Beautiful Shadow: A Life Of Patricia Highsmith (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
Andrew Wilson's biography of Patricia Highsmith is an engaging read from start to finish. He pays his subject the compliment of using prose as clear as her own to tell her story. Highsmith was a devoted diarist, letter writer, and keeper of detailed notebooks of all her background writing work. Andrew Wilson draws on all of this material plus his own interviews with many of her acquaintances, friends and lovers to produce a very detailed narrative of her life. He presents the testimony, opinions, and feelings of many others present at events, both great and small, in her life. He gives plot synopses of her major novels and has a good gallop around the critical reception following each publication. Some critics of this biography have taken Wilson to task for the sheer volume of his detail; but, I cannot think of anything in this book that I wouldn't want to know. Patricia Highsmith is most famous for a small number of tragic suspense novels in which little shams and mistakes lead to catastrophes. Her narrative point of view is usually through one or two unreliable, amoral, self-justifying individuals, such as her most famous creation, Tom Ripley. The reader sympathises with and then begins to excuse the narrator and is finally surprised to find herself hoping that he (always he) gets away with murder. She is the author of "Carol" (originally published as "The Price of Salt"), a lesbian romance and a departure from her suspense novels. She also wrote many short stories, some with quite vicious plots, and comment articles and travel writing. She had a unique talent and some of my curiosity as to her thought processes and writing methods was answered by Andrew Wilson's book. She was born in Texas, educated in New York, and lived most of her adult life outside of the United States, in England, France, and the Italian part of Switzerland. She had many good friends, including Graham Greene (whom she never met in the flesh) to whom she wrote volumes of letters. She had many lovers; but, could not maintain an intimate relationship for more than a few months. All her life, she protested her love of solitude and Andrew Wilson reveals with what labours she filled that solitude. I bought "Beautiful Shadow" in the week that it was first published in 2003.I didn't start to read it until a few days ago and suddenly, notice of the work of Patricia Highsmith is building in the media again. Her books are being reprinted and a film of her novel "The Two Faces of January" is in release. And in a real Patricia Highsmith moment, who should I hear on the radio this past Sunday but Andrew Wilson discussing this biography and the novel "Carol"! It is great to hear of her work again.
Patricia Highsmith's biography was just published. Recently deceased, she wrote very popular murder fiction most famously The Talented Mr. Ripley and succeeding novels about the maybe homosexual murderer and con artist Tom Ripley. In my quest to read about the lives of women famous in their own right, she is definitely a strong example: a lesbian, she never married nor settled down with a lover, was not close to either parent, and as far as I can see owes her entire fame solely to her own determination and talent. Pretty good role model right?Not really. Her biography consists of whinging paragraphs of letters to her parents, notably her mother tried to abort her by drinking turpentine and then when she was small would eerily remark upon PH's love of the smell of the stuff. It's a laundry list of women she fell for, slept with and tossed away. And its a little, weirdly, homophobic. PH believed that Tom Ripley really was her alter ego; and lived her life in a law abiding away but with those values at stake.I dropped the book 1/2 way through - its endless tide of abandoned panties and bitter recrimination was boring and stifling. But was it worth reading? Of course! It's refreshing to read about any person who could be described as representing multiple "oppressed peoples" in a completely non-enlightening manner. And even more importantly its refreshing to read about a famous woman who deserves her fame, but not my admiration. It reminded me that my values are more important than my success, lest I die a bitter old maid with a nasty, nasty biography for a eulogy.
What do You think about Beautiful Shadow: A Life Of Patricia Highsmith (2004)?
Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) is best known for her disturbing books about sensitive and sympathetic psychopathic murderers (i.e. "Strangers on a Train" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley") - and for the movies they've inspired. Andrew Wilson's biography is fascinating, well researched and convincing; I don't know if I'd want to have dinner with Miss Highsmith, but at least I think I can understand a little "where she's coming from." The author Wilson would probably make a good novelist himself; he understands psychology, without being reductive or a follower of the Phil Donahue School of analysis. In many ways Highsmith was not a happy person, and she held many reprehensible beliefs about human nature and society, but she was a survivor, no doubt. And she liked to read. I understand that, too. Here's Wilson describing Highsmith's fondness for solitary reading in her apartment - when she was in her early 20s: "She had always been a voracious reader, but now she turned down invitations to dinner in favor of staying at home and immersing herself in the dark imaginative landscape of Thomas Mann, Strindberg, Goethe, Joyce, T.S. Eliot and Baudelaire. The mere thought that she was alone and surrounded by books gave her a near sensuous thrill. As she looked around her room, dark except for the slash of light near her lamp, and saw the vague outlines of her books, she asked herself, 'Have I not the whole world?'" "Beautiful Shadow" is perhaps somewhat over-detailed, or maybe it just is that Highsmith's life lacks the kind of neat and tidy essence that makes for an elegant biography. On the other hand, Wilson is to be commended for his exhaustive research, AND for his ability to empathize with his subject, even at her most difficult.
—Yooperprof
I liked this biography. It is apparently not the best one out. For people familiar with Strangers on a Train by Hitchcock Hightsmith is the writer as she is of many other novels based on her books. As I read the book, I realized that Wilson did not get the difference between anti-semitic and anti-Israel. Highsmith except for her predictable prejudice against blacks and urban problems was a doctrinaire liberal of the Roosevelt era. Her insistence on existential approach for the artist, her devotion to her art, and her awareness of the failure of American vision make her an interesting artist for our times. I intend to read her over the next few months.
—Gordon
You may not have heard of Patricia Highsmith, but you've almost definitely seen the films Strangers on a Train or The Talented Mr Ripley, which were based on two of her most famous novels. I read this book on the advice of a literary magazine, and I can honestly say that it is one of the best biographies I have ever read. It was meticulously researched and extremely well-written, providing a model to all of us of what a good non-fiction book should be. Author Andrew Wilson did not try to avoid the embarrassing or awkward bits and paint a gorgeous posthumous picture or move in the other direction to spoil his subject's literary reputation, but has provided us with a balanced biography using facts, myriad interviews with her surviving friends, family, and publishing associates, and the pièce de résistance that crowned his research: her own thoughts, which were carefully recorded across her entire life and career in her cahiers (notebooks), and are today stored in the Swiss Literary Archives. Through it all, Wilson writes in a stylish, touching manner: despite the facts that she was a very difficult person, cantankerous, often shy, an alcoholic loner who was almost at war with the world, I felt a lump in my throat as I read about her final days. A unique talent, her literary skills and output were considerable, and this excellent biography has made me want to read more of it.
—James Perkins
