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(born Mary Patricia Plangman)
born on January 19, 1921 in Fort Worth, Texas, United States
died on February 14, 1995 in Locarno, Switzerland
American writer
30th anniversary of death on February 14, 2025
Biography
“I have always only ever been interested in the criminal traits and tendencies of those in society who appear to be ordinary; I have no interest in solving a murder case.”
Patricia Highsmith published twenty novels and seven volumes of short stories during her lifetime. Millions of readers identified with her criminals. Take, for example, the “talented” Tom Ripley, who first appeared on the scene in 1955: a charming, intelligent, and utterly unscrupulous blackmailer with plans for a more pleasant life. She had already explored the depths of the human soul in her first novel, Strangers on a Train, which appeared in 1950 after having been rejected by six publishers. That same year, Raymond Chandler adapted the book into a screenplay for a movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock that then made Patricia Highsmith world-famous.
She had come across a psychiatric textbook by Karl Menninger, The Human Mind, in her parents' library when she was nine years old. “It was a book of case histories: kleptomaniacs, pyromaniacs, serial killers, everything that could go wrong in the mind. The fact that they were real cases made them more interesting than fairy tales. I realized that these people looked perfectly normal on the outside and that there could be people like that around me too.” It became her favorite book.
Between 1938 and 1942, she studied English, Latin, Greek, and zoology at Barnard College, Columbia University. After graduating with a degree in English literature, she took a job as a writer for comic books. She had been writing since she was 18 years old. “I could afford the famous 'own room' that Virginia Woolf valued so much.” But until her literary breakthrough in 1950, she often had to take on odd jobs to make ends meet. In 1948, for example, she worked in the toy department of the New York department store Bloomingsdale's, where one day “a blonde woman in a fur coat emerged out of a throng of customers… I felt strangely dizzy, as if on the verge of fainting.” She describes the love that develops after a chance encounter between a sales clerk and a customer in a story that “flowed from my pen, out of nowhere…”
The story of the love affair between Carol and Therese, The Price of Salt, was not published until 1952, under the pseudonym of Claire Morgan. Almost one million copies were sold in the paperback edition. It was reissued as Carol in 1990 under Highsmith's name. She focused only one other time on a woman in a novel: in 1977, on Edith in Edith's Diary. In response to the American feminists who called her misogynist, she once responded by noting that she wrote “action novels” featuring “characters who can move freely about and who enjoy an independence that I have only ever seen in men.”
Starting in the early 1960s, Highsmith chose to live a secluded life in Europe – first in England, later in France and finally in Ticino, Switzerland, where she was surrounded by cats and by the snails whose bisexuality fascinated her. “Love is generally less constructive than work, so it's less important,” she said in an interview in 1979. “Not a single attempt at a life together with someone?” “Yes, but it was a disaster.” Patricia Highsmith died of leukemia in Locarno on February 14, 1995. That same year, her 21st novel, Small g - a Summer Idyll, was published by her estate. (Text from 1999)
Manfred Orlick: New publications for the 100th birthday of Patricia Highsmith
On the occasion of Patricia Highsmith's 100th birthday, Diogenes launched a veritable fireworks display of new editions in German. The prelude was the volume Ladies with short stories that had appeared in the early years in school newspapers, university publications and in women's magazines. In “The Legend of the Convent of Saint Fotheringay,” all the members of the convent are female – even the caretaker and the stoker. But one day, a foundling is discovered nearby – a boy who is taken in and given the name Mary. Young Lucille in “The Heroine” takes a job as a housemaid in order to start all over again. But then disaster strikes once more. In two whimsical stories, spiders and snails play the leading role.
In November and December 2020, new editions of six novels in which women play a leading role were released with a new cover design. All were carefully edited based on the original American texts (The Price of Salt, Deep Water, This Sweet Sickness, The Cry of the Owl, Edith's Diary and Found in the Street) and some appear in new translations. Each edition includes a detailed epilogue by Paul Ingenday, who studied Patricia Highsmith’s diaries, notebooks and correspondence for background information from her life at the time she was writing each of the novels and who offers insights into how each story arose.
The courageous novel about lesbian love, The Price of Salt, has already been discussed.
Deep Water, Highsmith's fifth novel, was written immediately after The Talented Mr. Ripley. In it, Highsmith tells the story of Victor and Melinda Van Allen, a seemingly normal young married couple who live in an idyllic small town. However, the marriage is far from perfect. Melinda is a fun-loving nymphomaniac who has numerous affairs. Initially, it seems as if Vic is either surprisingly indifferent about the affairs or remarkably tolerant of her infidelities. But appearances are deceptive; he becomes a schizophrenic double murderer. In this psychogram of a marriage, the main focus is on the description of the perpetrator’s motives and on the inner world of his emotions.
Perhaps Highsmith portrayed herself in Victor – both were educated, sophisticated, devoted to snails and interested in classical music. Still, she chose to end this story with something new for the criminal: on the last page of the novel Victor is actually exposed as a murderer and arrested.
“Love is an idea” could be the motto for the 1960 novel This Sweet Sickness, in which the successful chemist David Kelsey leads an outwardly unremarkable life in a guesthouse. On weekends – or so he lets everyone believe – he takes care of his mother, who lives in a nursing home. In reality, he spends the weekends with his former girlfriend Annabelle in a house in the countryside under the assumed identity of William Neumeister. Nights together in never-never land.
It is all just a dream world, because Annabelle has actually long since married and has just given birth to a baby. David refuses to accept this, and is increasingly unable to see what is real. When he tries to force Annabelle into his reality, his delusions lead him to murder. In the epilogue, Ingenday draws parallels between the novel and Highsmith's personal life at the time; her notebooks from this period provide information about the unrequited love she experienced when in 1958 she fell in love with a woman who was living with another woman.
Highsmith's eighth novel, The Cry of the Owl (1962), was written just before she took up permanent residence in Europe. The main character is 29-year-old Robert Forester, an extremely unstable technical draftsman at an aircraft manufacturer. After office hours, he observes a young girl in a house going about her daily business – without any sexual intentions, however. The secret observation gives him a sense of security after his separation from his wife Nickie.
In fact, Robert is discovered a little later by the young Jenny Thierolf. But instead of calling the police, she invites the voyeur into her home. Jenny falls in love with Robert and breaks up with her fiancé Greg, who tries to win her back. However, Robert is unable to deal with this real affection and seeks to create distance by requesting a transfer at work. Ultimately, all those involved are drawn into a maelstrom of unpredictable and fatal events that end in disaster.
Edith's Diary, which spans the two decades from 1954 to 1974, also deals with escapism. In the life of journalist Edith Howland, reality and dreams drift further and further apart. In her diary, Edith notes what a harmonious family life looks like: Brett as a loving husband, her son Cliffie excelling at the elite Princeton University, and she herself a successful journalist aspiring to manage her own small newspaper. But this is all just an illusory world. In reality, her husband has dumped her for a young secretary and left her with his bedridden and stubborn uncle, and her son is a failure who is at best capable of odd jobs. Eventually, Edith loses her job with a small-town paper and her ex-husband tries to persuade her to get psychiatric help. Highsmith also weaves references to the political events of the time – such as the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the Vietnam War – into the plot that is based on the disintegration of the main character’s identity. In the end, Edith falls down the stairs and dies and afterwards her diary is discovered by her son.
Edith's Diary, an oppressive novel about loneliness and self-deception that also addresses American disillusionment, has been praised by the critics as “Highsmith's most literary novel.”
Found in the Street (1986) is the third-to-last novel by Highsmith that was published during her lifetime. Elsie Tyler, a 20-year-old country girl, runs away from home to seek her fortune in Greenwich Village, New York. Young, pretty and possessing an erotic magnetism, she not only turns the head of the elderly night watchman Ralph, but also that of the friendly illustrator Jack. His wife Natalie also falls for Elsie, who attracts both sexes.
All those involved become rivals for the adored one's favor until everything comes to an end in an unexpected and surprising twist: Elsie is killed by a third party. Highsmith leaves the reader in the dark for a long time before revealing the murder as the jealous act of a casual acquaintance.
The Diogenes edition of her diaries, to be published in the fall of 2021, will be the culmination and highlight of the Highsmith anniversary releases and the first time ever the diaries have been published. Patricia Highsmith recorded her daily life from her student days until her death in 1995 in 56 notebooks (with a total of around 8,000 pages) that were discovered after her death in a linen closet. In addition to thoughts on literature and notes on what she was reading, she would also jot down ideas for her novels in her notebook. They are also illustrated with drawings and watercolors by the author. The diaries will surely also provide more insight into the darker sides of the author, specifically her anti-Semitic, racist, and misogynistic traits.
(Text from 2021; translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2025. Please consult the German version for additional information, pictures, sources, videos, and bibliography.)
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