Patricia highsmith biography
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‘Murder is a kind of making love’: The strange life of Patricia Highsmith, the author behind The Talented Mr Ripley
No one wrote antiheroes like Patricia Highsmith. Take Tom Ripley, the “suave, agreeable, and utterly amoral” conman protagonist of her thriller The Talented Mr Ripley, who lies, cheats and murders his way around Europe – and somehow makes us root for him while doing so. Almost 70 years since he first appeared on the page, he remains utterly compelling: no wonder Netflix’s TV adaptation, Ripley, which will star Andrew Scott, is one of ’s most anticipated releases.
Highsmith’s novels are filled with characters who, like Ripley, would look entirely normal if you passed them in the street, yet are consumed by dark impulses, horrible secrets, and the fear of being found out. Reading them can feel like the literary equivalent of an anxiety attack: not for nothing did Graham Greene, an early admirer, call her “the poet of apprehension”.
And just as her characters coul
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A Look Into the Dark Inner World of Patricia Highsmith
Author of such novels as Strangers on A Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, Highsmith captured brilliant, amoral characters willing to manipulate and even kill other people to achieve their goals. In Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith, biographer Richard Bradford shows that these characters were often dark reflections of Highsmith herself.
To say that Patricia Highsmith&#;s life was filled with troubled complexities would be an understatement. The author had a continuously fraught romantic life. One of her lovers once attempted suicide after Highsmith betrayed her with another woman. “She seemed to enjoy affairs with married women”, Bradford writes, suggesting that were she around today, “one could imagine her taking great delight in adding breaking up lesbian marriages to her repertoire.&#;
She made incredibly offensive, even outrageous remarks about Blacks and Jews, even though, as Bradf
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Patricia Highsmith
American novelist and short story writer (–)
Patricia Highsmith | |
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Highsmith in | |
| Born | Mary Patricia Plangman ()January 19, Fort Worth, Texas, U.S. |
| Died | February 4, () (aged&#;74) Locarno, Ticino, Switzerland |
| Pen name | Claire Morgan () |
| Occupation | Novelist, short story writer |
| Language | English |
| Education | Julia Richman High School |
| Alma&#;mater | Barnard College (BA) |
| Period | – |
| Genre | Suspense, psychological thriller, brott fiction, romance |
| Literary movement | Modernist literature |
| Notable works | |
Patricia Highsmith (born Mary Patricia Plangman; January 19, – February 4, )[1] was an American novelist and short story writer widely known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of fem novels featuring the character Tom Ripley. She wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories in a career spanning nearly fem decades, and her work has led to more than two dozen bio adaptations. Her writing was in