Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995

by Patricia Highsmith

Relegated during her lifetime to the pulpy genre of mystery, Patricia Highsmith has emerged since her death in 1995 as one of “our greatest modernist writers” (Gore Vidal). Presented for the first time, this one-volume assemblage of her diaries and notebooks—posthumously discovered behind Highsmith’s linens and culled from more than 8,000 pages by her devoted editor, Anna von Planta—traces the mesmerizing double-life of an artist who “[worked] like mad to be something.”


Beginning in 1941 during her junior year at Barnard, the diaries exhibit the intoxicating “atmosphere of nameless dread” (Boston Globe) that permeates classics such as Strangers on a Train and the Ripley series. In her skewering of McCarthy-era America, her prickly disparagement of contemporary art, her fixation on love and writing, and ever-percolating prejudices, the famously secretive Highsmith reveals the roots of her psychological angst and acuity. In one of the most compulsively readable literary diaries to publish in generations, at last we see how Patricia Highsmith became Patricia Highsmith.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Diary, Writing, Queer, Biography Memoir

1024 pages, Paperback

Published November 16, 2021

About the author

Patricia 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

Reviews

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Our only reality is in books: the purely fictional distillation from the impurity of reality

Reading Highsmith's diaries and notebooks gives a very different view of her than I had from her biographies. She's been positioned by biographers as socially awkward, misanthropic and with dodgy, veering on racist, opinions. That's not my view of her from reading these journals.

Firstly, PH has a vivid and strong voice right from the start and that doesn't change throughout her journals, though she does get a bit grumpier towards the end of her life. Interestingly, the Second World War barely impinges on her consciousness and we get very little sense of exterior history taking place. Instead, one of the most striking aspects here is the sheer number of lovers that Highsmith has, mostly female but also a few males, and how quickly she sheers through them. She seems to fall into love or lust very fast, and then fall out again with almost equal speed. She tries very hard by moving in with lovers, going travelling with them, but the relationships seem to fall apart, perhaps because no-one lives up to PH's uncompromising, perhaps unrealistic, standards.

As interesting are her own political opinions which are not those that I expected from her biographers:

'America now hesitating about employing a black woman professor who is an avowed Communist. It should be interesting & stimulating to have a Communist professor, providing she lets her polemical ideas filter through now and then. No one balks at Christian professors. Christ was essentially a communist. No one fears that Americans will begin to practice what Jesus preached. Why fear the preaching of Communists or communists?' (15/5/1970)

or:

'There wouldn’t be so much greed if there were more socialism in America. No one wants to become a pauper at sixty, because he has developed tuberculosis or cancer at fifty-five. But this is what happens now in America.' (27/11/1972)

And the scathing, cynical, vicious and sort of hilarious-if-it-weren't-so-tragic:

'Why don't the Americans drop some bombs on the Vatican? Look at all the human misery and poverty they are causing by their dilly-dallying over birth control. But no, the bombs are being dropped on innocent farmers. I propose a toast to the Pope: "I wish you eternal pregnancy! Breach deliveries every time, preferably sextuplets! May your vagina be torn to pieces! May your teeth fall out! May you be bed-ridden with anemia! But may you continue to bear, into eternity!" (1/11/67)

I really came to this for the insights into PH's novels, but stayed for so much more. Some bits I notated include her assessment of how easily The Talented Mr. Ripley came to her: 'The sentences of this book go down on the paper like nails' - and isn't that one of the best assessments of that novel's atmosphere as anything else you've ever read? - and her feeling that she was channeling Ripley who was dictating the book to her while she merely typed it up. She talks of wanting to write an honest assessment of life as she sees it: 'What I predicted I would once do, I am doing already in this very book (Tom Ripley), that is, showing the unequivocal triumph of evil over good.' (1/10/54)

A story I'd love to read is her third snail story where a nuclear holocaust takes places... and the snails survive because they retreat into their shells for months. With genetic mutation and their relentless will to survive, they then devour everything, including cannibalising each other, grow into giants and rule the world! Ha!

A moment that made me snort out loud on the tube is this: 'Probably the most serious handicap to a woman’s becoming President is her clothes. Just imagine trying to please every section of the country!' (March 26, 1942) - something we've all seen played out in our media from Hilary's suits and hair to Teresa May's so-obviously-styled leather trousers and leopard-print shoes, to Truss' Thatcher-wannabe true blue dresses.

This is a large collection, just over 1000 pages, but it is entertaining, insightful and wonderfully abrasive with a strong and characterful, as well as characteristic, voice. Oh, and Highsmith was being talked about for a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991 - ha! say those of us who love her and see her books as far more than merely deep, dark crime thrillers.

[Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

2:30 A.M. My New Year's Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envys, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle—may they never give me peace.
—1 Jan 1948

There is no moral to life—I have none—except: “Stand up and take it.” The rest is sentiment.
—2 Apr 1954

I wonder if it's her rejection of sentiment, her openness to darker impulses, that has made Patricia Highsmith seem hard, even misanthropic. That's certainly the impression of her I'd absorbed, through I don't know what cultural osmosis, before I picked this book up: of a crabby, rebarbative person, abusive to her romantic partners, and possibly racist into the bargain. Yet when you turn to her own journals, especially in the early years, a very different impression obtains: here it's all open curiousity and eager exclamations (‘Oh—the kisses last night—they were sweet, they were heavenly!…Shakespeare, you were right!’).

We do see a harder, more cynical Highsmith emerge over the years, but that underlying person never goes away. I hadn't expected it. The diaries begin in 1941, when she is a nineteenth-year-old at Barnard College in New York, and are continued, with varying dedication and prolixity, during all her peregrinations across Europe and through to her final years in Switzerland in the 1990s. They are the storehouse for her fiction, and a fascinating record of her embattled inner life.

The basic parameters are already well established before the diaries begin: namely, her determination to be a writer, her desire to understand the world, her attraction to ‘abnormality’, and – not unrelated – her complicated feelings about her own sexuality. She knows she fancies women from a very young age, and in those early years in New York, her whole life seems to be a swirl of love affairs. She had excellent connections, oodles of charisma, and classic good looks:



Reading these entries, one has the sense of the world as a wonderland populated entirely by lesbians. Highsmith finds lovers everywhere, at every party, on every vacation. They can be straight, they can be married – they'll still find themselves in bed with her, almost without anyone understanding how. ‘So little motivation, strength of purpose, is needed apparently to turn a woman or a girl from her regular bourgeois world into the road to homosexuality,’ she muses. ‘Why do they choose this? I must discover.’

Regardless of their motivation, Highsmith is not one to look a gift-wife in the mouth. ‘There are not enough girls for me, not enough gin, not enough hours in the day to dissipate,’ she says gleefully. Fidelity is not a strong suit. She becomes fixated on someone, writes of little else for days; and then suddenly, almost overnight, she has found someone else and her old flame is forgotten. It's not unusual for her entries to go from ‘I adore her’ to ‘She disgusts me’ within a couple of weeks. Even when in a relationship, she will cheerfully sleep with other people when the opportunity arises. (‘In my system of morals, I do not feel this in the least unfaithful,’ she comments at one point.)

She mellows a little with age, but the general theme persists. In her late 40s, living in France, she is visited by a young (female) reporter who's travelled out from London to interview her; the two end up having a whirlwind affair. ‘To love a girl like her, to make love to her, is like conquering, or at least pleasing, a continent,’ Highsmith writes. ‘It is somehow so important, so important.’ This vital importance of sex for her is something she returns to again and again:

Sex, to me, should be a religion. I have no other.
—7 Aug 1941

The sex act should be done either in a white heat or with the best sense of humor. Technique is a matter of imagination, and consideration only of the other person; a talent never found in men.
—21 Dec 1941

Yes, maybe sex is my theme in literature—being the most profound influence on me—manifesting itself in repressions and negatives, perhaps, but the most profound influence, because even my failures are results of repressions in body & mind, which are repressions of sex.
—13 May 1942

Sexual love is the only emotion which has ever really touched me. Hatred, jealousy, even abstract devotion, never—except devotion to myself.
—24 Sep 1943

Every move I make on earth is in some way for women. I adore them! I need them as I need music, as I need drawings. I would give up anything visible to the eye for them, but this is not saying much. I would give up music for them: that is saying much.
—4 Oct 1947

One realises then that the sex life motivates & controls all. (I am myself entirely a mass of tributaries from this great river in me.)
—29 Mar 1948

Sometimes, you can see how she takes this tendency as something universal, and applies it to other artists she admires. ‘Why is the Second Piano Concerto of Saint-Saëns so brilliant in comparison to all the rest of his work?’ she asks herself. ‘Probably because he had just started an affair with his cook or his maid.’ At the same time, her interest in women – sexual, emotional and romantic – is increasingly tinged with a broad streak of misogyny:

Having an automobile is like having your own woman. They're a terrible expense and give you a lot of worry, but once you've had one, you'll never want to be without one.
—28 Apr 1941

A woman is never, or very seldom, hopelessly in love with one man. She can make a calm choice between the man with the money and the man without, the better father and the bad father, who may be handsomer. The woman, because, chiefly because, she has less imagination, has less passion. She brings less, and she takes less.
—7 Aug 1941

No man really likes a woman. He is either in love with her or she annoys him.
—17 Dec 1941

[after being forgiven following a violent argument with a girlfriend] Moral: Beat your wife once a week. They love it.
—22 Mar 1952

Women—they believe they manipulate other people. Actually, they are still puppets, never alone, never content to be alone, always seeking a master, a partner, someone really to give them orders or direction.
—7 Jun 1973

It's clear when you encounter such comments that Highsmith does not think of herself as the woman in such situations, but rather the contrary, as the man. ‘I want to change my sex,’ she writes in 1948. ‘Is that possible?’ A few years later, she says that from the age of six she's considered herself to be ‘a boy in a girl's body’. It may well be, then, that if she'd been growing up today she would have considered herself trans, though whether that would have brought her any more happiness is hard to see.

Her struggles with faithfulness (‘I am in great need of strange lips that don't mean anything to me’) and her insistence on complete independence for work combine to scupper every relationship she has. It's not all her fault; and beneath the arguments and break-ups is clearly someone who desperately wants (and probably thinks she doesn't deserve) a committed, loving partnership.

But every relationship that doesn't work knocks her back a little more; and by her later years, you can see how her cynicism has grown out of the disillusionment of those experiences. It's sad. But for her, work is always the priority, and everything else takes second place. Even her sexuality: ‘To be creative is the only excuse, the only mitigating factor, for being homosexual,’ she says at one point. Other helpful tips for the aspiring writer appear passim:

Night writing—Certainly all younger writers should write at night, when the conscious brain (the critical faculty) is tired. Then the subconscious has its way and the writing is uninhibited.
—1 Nov 1942

The size of paper one writes a letter or a book on is vitally important. The length of the page, the width, even the space between the lines, influences the rhythm of the sentences.
—26 Jan 1944

The actual time spent in creative work each day need by only very little. The important thing is that all the rest of the day contribute to this strenuous time.
—8 Jul 1945

How I write these days: (or is anybody interested?) I do everything possible to avoid a sense of discipline. I write on my bed (bed made up, myself fully but not decently clothed), having once surrounded myself with ashtray, cigarettes, matches, a hot or warm cup of coffee, a stale part of a doughnut and saucer with sugar to dip it in after dunking. My position is as near the fetal as possible, still permitting writing. A womb of my own.
—28 Aug 1947

Wait for inspiration: mine come with the frequency of rodent orgasms.
—30 Aug 1947

I have only two criteria for a novel: it must have a definite idea behind it, precise and evident; it must be readable, so readable the reader doesn't want to put it down even once. I don't know but that I set the second criterion higher than the first.
—3 Aug 1951

Every book is perfect until one begins to write it.
—30 Oct 1951

What a leap world literature would take, if everyone who writes a book were able to have ideal working conditions—a quiet room, regularity, freedom from anxiety. The writer's demands are so simple, yet the most difficult thing in the modern world to achieve is privacy, and the most expensive. Perhaps not one book in a thousand is written under ideal conditions, that is to say written at the writer's best. The world is full of writers writing in exhausted spare time in noisy uncomfortable corners of rooms, interrupting themselves to do work for others, etc., etc. and only the ones with burning conviction bring it off.
—4 Dec 1951

[on why she writes]
It is not an infatuation with words. It is absolute daydreaming, for daydreaming's sake.
—14 Feb 1955

A pox on my peers! Goodbye, my brothers! Some things, such as painting, a poem, a novel, a love affair, a prayer, must be done alone. Let me alone. Noli me tangere.
—16 Feb 1957

So strong is this need to work that when, in her final years, she finds herself taking much longer between books, it is the lack of work itself that seems both cause and symptom of her deteriorating health. ‘It is worse than a nightmare, the confrontation of leisure,’ she writes from her home in the Ticino. Her last couple of books were not felt to be up to her usual standards, but she simply could not exist without writing something.

I related to Patricia Highsmith a lot while reading these diaries, which is perhaps a worrying sign. (Hannah, reading over my shoulder the list of quotes I'd underlined, said this morning: ‘Well I can see why you like her.’) Much of what's above falls into that category – misogyny excepted – as does her love of reading the dictionary, something I've often been teased about. There's her occasional comments on socialising in a relationship (‘The old story: I want to stay home and read, and she wants to go out’). And although she writes only rarely about travel as a concept – her diary is mostly concerned with her feelings about specific people in her life – when she does, she is exquisite:

Oh the wonderful night rides on the bus, when I think, I believe, I know, all things are possible, when the mind, untrammeled, unanchored, moves like a primeval, omniscient, omnipotent thing, from abstraction to concretion, to fantasy to fact, and strings them all together in a wondrous necklace.
—11 May 1944

…she is not coming, and the old adventure and loneliness calls again to me. There remains at this date only to take off really alone, the small lonely hotel room, the view of some river at night, the lights of some restaurant where there is no one to dine with me. Out of these things come my stories, books, and my sense of life.
—21 Oct 1959

It's a hard life to look at in some ways, because she never really found the happiness she wanted, and ended her life more or less alone in a foreign country. You feel she never really succeeded in resolving the competing pressures, anxieties and drives she felt. But the wonder is that she used them to create so much joy for other people.

I believe that people should be allowed to go the whole hog with their perversions, abnormalities, unhappinesses and construction or destruction. Mad people are the only active people. They have built the world. Mad people, constructive geniuses, should have only enough normal intelligence to enable them to escape the forces that would normalize them.
—27 Sep 1942

[Christie Bane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now why in the world would I get this MASSIVE (42-hour audiobook) diary of a writer when I've never read any of her books and never even heard of her before? Well, because the NY Times told me I should. In all honesty, the Times review described her life as the life of someone who lived it with gusto, and I like stories about people getting everything out of life that they can, as opposed to just existing. Also, I'm nosy, and I like seeing what other people put in their diaries. Even when they've been dead for 25 years and I have no idea who they are.

This book met or exceeded all my expectations. I now know an awful lot about Patricia Highsmith. She was young in New York City in the 1940's, and she was a bit of a crazy girl even as she was always dedicated to pursuing her art (writing). She slept with dozens of women and also a handful of men. If there was any stigma to being gay then, it is barely referred to in her diary; she's too busy being IN LOVE with one woman, then another, then another. Good for her! Nothing wrong with a series of intense, non-permanent relationships, in my opinion.

She ended up being a very successful writer, but her struggles with writing were as interesting to me as all of her hot affairs. I think that all writers have the same internal struggles. This is an enjoyable and inspiring look into the brain of an artist, and a front-row seat to the movie of her life.

[Oliver Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book was as a fascinating, moving experience. I don’t read many memoirs, and when I do they’re the considered, filtered kind. Reading something as raw as this was breathtaking - Highsmith’s most private thoughts laid bare. It feels intrusive at times, but it’s also utterly compelling, even when she’s describing the most mundane things.
She’s an author I’ve come to greatly admire over the last 2 years, so having access to her diaries and notebooks felt like a rare treat, an opportunity to better understand a truly great writer.

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, she was a kind of awful person morally, but I want to know what her thoughts were like because she was a very strange, yet brilliant woman. I think knowing them will bring so much more depth to her writing as I suspect she infused a lot of her characters with her own personality.

some questionable quotes:

"Murder is a kind of making love, a kind of possessing."

"They roared into the Lincoln Tunnel. A wild, inexplicable excitement mounted in Therese as she stared through the windshield. She wished the tunnel might cave in and kill them both, that their bodies might be dragged out together."

Except for that quote, Therese is pretty normal in her line of thinking, which makes me wonder if Highsmith just assumed that everyone else thinks these kinds of morbid thoughts. Anyways, I just think her mind is a curious one.

[H · Rating 5 out of 5]

well.

it took me over a year to finish this book, though not steadily—i devoured it at the end of 2021, and touched it hardly at all for the entirety of 2022. but now i’m done and the sun is setting outside.

what to say—it got harder to read as she got older, the sparks disappeared, the loves were more toxic, her own prejudices clearer and stronger. it’s an utterly masterful collection (in particular i appreciated the notes at the back about the particulars of the diaries/notebooks) but complicated. because highsmith was complicated. because people are complicated.

what a devouring mind. art & the world & herself. gives me the same self-consciousness about my own journals that any such book does. what on earth will become of us all.

[paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

siempre siento que invado la intimidad de quien leo diarios, cartas, etc... pero menudos pensamientossss!!!! me ha encantado y no puedo hacer nada al respecto (asumir que los filólogos somos todos unos cotillas, por ejemplo); ahora quiero leerme todas sus novelas (lástima q sea una lectora de pacotilla) le pondría un 4 y medio pero esto no es letterboxd

[Arcimboldis World · Rating 5 out of 5]

2021 wäre sie 100 Jahre geworden – die amerikanische Schriftstellerin Patricia Highsmith, die jedoch die Hälfte ihres Lebens in Europa verbrachte und hier auch weit mehr geschätzt wird, als in ihrer Heimat. An ihrer imposanten Figur Tom Ripley kommt man als Leser nicht vorbei, ihr Leben war ebenfalls alles andere als langweilig oder uninteressant. Im Diogenes Verlag sind letzten Herbst ihre Tage- und Notizbücher erschienen – schnell weiss man: ihre politischen Gedanken sind in dieser Ausgabe Nebensache, viel spannender sind kleine und intime Details, ihre Liebschaften, Selbstzweifel, die Schneckenzucht – unterhaltsam, informativ, erfrischend freizügig…
Ein dicker Schmöker ist es schon (1376 Seiten samt Personenregister, Auwahlbibliographie, Filmographie, editorischen Notizen etc. ) – aber eine spannende Lektüre gleichwohl. Patricia Highsmith führte seit ihrer College-Zeit Tagebuch und so verwundert es nicht, dass 1995 nach ihrem Tod im Wäscheschrank 18 Tage- und Notizbücher gefunden wurden. Anna von Planta hat diese nun herausgegeben (aus dem Amerikanischen von Melanie Walz, Pociao, Anna-Nina Kroll, Marion Hertle und Peter Torberg). 1921 in Fort Worth (Texas, USA) geboren, war sie zeitlebens eine Reisende, eine Unstete, Rast- und Ruhelose, 1963 zog sie nach Europa, war nie lange an einem Ort, erst ab 1981 kehrte etwas Ruhe ein, als sie ins Tessin zog, wo sie 1995 verstarb – hier in Tegna liegt sie auch begraben.
Klar ist jedenfalls, dass Highsmith in jüngeren Jahren ihre Sexualität promisk ausgelebt hat, darüber freut man sich fast ein wenig, wenn man weiss, wie zurückgezogen, fast schon weltabgewandt, auf jeden Fall eigenbrötlerisch sie die letzten Jahre im Tessin verbracht hat. Und das Bild, das man von ihr hat, diese Härte, dieser Schaffensrausch, immer mit einer Zigarette in der Hand oder im Mund – das bekommt man auch bestätigt. Und noch viel mehr. Allerdings auch mit einigen Auslassungen und Strichen, zwar gibt es dazu eine editorische Anmerkung der Herausgeberin, dennoch sind es die nicht vorhandenen Dinge, die man als Leser gerne wüsste. Es ist ja kein grosses Geheimnis, dass sie sehr zum Antisemitismus neigte und dies auch äusserte. Da es sich um Tagebücher handelt, sind es oftmals intime Bekenntnisse und Blicke in Emotionen und Selbstreflexionen. Zusammen mit der grossen Biografie von Joan Schenkar „Die talentierte Miss Highsmith“ (2015, ebenfalls bei Diogenes erschienen) bietet diese Ausgabe die Möglichkeit, sich ein gutes Bild dieser vielseitigen Schriftstellerin zu machen. Der Inhalt gliedert sich in folgende Lebensabschnitte:
1921-1940 Die frühen Jahre zwischen Texas und New York / 1941-1950 Leben und Schreiben in New York / 1951-1962 Zwischen den USA und Europa / 1963-1966 England oder der Versuch, sesshaft zu werden / 1967-1980 Rückkehr nach Frankreich / 1981-1995 Lebensabend in der Schweiz
In einem Zuge liest man das sicherlich nicht, aber ab und zu darin blättern und sich nach und nach auszugsweise in Highsmith zu versetzen, gleichzeitig einmal mehr die Ripley-Romane hervorkramen und in dessen Welt eintauchen – das ist Lesevergnügen pur!

[Alberto Delgado · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5
Desde que me enteré que se iba a publicar este libro lo marqué como una lectura que quería hacer y no dejar en la lista de pendientes y es que si hay una escritora de lo que se denomina novela negra que me haya perturbado leyendo sus obras es ella con la creación de esos personajes tan complejos y tan fuera del estereotipo que suele aparecer en muchas novelas del genero por lo que me pareció la forma perfecta de poder conocer mas de su personalidad y de su vida. No es un libro desde luego para leer del tirón. Yo lo he leído a lo largo de 4 meses avanzando poco a poco en su lectura leyendo en la cama unas páginas cada día justo antes de dormir y por supuesto es solo recomendable para fans de la autora. En sus mas de 1000 paginas se han reunido un resumen de los mas de 8000 páginas que dejó escritos en 38 cuadernos a lo largo de su vida y que fueron descubiertos en un armario tras su muerte. En ellos fue dejando notas de su vida en los diarios y de reflexiones que utilizaba para la escritura de sus novelas y cuentos en los cuadernos. A veces se hace una lectura repetitiva ya que muchas de las anotaciones que nos encontramos son muy similares en la descripción de reuniones sociales pero a mi me ha gustado poder ver como fue evolucionando a lo largo de su vida en lo profesional y en lo personal con una complicada relación con sus padres y sus también conflictivas relaciones de pareja. Desde luego me han quedado muchas ganas de volver a leer sus obras.

[PatriShaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

No suelen gustarme mucho los diarios (ni propios, ni ajenos), menos cuando lo que se presenta ante el lector es una selección.
Si bien completas y muy justificadas, las transcripciones de los cuadernos de Patricia Highsmith me han proporcionado esa sensación que puede traducirse y resumirse con la palabra "demasiado". Obviamente son un documento maravilloso y aportan mucha luz sobre la figura sombría de la escritora, pero a la hora de la lectura menos académica resultan (o por lo menos a mí) increíblemente tediosos.
Eso sí, poder entrar en los pensamientos de una autora de ese calibre (cuya figura sigue fascinándome de un modo que tampoco sé explicarme bien) es un placer voyeurístico de primera, aunque desconcierta y asusta a partes iguales.
Leer lo que los escritores "escriben cuando no están escribiendo" siempre es un reto, más o menos logrado, que deja poso. Ya solo por eso merece la pena zambullirse entre los centenares de páginas y notas que nos ayudan a enfocar una figura que siempre quiso estar fuera de plano.

[Garry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning, amazing, fantastic; I really enjoyed reading these beautifully curated excerpts from the diaries and notebooks of the writer Patricia Highsmith, edited by Anna Von Planta.

Tons of lesbian literary history, gay history, New York and European artist and writing circles and drinking, smoking and whoring around. Full of interesting insights and observations.

[Mark Hussey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a revelation (as I knew nothing about Highsmith). Such an interesting, original mind, cutting through a whole lot of bs! And a sad personal life, exacerbated, of course, by homophobia. And so many gems (like this from 1942: "Probably the most serious handicap to a woman’s becoming President is her clothes. Just imagine trying to please every section of the country!"

[Jose Miguel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un diario de vida monumental! Se trata de 1200 páginas que resumen 50 años de diarios de vida y cuadernos de escritura donde Patricia Highsmith (Pat) llevó registro de su trabajo escritural, sus obsesiones, sus opiniones sobre contingencias variadas (desde la escena literaria y artística de mediados del siglo pasado hasta la segunda guerra mundial y el conflicto entre Israel y Palestina) y sus amores (ACÁ HAY MUUUUUUCHO MATERIAL).

Una manera muy diferente de aproximarse a la autora.

A diferencia de otros diarios de vida que he leído —con la notable excepción del diario de Sylvia Plath— acá la escritura es estilísticamente muy elevada. Uno pensaría que Pat escribió esto pensando en que sería leído y minuciosamente revisado algún día.

Sugerencia: sólo para gente que gusta mucho de leer diarios de vida o para personas que —como yo— aman a la autora y quieren saber más de su vida.

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

so interesting to read these after reading the novels and stories and a biography. from the feel of some of the letters i came away having a different impression of highsmith's relationship with her mother (the biography i read really painted it as a disaster ... the impression you get here is more nuanced, perhaps ambivalent). i admit i didn't read every page, because i was flipping back and forth between some of the books and got sidetracked, but have a great feel for it. this is an excellent collection in terms of selection and editing (we must assume there was a good deal of editing, considering highsmith apparently wrote in her diaries and notebooks nearly every day) and a real asset for the devoted fan.

[Alice Rix · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating insight into Patricia Highsmith's life. She was a very strong, very brave woman, and survived a lot more than she ever realised. A pleasure and an education to read. Beautifully compiled and presented, and translated from her many languages. One of the finest books I've read.

[Wendy Liu]

A fascinating read that doubles as a speed-run of a remarkable life.

[Lit Folio · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read excerpts recently in the New Yorker from this exhaustive compendium, and once I actually got the book in my hands I realized this was going to be a disappointment. Big Time. It's a collection of thousands of small tidbit entries from the day to day life of this author going back decades to her early life. Perhaps, that is the best section. When she was young and at Yaddo. Remarkable in her successes as she was (Hitchcock doing 'Strangers on a Train') and at such a young age, Highsmith was just plain weird.

It's not that she's gay; this is fine. No problem with this reader. But that she's odd. Very odd. And kind of creepy; as creepy as her subjects (Mr Ripley?). There's a fascination with the dark, the cold and the murderous in this woman; the prurient weirdness of her subjects; her strange way of 'relating' to others that comes through. Frankly, I would have not have liked to have known this woman. When the film, 'Carol' came out a few years ago (based on her novel: 'The Price of Salt)' I was intrigued. Perhaps I would see a different side to this writer. But lo...it, too, had a creepy feel to it. That the older woman (played by Blanchett) was seeking out the loner, Carol,for darker reasons than it seems. Its subtle. Many did not see this important quality here. But Carol was ripe prey for the more worldly Blanchett character. A common theme with Highsmith is her profiles of many of her characters; they are outsiders, loners, without roots--therefore ripe for those aiming for darker goals in seeking out others.

All in all, this glimpse into the day to day life of this author really doesn't open new doors about an already strange and cold woman who seems to have held many a dark secret that even her diary was going to leave out.

[Christopher Denny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can only compare it to The Diaries of Anais Nin and the notebooks of Jack Kerouac...Her style is so modern and fresh that when she mentions seeing Citizen Kane I initially thought it was at a revival showing then realized that she was talking about having seen the original theatrical release in 1941! Pat, as her friends called her, was bisexual but she seemed to prefer the ladies. I mention this because she is both fickle and romantic. Some readers might find these passages exhausting. Nothing tawdry or vulgar here; it's just that she falls head-over-heels so often it's like watching her do cartwheels. She seems to be entirely candid throughout this 1,000-page memoir. (Given its size, this is one you might prefer as an ebook.)...After reading Strangers on a Train and The Price of Salt, I think this life-long work is as compelling and beautifully written as her best fiction--not that you need to read any of her fiction as a prerequisite to reading this. However, this book will make you want to read everything she's written. Years from now, this relatively recent release will rank among her finest work...Also a must-read for anyone wanting to pay a visit to New York City in the 1940s. (The footnotes are essential reading, as well, if you want to fully understand the people and places in Pat's life.)...The single disappointment was not having photos of all the key players in her life--relatives, friends, lovers, etc. I imagine this will eventually be added in later editions. There are several pictures of the author here--each one beginning a new section, which gives the reader an idea of what Pat looked like during that period...After finishing this hefty book, I might have read it all over again, if not for the fact I had run out of renewals at the library.

[Clara Mundy · Rating 4 out of 5]

“November 21, 1941: I felt no part of my body—it was all sensation—and not in my head, but floating where out in a sea of perfume and white flowers, without time and beyond time.”

“2/11/42: At sixteen, I lay and ask myself could there be anything ever in the world so wonderfully beautiful, so perfect, as this Mozart concerto? And the answer was, no, not really—only someone might somehow be a concerto.”

“4/27/71: More and more food must be grown, because more and more animals must be raised to feed more and more people. Thus, in a way animals and people are eating each other. Animals eat man’s spiritual heritage—the land—and man eats the flesh of his cousins, the animals.”

4.25/5

[Dandelion · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been dipping in and out of this book over a number of months. At first, the diary and notebook entries struck me as a tad superficial and lacking in detail. Moreover, there was a significant amount of repetition as the young Patricia Highsmith somersaults from one love affair to another. Drinking, lovemaking and writing seemed to be the author's main preoccupations. But once I fell into the rhythm of Highsmith's life, the book felt deeply immersive and surprisingly panoramic despite many questions left unanswered.

I felt quite sad to say goodbye to Highsmith in the end. She certainly was a character but didn't come across half as badly as I thought she would (apparently she self-edited her diaries while she was alive and perhaps made them more agreeable).

Highsmith seemed to lose a significant amount of energy once she hit 50, and the diaries become much sparser in her later years.
Her foreign language attempts (some of her diary entries are written in other languages) are extremely admirable but also quite hilarious as she had a knack for using incorrect words.

While there are many things I would have liked to have read more about, for example her relationship with her mother, the book was so comprehensive that in the end, Highsmith felt like a flawed but close friend of mine. A fascinating insight into the mind of very talented writer.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an exhausting, difficult, sad journey through the diary pages of one of our great modern writers.

Born in 1921, raised in New York City, she came of age in a place of culture, museums, libraries, history, and art. She was a voracious reader, lived with her mother and stepfather, quite unhappily, in the West Village. Her passion and her determination was always to be independent, to get published, and to find true love with another woman.

About 18 when WWII began, she seemed in these diary pages to be almost oblivious to the millions of people suffering, dying and fighting around the world. I can't recall any references to the invasion of Poland, the persecution of the Jews, the Japanese invasion of China, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore or Pearl Harbor. There is nothing about young men she knew going off to war, the heartbreak of families left behind, the domestic policies of FDR. There is only one reference to a movie I remember, "Mrs. Miniver" and nothing else about the movies at a time when the average American went 52 times a year.

Her only contribution to the war is purchasing war bonds, which she cashes in 15 years later to finance her European travel.

Everything is about her. Her clothes, her drinking spots, her girlfriends, her meetings with potential lovers in restaurants and in parks. And what hats, dresses, blouses, shoes she bought, what elite friends she weekended with in Connecticut and Long Island, the smallest things are her obsession. V-E Day, the Invasion of Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Auschwitz, Dachau, the defeat of fascism in Italy, Germany and Japan, none of it is in these copious, long, detailed diaries which chronicle her arguments with her mother, mean letters, mean girls, breakups with girls, fights with girls, all enacted under many bottles of wine, whisky, beer and four packs of cigarettes a week.

She counts every penny, is obsessed with money, knows exactly how much she spent on cigarettes, taxis and gin. And she knows when the girl she's with hasn't paid, or paid too much, or paid too little. Always the relationships are based on sex, and they die when love doesn't grow, and because the world still hates gay people. Yet it seems from these pages that the words "queer" and "gay" are widely used and there are ample places where queer people meet in NYC, despite societal controls and family disapproval. She has freedom to be herself, to get laid, to get paid, but it all is a trudge.

As she precociously gets famous, selling her best selling book,' Strangers on a Train' to Hitchcock in 1950, she does not undergo any sort of change in her solitude. She moves to a better apartment, writes fiendishly, is a full-time workaholic and alcoholic, and cannot make a successful partnership with any woman, but runs through all of them, continually fighting and arguing and crying and making up and then splitting up and getting back together, international melodramas that are played out in France, Italy, Germany, England, Texas and New York City.

And always she is angry, bitter, depressed, broken, mad, furious, hurt, from agents who don't work enough, publishers who don't buy enough, landlords who charge too much, hotels that aren't cheap enough, mothers and girlfriends who don't love enough.

The 1950s sees another triumph: "The Talented Mr. Ripley" which also becomes another film, "Purple Noon" with Alain Delon but that does not secure her financially. And her Hollywood connections, her publishing connections, her friendships with notables in film and books does not help her because she is determined to be unhappy, and you are made to read every day of every year to learn how yet another small thing has fallen apart for her.

At about 33, 1954, she starts to write with pronouncements about the truths of human nature, about God, girls, men, work, Europe and America. She projects all her unhappiness onto the world, still not understanding herself or her planet, but jotting off daily observations of the objective reality she observes:

4/22/54: "Whatever pity I have for the human race is a pity for the mentally deranged and for the criminals."

6/28/54: "What nation hasn't something atrocious in its history to be ashamed of?"

9/13/54: "Philosophers never come to a decision."

11/2/54: "The world makes sense after one or two drinks."

3/5/55: "If people are emotionally bound together they often can't be funny or witty or light."

This is just a year's worth of random quotes. The book is full of nearly 1000 pages of this.

I know my review sounds harsh. I wanted to go back in time and shake her up and slap her face and tell her to take $5,000 and buy an apartment on the Upper East Side or $15,000 for a house in Greenwich and just shut the fuck up. She lived at a time when she did not have worry about money, because she secured her career before she was 29!

But her fate, which she accelerated, was to suffer in a haze of cigarettes and alcohol and lost love. 999 pages attest to this life story of meltdown and regret.

[Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me three library check-outs to complete this book. When I started reading, I wondered if it could sustain my interest, but it did. The diary and journal entries (hereafter just referred to as "entries," but there actually was a difference in what she wrote in each until the '60s when both purposes seemed to meld) begin in 1941 when Highsmith is 20 years old, and they reflect her youthful enthusiasm about life. It's in the late 1940s, after many a disappointing love affair, that the tone changes so that she sounds more like the HIghsmith most people are familiar with--cynical and pessimistic. This is not the whole picture of her. She fought against depression; it was not a state of mind she indulged in. Some of her late entries of the '80s and '90s revealed a hint of optimism. Much has been said about Highsmith being racist and anti-semitic. You won't find this in this collection, though I looked for it; in fact, you'll find just the opposite. She did criticize Israel and in doing so make generalizations about Jewish support of Israel. It should be taken into consideration that Highsmith had a dependence on alcohol. At 20, she believed drinking hindered the writer, noting, "But the rosy haze of drunkenness is singularly unproductive--seemingly fertile at first--but put your ideas into concrete practice and they vanish like a soap bubble." Over the years she makes impersonal observations about why writers drink. But by at least the age of 35, she considers it a necessity to creativity. She writes, "...to alcohol, in all its charming guises, its delightful forms, to its lifting of the heart, to its rending of the dark, close curtain of reality that enables man to behold the depth and breadth of his imagination...." and at 39, "Look what salt does to a snail, [a friend] replies. But I love salt and it's also a necessity." Any looney remarks attributed to her in her later years, need to be taken in the context of her alcoholism and deteriorating physical health.. In spite of the 900-plus pages of this collection, I found it engaging and fascinating.

[Carlos Puig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patricia Highsmith registró aspectos de su vida personal y de su actividad  como escritora a lo largo de más 50 años en 8 diarios y 38 cuadernos, lo que suma cerca de ocho mil páginas. Como ella misma reflexiona en una entrada del año 50: "¿quién sería capaz de leerlos por completo?".

La escritora consideraba estos escritos parte de su obra y habló con sus editores para que se publicara una selección después de su muerte.

"Condensar alrededor de ocho mil páginas en un solo tomo sin dejar de hacer justicia al material reunido resultaba un reto inmenso", señala el comienzo de una nota editorial incluida en el prólogo.

El resultado es fascinante.

La lectura de las más de mil páginas de este libro nos permiten asomarnos a la vida íntima de la autora, a sus relaciones amorosas y los conflictos con la madre; a las dificultades para realizar su labor literaria, a sus contradicciones, obsesiones, disciplina de trabajo, procesos creativos y editoriales; a sus cuestionamientos existenciales, pensamientos sobre el arte, la literatura, los hombres, las mujeres, EEUU y Europa, la vida y la muerte; a sus opiniones sobre acontecimientos históricos, políticos, sociales; a sueños, anécdotas, entretenimientos, al ocio; a sus viajes, a los aspectos triviales de su existencia, como dolores de muela, enfermedades, el abuso del alcohol, sus cambios de residencias, en fin, a una variedad de experiencias y reflexiones donde podemos apreciar la complejidad de una escritora singular y valiosa del siglo XX y su inclaudicable tesón y capacidad de trabajo para convertirse en escritora y vivir de la escritura.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chosen one of the New York Times critics' Top Books of 2021, this abridged collection of Highsmith's diaries and notebooks had me hovering between a 3 and 4-star rating, but I decided to be generous and round up. I say that because I probably enjoyed Joan Schenkar's biography, The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith so much, and I prefer diaries that focus more on author's creative process (rather than their personal life, which is depicted here in abundance - and was admittedly quite interesting.)

[Sara Booklover · Rating 4 out of 5]

Per chi già conosce le opere dell’autrice questi diari sono d’aiuto per comprendere meglio i suoi intenti e i suoi pensieri, nonché conoscere meglio la sua vita.

Per poterli apprezzare al meglio bisogna superare uno scoglio iniziale, perché inizialmente questi diari sono molto ermetici e didascalici, non incoraggiano a proseguire la lettura. Ma ad un certo punto la scrittura diventa più personale, più introspettiva, come se l’autrice abbia avuto bisogno di tempo prima di prendere confidenza con le pagine del suo diario e la lettura da un certo punto in poi diventa più interessante.

Ho trovato indispensabili le varie note introduttive poste all’inizio di ogni periodo e che aiutano ad inquadrare e a contestualizzare i diari con il periodo storico e con le tappe professionali e personali dell’autrice.

[A · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it is interesting to read the curmudgeonly Highsmith recounting her annoyance with people, places and things, it does tire after a bit. Yes, i love her - and you can see her ways in this very plain diary, but it doesn't really go anywhere or add anything. Interesting to read about her world travels and to see the development and reaction to her great books, but there isn't much of that all- that would have been interesting. O well.

[Déborah Sánchez-Marín · Rating 3 out of 5]

follar beber escribir tener dinero follar caracoles gatos beber escribir beber marica marica follar amor amar follar jiji escribir.

Muy curioso cómo las lesbianas y bisex. se narraban y narraban sus vidas, esto se lo decía yo a mi querida María el otro día, porque es algo que me pasó también al ver el documental de Susan Sontag.

No sé si marcar la casilla contiene spoilers, porque ya lo he dicho todo.

MUCHO TEXTO.

[Ann Duddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, at nearly 1,000 pages, what a ride! I finished this in one year and three days, as I checked it out or waited for it from the library.

I have never been so enthralled by an author’s journals as I was by Pat Highsmith’s. She was known to be mean and cruel, but in her journals she comes across as someone who was in love with being in love and determined to live her life in her own terms.

[Erin Loken · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a substantial page count, but queer history is kinda most comprehensively documented through crime, and it’s so refreshing to read pages of its happenstance crap. Letterwriting! Vintage workwear! “Darling”! Etc. Etc..

Patricia Highsmith was inherently an imperfect weirdo but she diaried phenomenally and it was a pleasure to invade her privacy

[Christine Mathieu · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've finished reading this interesting book. Many of the places in the US, UK, Italy and France mentioned in the book were familiar to me, I've been to some of them.
However, I find the two biographies by Andrew Wilson and Joan Schenkar more rewarding.