous' animals, including a rat, camel, elephant, dog, cat, and perhaps a tapeworm of some sort. Oddly, the animals seem to share her prejudices, all which are multiple and at best embarrassing: against Italians, 'natives,' and so forth.
Otherwise, I just don't get the fascination w/ her. If John Cheever--or Kingsley Amis-had a stupider younger sibling who thought a fascination w/ violence and mere cleverness substituted for insight, this is what would be produced. Better fictional explorations of evil (or demonic evil, i.e., evil w/out a goal) can be found in Pär Lagerkvist's The Dwarf, and a better exploration of obsession and misanthropy can be found in Evan S. Connell's Diary of a Rapist.
Otherwise, I just don't get the fascination w/ her. If John Cheever--or Kingsley Amis-had a stupider younger sibling who thought a fascination w/ violence and mere cleverness substituted for insight, this is what would be produced. Better fictional explorations of evil (or demonic evil, i.e., evil w/out a goal) can be found in Pär Lagerkvist's The Dwarf, and a better exploration of obsession and misanthropy can be found in Evan S. Connell's Diary of a Rapist.
August 5, 2023
2023 was the year I became a Highsmith fan. I adore her darkness and her humor.
Almost every story ends in death or destruction of someone’s life, but it always feels deserved or peaceful. She removed tragedy from the equation in such a masterful way - it’s just demented people getting their comeuppance or victims of life’s cruelties finding a peaceful way out.
I especially loved the animal stories (which had the same beginning, middle and end but each read so uniquely) and the short story about the man dating two women. Or the woman lying to stay on disability and go to the movies during the day instead of work.
This collection was gifted to me by a friend @raindog, and I think it will start a new summer tradition of reading a short story collection
Almost every story ends in death or destruction of someone’s life, but it always feels deserved or peaceful. She removed tragedy from the equation in such a masterful way - it’s just demented people getting their comeuppance or victims of life’s cruelties finding a peaceful way out.
I especially loved the animal stories (which had the same beginning, middle and end but each read so uniquely) and the short story about the man dating two women. Or the woman lying to stay on disability and go to the movies during the day instead of work.
This collection was gifted to me by a friend @raindog, and I think it will start a new summer tradition of reading a short story collection
March 30, 2021
there's a wonderful range here in this collection, which pulls from five different publications of highsmith's stories. i read four of those collections, but after reading her biography i wanted to go back to a novel. i will save the fifth and final collection, MERMAIDS ON THE GOLF COURSE, for after.
each of the four collections have different themes, some are loosely organized, others stick close, as in THE ANIMAL LOVER'S BOOK OF BEASTLY MURDER - perhaps my favorite, but regardless of theme, you get a BIG range of approaches and situations, but in each case you get highsmith working the irrational and the unexpected. the puzzles are tighter, due to economy of space, but the best here are exhilarating tales of haunted psyches.
each of the four collections have different themes, some are loosely organized, others stick close, as in THE ANIMAL LOVER'S BOOK OF BEASTLY MURDER - perhaps my favorite, but regardless of theme, you get a BIG range of approaches and situations, but in each case you get highsmith working the irrational and the unexpected. the puzzles are tighter, due to economy of space, but the best here are exhilarating tales of haunted psyches.
October 16, 2022
that one about the murderer was so good
May 14, 2010
In many ways, Strangers on a Train is a much more satisfying work than Crime and Punishment. In broad strokes, both detail the guilt-wracked protagonists after each committed murder. Guy Haines was browbeaten into committing murder, which seemed a questionable plot point. But what struck me as eminently believable was the way in which Guy's mind grew distraught, even as his life continued apace.
I think it seems in vogue to write about murder as if any one of us can commit it. From my reading, Highsmith took the opposite thesis. People who kill are a little bit off. Charles Bruno is the son of a rich man; he's indolent and insolent. He is a little bit too close to his mother, and he probably harbors homosexual tendencies (it's not weird now, but in the 50's, it was). He certainly has a strong sense of the fantastical. He feels that Guy is the only person who can understand him and that they can escape together and recount their crime.
Guy and Bruno meet on a train. They talk, and Bruno senses some hint of tension in Guy. Guy has a wife whom he wishes to divorce - the very reason for the train trip - and Bruno has a father who apparently is an ogre. Bruno suggests what is the perfect crime, and has become a detective genre cliche. Bruno would kill Miriam, Guy's soon to be ex-wife and Guy would kill Bruno's father. The perfect crime, as the killers would have no obvious links to the victims, amounting to a random murder. Guy is disturbed and appalled by Bruno; I think he senses something is off-kilter about Bruno. Needless to say, Bruno is crazy, and decides to force matters and kills Miriam. Part of this might be because Bruno hates women. He says he hates his father because the father is an adulterer. But it turns out that Bruno's mom gives as good as she gets, having her own stable of men to toy with. As another hint as to the fact that Bruno lives in his own head, he tells Guy that his mother is an example of the purity of women. Other evidence to show that Bruno is mentally unstable is that Bruno cannot leave Guy alone. He needs to drop hints to the detective who is following him. He involves himself in Guy's life. In other words, establishing the connections that make it much easier to to link the two men.
What was interesting to me is how Highsmith handled Guy's eventual descent into his own madness and commits murder. It is as if the motive is for Guy to shut Bruno up. Not necessarily to avoid being framed for a murder he didn't commit, or that he wished to indulge in an animal behavior, but to kill so that Bruno would stop bothering him. Guy is portrayed as a depressed individual. He can't take joy in his success. He is divorcing Miriam because she cheated on him, often. There is the element that Guy feels ill-used and played for a fool. He can't be happy with his new girlfriend. He cannot confide in her, certainly not the murder but also very few other things. It doesn't take too much to disrupt Guy's life, because he is already on the edge. He couldn't be happy with his life before the murder, and he lets guilt take over after the murder. That is the one thing Guy can do extremely well - play martyr.
But I thought the best part of the novel was in how it slowly developed that others began to notice Guy's odd behavior. It was a neat trick to portray it subtly, where others begin to see that something is not quite right with Guy. This is true especially in how Guy's fiance notices that Guy goes from depression to something wilder.
In similar fashion, Highsmith's short stories, in the collection The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith, show that she has little sympathy for humankind. Although there is a collection of character sketches that paint women in a terrible light (Little Tales of Misogyny), in truth, no one came off looking too sympathetic. That's not true; the collection opens up with a number of stories about animals that commit murder. Highsmith portrays these murderers as eminently justified. Everyone else is selfish, ugly, and dark. We see murder committed in cold blood, as an afterthought, for the joy of it, and from negligence and indifference. It's impressive that, to my eyes, the stories are distinctive enough such that they don't seem repetitive.
My favorite story is "The Romantic". It is about a secretary who gets stood up on a date. Eventually, she starts going on made-up dates, where she sits and enjoys her time at a bar. She imagines the men she is waiting for. Knowing that these men will never show up, she feels liberated and happy. She comes to realize that she very much prefers these pretend dates. So much so that when she is asked to go out on a date, she stands her date up. Her imagination gives her more satisfaction then men (and perhaps even other companions.) While it isn't quite the slamming of the door in Ibsen's "The Doll House", I think it is a strong statement to make: Fuck them; I don't need them.
I think it seems in vogue to write about murder as if any one of us can commit it. From my reading, Highsmith took the opposite thesis. People who kill are a little bit off. Charles Bruno is the son of a rich man; he's indolent and insolent. He is a little bit too close to his mother, and he probably harbors homosexual tendencies (it's not weird now, but in the 50's, it was). He certainly has a strong sense of the fantastical. He feels that Guy is the only person who can understand him and that they can escape together and recount their crime.
Guy and Bruno meet on a train. They talk, and Bruno senses some hint of tension in Guy. Guy has a wife whom he wishes to divorce - the very reason for the train trip - and Bruno has a father who apparently is an ogre. Bruno suggests what is the perfect crime, and has become a detective genre cliche. Bruno would kill Miriam, Guy's soon to be ex-wife and Guy would kill Bruno's father. The perfect crime, as the killers would have no obvious links to the victims, amounting to a random murder. Guy is disturbed and appalled by Bruno; I think he senses something is off-kilter about Bruno. Needless to say, Bruno is crazy, and decides to force matters and kills Miriam. Part of this might be because Bruno hates women. He says he hates his father because the father is an adulterer. But it turns out that Bruno's mom gives as good as she gets, having her own stable of men to toy with. As another hint as to the fact that Bruno lives in his own head, he tells Guy that his mother is an example of the purity of women. Other evidence to show that Bruno is mentally unstable is that Bruno cannot leave Guy alone. He needs to drop hints to the detective who is following him. He involves himself in Guy's life. In other words, establishing the connections that make it much easier to to link the two men.
What was interesting to me is how Highsmith handled Guy's eventual descent into his own madness and commits murder. It is as if the motive is for Guy to shut Bruno up. Not necessarily to avoid being framed for a murder he didn't commit, or that he wished to indulge in an animal behavior, but to kill so that Bruno would stop bothering him. Guy is portrayed as a depressed individual. He can't take joy in his success. He is divorcing Miriam because she cheated on him, often. There is the element that Guy feels ill-used and played for a fool. He can't be happy with his new girlfriend. He cannot confide in her, certainly not the murder but also very few other things. It doesn't take too much to disrupt Guy's life, because he is already on the edge. He couldn't be happy with his life before the murder, and he lets guilt take over after the murder. That is the one thing Guy can do extremely well - play martyr.
But I thought the best part of the novel was in how it slowly developed that others began to notice Guy's odd behavior. It was a neat trick to portray it subtly, where others begin to see that something is not quite right with Guy. This is true especially in how Guy's fiance notices that Guy goes from depression to something wilder.
In similar fashion, Highsmith's short stories, in the collection The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith, show that she has little sympathy for humankind. Although there is a collection of character sketches that paint women in a terrible light (Little Tales of Misogyny), in truth, no one came off looking too sympathetic. That's not true; the collection opens up with a number of stories about animals that commit murder. Highsmith portrays these murderers as eminently justified. Everyone else is selfish, ugly, and dark. We see murder committed in cold blood, as an afterthought, for the joy of it, and from negligence and indifference. It's impressive that, to my eyes, the stories are distinctive enough such that they don't seem repetitive.
My favorite story is "The Romantic". It is about a secretary who gets stood up on a date. Eventually, she starts going on made-up dates, where she sits and enjoys her time at a bar. She imagines the men she is waiting for. Knowing that these men will never show up, she feels liberated and happy. She comes to realize that she very much prefers these pretend dates. So much so that when she is asked to go out on a date, she stands her date up. Her imagination gives her more satisfaction then men (and perhaps even other companions.) While it isn't quite the slamming of the door in Ibsen's "The Doll House", I think it is a strong statement to make: Fuck them; I don't need them.
September 14, 2023
This is a well written group of very short stories that explore human behaviour and common mental aberrations. Each protagonist has recognisable qualities often indulged in uncanny situations brought about by intense desires to reach an unusual end
May 9, 2022
This is 5 books in one. The stories are interesting, surprising, varied, and well written. The language is not challenging for a C2-level student, but there are enough lesser-used words and expressions to make it useful in expanding one's vocabulary. It is also a great source of inspiration for writing tasks on the exam. By being exposed to so many different imaginative tales, students will probably improve their creativity when it comes to having to make up a story on the spur of the moment. The book is in the CAM (well, it will be as soon as I return it), and I recommend checking it out. A lucky student might be able to take it home for the summer.
March 29, 2022
With all the glittering evil humanity on display in this collection, why am I obsessed with Maud and Claud, Highsmith’s “Two Disagreeable Pigeons”? Something must be wrong with me. I hope it gets worse.
**Spoilery Thought**
(Disagreeable! What a word for this pair of elderly birds dottering about London, too arthritic to even fly much, preferring the attention they get when they take the tube, nothing more off putting about them than the irritability of a couple together for too long - until they suddenly swoop up in the air and down to attack a baby in its pram! Then home again, home again, jiggity jig. If pigeons jig. Which these two certainly do not).
**Spoilery Thought**
(Disagreeable! What a word for this pair of elderly birds dottering about London, too arthritic to even fly much, preferring the attention they get when they take the tube, nothing more off putting about them than the irritability of a couple together for too long - until they suddenly swoop up in the air and down to attack a baby in its pram! Then home again, home again, jiggity jig. If pigeons jig. Which these two certainly do not).
July 16, 2022
Since I’ve recently read the two novels included in the volume, I was really only in this for the short stories (which I seem to be reading a lot of lately).
I’m also reading this fresh off learning about some of Highsmith’s horrendous racial views, something which definitely comes through in a few of these short stories.
In general, her style of writing is ok, but I can’t get past the casual racism or the general misanthropic tone. I don’t need a happy ending, but stories about how awful humanity is do get tiresome. At least in book-length projects, there’s some insight or potential for redemption that gets thrown aside.
I’m also reading this fresh off learning about some of Highsmith’s horrendous racial views, something which definitely comes through in a few of these short stories.
In general, her style of writing is ok, but I can’t get past the casual racism or the general misanthropic tone. I don’t need a happy ending, but stories about how awful humanity is do get tiresome. At least in book-length projects, there’s some insight or potential for redemption that gets thrown aside.
June 2, 2009
It can be hard to rate an anthology. I would give this 3.5 if I could. Some of the entries here are terribly brilliant (and brilliantly terrible), while others are just ugly...but without that inspired ugliness which is Highsmith's hallmark. I keep her on the shelf where Shirley Jackson and Roald Dahl reside. She shares Jackson's sense of life's sad irony and Dahl's sense of its ridiculousness, but lacks the former's underlying generosity and the latter's wicked glee. Still, when she is good, she is very, very good and I return to her again and again.
September 6, 2009
I am now past the dog. cat. camel and pig and they may have been the most interesting characters.
Good writing, but despite what Graham Green says in the introduction, I just can't find myself in Patricia's world.
Good writing, but despite what Graham Green says in the introduction, I just can't find myself in Patricia's world.
June 18, 2017
The best, fucked-up-in-a-mostly-good-way stories.
December 13, 2022
The first four sets of stories had me raving to friends. "She's a cruel b****! She stabs the knife from a different angle every time. It's like she has no milk of human kindness except to make me love the person she's about to eviscerate. What a spectrum of rottenness." The breadth is breathtaking, and the writing is clean and sharp.
Reading the last collection, Mermaids on the Golf Course, my impression was less enthusiastic. I rated the collection four stars at finish because the last of her theoretical psyches were subtler, not so knife-edged, and I had trouble naming what had me feeling off about them. Where Little Tales of Misogyny are extremist fantasies, character flaws hyper-magnified in deliciously sinister vignettes, Mermaids is like a clinical sci-fi genre. Instead of building worlds or robots, Highsmith creates psychological profiles of people who are "realistic" but just wrong enough to be "not quite right." Their mundane "realness" was boring compared to the absolutely brutal crush of earlier stories.
When I woke up after rating it four stars, I realized my unsettled feeling was a slow internal bleed where I'd been looking for the gush of a knife. Yes, they were last collection and freshest in my memory, but they landed deepest. It has its share of tropes and razors, a love letter to God and the pure of heart, but there's an innocence and inevitability and normalcy to these characters that feel like fiction's response to the banality of evil. The depravity is somehow heightened because "that's just the way people are." These are not exaggerations, but tragedies walking around and feeling pretty fine most of the time. I might feel a fair mental distance away from Tom Ripley or a ravenous truffle pig, but the psychic rot of these last unlucky characters could come for me or for anyone. Five stars for a new genre of horror.
Reading the last collection, Mermaids on the Golf Course, my impression was less enthusiastic. I rated the collection four stars at finish because the last of her theoretical psyches were subtler, not so knife-edged, and I had trouble naming what had me feeling off about them. Where Little Tales of Misogyny are extremist fantasies, character flaws hyper-magnified in deliciously sinister vignettes, Mermaids is like a clinical sci-fi genre. Instead of building worlds or robots, Highsmith creates psychological profiles of people who are "realistic" but just wrong enough to be "not quite right." Their mundane "realness" was boring compared to the absolutely brutal crush of earlier stories.
When I woke up after rating it four stars, I realized my unsettled feeling was a slow internal bleed where I'd been looking for the gush of a knife. Yes, they were last collection and freshest in my memory, but they landed deepest. It has its share of tropes and razors, a love letter to God and the pure of heart, but there's an innocence and inevitability and normalcy to these characters that feel like fiction's response to the banality of evil. The depravity is somehow heightened because "that's just the way people are." These are not exaggerations, but tragedies walking around and feeling pretty fine most of the time. I might feel a fair mental distance away from Tom Ripley or a ravenous truffle pig, but the psychic rot of these last unlucky characters could come for me or for anyone. Five stars for a new genre of horror.
April 1, 2012
In her more than 20 books, Patricia Highsmith created some of the most unsettling tales of human deception and psychological nightmare in recent literary history, halls of mirrors in which appearances and attitudes often have greater weight and consequence than actions do. Highsmith's work possesses the same urgency as that of fellow noir/crime writer Jim Thompson--the reader imagines he or she is experiencing firsthand the blossoming of a psychotic or demented mind. But where Thompson's writing is sparse, blunt, and hot, so stripped-down that the reader almost feels perched at the edge of the unreliable narrator's consciousness itself, Highsmith's prose is composed and highly detailed, meticulously fleshing out the familiar space around her characters, forcing us to admit it would take only a few twists of fate or mind to find ourselves in a similar situation.
Born in Texas in 1921, Highsmith spent most of her life in France and Switzerland, and her books slip in and out of print in her native country. Now, partially due to the not-too-shoddy 1999 film version of her novel The Talented Mr. Ripley (also the subject of the very good 1960 French film Purple Noon), the expatriate author's work is regaining American favor six years after her death. (An adaptation of the sequel, Ripley's Game, is currently in production; it was also previously filmed, by the German director Wim Wenders, as The American Friend in 1977.) In light of her renewed popularity, W.W. Norton & Co. is reissuing nine Highsmith novels and five short-story collections over the next couple of years. First up: Strangers on a Train (1950), her debut novel, and A Suspension of Mercy (1965). Norton has also gathered 60 of her short works in The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith.
As Graham Greene writes of Highsmith in the foreword to The Selected Stories: "She is a writer who has created a world of her own--a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger, with the head half turned over shoulder, even with a certain reluctance, for these are cruel pleasures we are going to experience." Not many reading experiences are more cruel or pleasurable than reading Strangers on a Train, which Alfred Hitchcock turned into a movie in 1951. The novel itself should be taught in school next to Albert Camus' The Stranger, so brilliant is its existential examination of a seemingly decent, intelligent man who slowly hangs himself through his passivity and ever-worsening choices.
The strangers of the title are Guy Haines, a budding young architect, and Charles Bruno, a budding alcoholic gadfly with a mother complex. Haines is frustrated by his estranged wife's psychic stranglehold on him; Bruno hates his father for undermining his sycophant lifestyle and getting in the way of his cloying relationship with his doting mom. The men meet on a train and, after a few formalities and cocktails, Bruno presents a fantasy plan to Haines: Each will murder the other's enemy. The killer would lack any motivation or link to his victim, so police would never suspect him.
Highsmith masterfully and subtly portrays the mild-mannered and slightly weak-willed Haines' slow descent into a martini-fueled maelstrom created by the obsessive Bruno. With his whining attachment and shadowy lust for his mother, his creeping-vine obsession with the successful Haines, and frequent drunken heebie-jeebie freakouts, Bruno is a shining contender for the Literary Psychotic Hall of Fame. But Highsmith wouldn't be content with just a battle between the forces of good and evil, so she shades the gray areas inside Haines, revealing his conflicting feelings about Bruno, a mix of repulsion and enchantment.
Though not as hair-raising and complex as Strangers, A Suspension of Mercy ranks among Highsmith's best work, along with The Cry of the Owl, Edith's Diary, Eleven, and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Suspension tells the bent tale of an unhappy marriage between Sydney Bartleby, a struggling author trying his hand at writing for television, and his wife, Alicia, an amateur painter. In his frustration and struggle to prove himself as an artist and breadwinner, Sydney loses himself more and more in his fantasy/writing life, finally hitting on a character for a TV series. Christened "The Whip," this character seems like a tongue-in-cheek parody of Highsmith's own Tom Ripley, a suave man of many faces who lives above the law. Rather than providing a vent for Sydney's more violent urges, however, the character further blurs the line in Sydney's mind between fantasy and reality.
In her novels Highsmith nestles her contempt for the foibles of humankind in roller-coaster plotting and psychological nuance; her short stories sometimes read like malicious, moralizing assaults. This is particularly true of the stories in "Little Tales of Misogyny," one of the five mini-collections gathered in Selected Stories. The titles tell it all: "The Fully Licensed Whore, or, The Wife," "The Breeder," "The Mobile Bed-Object."
Sharing the same one-dimensionality, but with more evident humor, is a batch called "The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder," in which all sorts of creatures, from the lovable elephant to the lowly rat, exact vengeance on deserving humanity. In "Hamsters vs. Websters," even the nerdy rodents of the title get their turn turning off The Man: "Larry observed it all from the darkness. And he realized he didn't care. He didn't care what happened to his father. It was a little like watching something on the TV screen. Yes, he did care. He wanted the hamsters to win." Sadly, Highsmith's strongest collection of stories, Eleven, isn't included here, but those that are make for good brain candy on days when you'd like to slip out of your skin and pretend you're not human.
Many writers try to portray the darker sides of human nature, but few can do it as convincingly or pleasurably as Patricia Highsmith. She exposed the darkness beneath the calm veneer of the middle class and well-to-do. Her own misanthropy is so enjoyable that a reader can find refuge in her work, but it's a dangerous shelter. The risk in reading Highsmith's books lies in getting pulled so far into her vision of lurking menace that you lose the power--and desire--to escape.
Born in Texas in 1921, Highsmith spent most of her life in France and Switzerland, and her books slip in and out of print in her native country. Now, partially due to the not-too-shoddy 1999 film version of her novel The Talented Mr. Ripley (also the subject of the very good 1960 French film Purple Noon), the expatriate author's work is regaining American favor six years after her death. (An adaptation of the sequel, Ripley's Game, is currently in production; it was also previously filmed, by the German director Wim Wenders, as The American Friend in 1977.) In light of her renewed popularity, W.W. Norton & Co. is reissuing nine Highsmith novels and five short-story collections over the next couple of years. First up: Strangers on a Train (1950), her debut novel, and A Suspension of Mercy (1965). Norton has also gathered 60 of her short works in The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith.
As Graham Greene writes of Highsmith in the foreword to The Selected Stories: "She is a writer who has created a world of her own--a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger, with the head half turned over shoulder, even with a certain reluctance, for these are cruel pleasures we are going to experience." Not many reading experiences are more cruel or pleasurable than reading Strangers on a Train, which Alfred Hitchcock turned into a movie in 1951. The novel itself should be taught in school next to Albert Camus' The Stranger, so brilliant is its existential examination of a seemingly decent, intelligent man who slowly hangs himself through his passivity and ever-worsening choices.
The strangers of the title are Guy Haines, a budding young architect, and Charles Bruno, a budding alcoholic gadfly with a mother complex. Haines is frustrated by his estranged wife's psychic stranglehold on him; Bruno hates his father for undermining his sycophant lifestyle and getting in the way of his cloying relationship with his doting mom. The men meet on a train and, after a few formalities and cocktails, Bruno presents a fantasy plan to Haines: Each will murder the other's enemy. The killer would lack any motivation or link to his victim, so police would never suspect him.
Highsmith masterfully and subtly portrays the mild-mannered and slightly weak-willed Haines' slow descent into a martini-fueled maelstrom created by the obsessive Bruno. With his whining attachment and shadowy lust for his mother, his creeping-vine obsession with the successful Haines, and frequent drunken heebie-jeebie freakouts, Bruno is a shining contender for the Literary Psychotic Hall of Fame. But Highsmith wouldn't be content with just a battle between the forces of good and evil, so she shades the gray areas inside Haines, revealing his conflicting feelings about Bruno, a mix of repulsion and enchantment.
Though not as hair-raising and complex as Strangers, A Suspension of Mercy ranks among Highsmith's best work, along with The Cry of the Owl, Edith's Diary, Eleven, and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Suspension tells the bent tale of an unhappy marriage between Sydney Bartleby, a struggling author trying his hand at writing for television, and his wife, Alicia, an amateur painter. In his frustration and struggle to prove himself as an artist and breadwinner, Sydney loses himself more and more in his fantasy/writing life, finally hitting on a character for a TV series. Christened "The Whip," this character seems like a tongue-in-cheek parody of Highsmith's own Tom Ripley, a suave man of many faces who lives above the law. Rather than providing a vent for Sydney's more violent urges, however, the character further blurs the line in Sydney's mind between fantasy and reality.
In her novels Highsmith nestles her contempt for the foibles of humankind in roller-coaster plotting and psychological nuance; her short stories sometimes read like malicious, moralizing assaults. This is particularly true of the stories in "Little Tales of Misogyny," one of the five mini-collections gathered in Selected Stories. The titles tell it all: "The Fully Licensed Whore, or, The Wife," "The Breeder," "The Mobile Bed-Object."
Sharing the same one-dimensionality, but with more evident humor, is a batch called "The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder," in which all sorts of creatures, from the lovable elephant to the lowly rat, exact vengeance on deserving humanity. In "Hamsters vs. Websters," even the nerdy rodents of the title get their turn turning off The Man: "Larry observed it all from the darkness. And he realized he didn't care. He didn't care what happened to his father. It was a little like watching something on the TV screen. Yes, he did care. He wanted the hamsters to win." Sadly, Highsmith's strongest collection of stories, Eleven, isn't included here, but those that are make for good brain candy on days when you'd like to slip out of your skin and pretend you're not human.
Many writers try to portray the darker sides of human nature, but few can do it as convincingly or pleasurably as Patricia Highsmith. She exposed the darkness beneath the calm veneer of the middle class and well-to-do. Her own misanthropy is so enjoyable that a reader can find refuge in her work, but it's a dangerous shelter. The risk in reading Highsmith's books lies in getting pulled so far into her vision of lurking menace that you lose the power--and desire--to escape.
December 1, 2019
These stories are all well written, but the consistent, dark theme(s) grew a little repetitive. The first section here--all or most stories told from the POV of animals is not for me, as I dislike this approach. However, the camel story that uses the POV of a camel but in a greatly diminished capacity was interesting--the camel only knew a few words, etc. A few interesting twists throughout. Only a few have LGBT content.
Want to read
January 4, 2021#4.9
“It’s almost as if we’re married,” Lesley said in a moment when the music was not so loud. She smiled her fresh smile, the corners of her lips went up like a child’s. “You’re the kind of man I could live with. There are very few.”
“It’s almost as if we’re married,” Lesley said in a moment when the music was not so loud. She smiled her fresh smile, the corners of her lips went up like a child’s. “You’re the kind of man I could live with. There are very few.”
Read
November 20, 2024DNF - this is the second attempt and it just was not what I wanted. I do not know why they started with animal-focused stories, but I was way over it by the third one. She might be brilliant. I may never know.
June 10, 2018
A good read!
July 17, 2018
I was disappointed with most of these stories but I did enjoy the third collection.
November 13, 2018
macabre.
December 19, 2018
Great depth
February 28, 2019
I decided to review each book in this anthology separately since it's a diverse collection. There's a couple 4 star books in here, but the rest are only 3 star.
December 27, 2019
Some very short, but just enough to intrigue and provoke many different feelings...unease, anger, disgust, pity, yearning. LOVED IT.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 79 reviews