Beautiful Shadow (94 page)

     As Daniel Keel walked out of the church into the graveyard, the publisher told the journalist Joan Dupont that Highsmith was ‘ “going to get bigger and bigger; she’s going to become a classic.” ’
²¹
Keel passed out two poems written by Highsmith – one from
Edith’s Diary
, in which Edith imagines the trees in her garden, teeming with life, indifferent to her death only hours before, and one written in 1979 entitled ‘A Toast’, which celebrates the ennobling pursuit of human aspiration and the quest towards achievement: ‘A toast to optimism and to courage!/A glass to daring!/And a laurel to the one who leaps!’
²²
At the end of the service, as Tanja was standing in the churchyard, she heard a thunderous noise. ‘After the emotionally charged silence, we turned around and saw this train coming towards us, travelling on the lines which ran past the church,’ she says. ‘We were waved to and cheered at by a group of young people travelling on a passing train, a stone’s throw away from Pat’s resting place. ‘Strangers on a train indeed.’
²³

     Throughout her career, Highsmith had written in her notebooks about death – wondering about her fears, her final thoughts and the changing nature of consciousness as her body grew weaker until she breathed no more. In a way, death was something she always aspired to, as she viewed it as a state of pure thought, a transcendent perfection. In 1973, Highsmith imagined the last words she would ever speak – ‘It was all so predictable’, she surmised.
²⁴
On this occasion, Highsmith was wrong; far from following a clear, well-trodden path, the writer veered off into the margins, exploring dark aspects of the psyche which are usually hidden in the shadows. Her perspective, for all its distortions and fantastical illusions, was unique and, ironically, it is only now, after her death – thanks, in part, to the release of Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film
The Talented Mr Ripley
and the reissuing of her novels – that the power of her work is finally being appreciated, especially in America. In October 2002, W.W. Norton published
Nothing That Meets the Eye
, a collection of twenty-eight mostly unpublished stories, described by James Campbell as consisting of ‘completed pieces by a natural storyteller . . . Her settings and characterizations, established with a few deft strokes, and her endless fund of seemingly simple situations, put one in mind of another laureate of everyday life, Guy de Maupassant.’
²⁵

     To a degree, a cultural change is also responsible for the Highsmith renaissance as the mass market is now much more comfortable with literature and film that subverts genre expectations and disturbs popular notions of morality. ‘I think Pat was born a little too early for her work to be properly understood,’ says Tanja Howarth. ‘Yet in many ways she can be seen as an example of the twentieth century itself – she was so way ahead with her sexual ideas and with her sense of freedom.’
²⁶
Some critics have even gone so far as to link Highsmith’s renewed relevance with the recent changes in American society. Whereas America in the past was perhaps too complacent to appreciate Highsmith, a ‘post-Oklahoma City, post-Columbine United States . . . may just now be catching up to her,’ says Margaret Caldwell Thomas.
²⁷
Ed Siegel, writing in the
Boston Globe
, believes that Highsmith’s work has significant lessons to teach us. ‘In the wake of September 11, Highsmith’s world is not only more like ours, where crime and punishment or cause and effect don’t necessarily go hand in hand, she seems a more important writer than ever,’ he writes.
²⁸

Just as Highsmith, as she wrote, began to see the world through the skewed vision of her characters, so I, as I worked on her biography, felt my self slipping away, finding my perspective transformed. At times, sitting alone in my study, looking at a small copy of Allela Cornell’s haunting portrait of the young Highsmith, tinged as it is with a strange, terrible beauty, I felt what it might be like to view the world through my subject’s eyes. I understood, for a moment, how she must have found life difficult; why she chose relationships she knew would end bitterly, why she needed to dull her senses with alcohol and why she, albeit unconsciously, chose to transform herself from a beauty into something approaching the grotesque, projecting her psychological pain onto the thickly lined contour map of her face. Writing, as we have seen, helped her survive; what she would have done without it is a frightening thought.

     In the middle of researching the book, during one of my many interviews with Kingsley at her New York apartment, Highsmith’s closest friend presented me with a gift – Pat’s old dressing gown. It was a touching gesture, both a sign of trust and a symbol of the biographical task that lay ahead of me – the dangerous job of literally inhabiting another’s life, slipping under their skin to find out how they experienced the world. Back home in London, I examined the garment. Made from thick, dark blue wool, with black, blue and beige stripes on its cuffs and its lining and a rather fine twill, tasselled waist-cord, the dressing gown, purchased from Harrods, still bore traces of its owner – strands of grey hair nestling around the neck. Although a dry-cleaning ticket was safety-pinned to its collar, there was something musty about it, as if its wearer steadfastly refused to relinquish it for good, an air of otherworldliness that suggested Highsmith was nearby.

     Gingerly, I took hold of it and placed it around my shoulders, easing my arms through the same soft, dark spaces once occupied by her slight frame. I tied the waist-cord around me and sat at my desk, looking down at my hands which I knew would one day write these words. I had read all her work, her diaries, her letters, and listened to her most intimate thoughts. I had repeatedly dreamt about her and, in all seriousness, probably knew more about her than anyone alive. Now I was inhabiting her private space, slipping on an item of clothing which once would have brushed against her bare skin. Like Highsmith, who compared new fictional ideas to birds that she saw at the corner of her eye, I’m convinced I recognised a dark form at the periphery of my imaginative vision, a shape which was unmistakable. I caught a glimpse of her and then she was gone.

Notes

Abbreviations used in the Notes

AK:
Alfred A. Knopf Archive, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin

BCA:
Barnard College Archive, New York

CLA:
Calmann-Lévy Archive, Paris

CM:
Private collection of Christa Maerker

DS:
Donald L. Swaim Collection, MSS Collection # 177, Archives & Special Collections, Ohio University Libraries

EB:
Private collection of Edith Brandel

FW:
Private collection of Francis Wyndham

GV:
Gore Vidal Collection, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin, now held by the Houghton Library, Harvard University

HA:
Harper Archive, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin

HRA:
Harper & Row Archives, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York

JR:
Private collection of Janice Robertson

KA:
Koestler Archive, Edinburgh University Library

NY:
The New Yorker
Records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

PH:
Patricia Highsmith

PL:
Private collection of Peggy Lewis

RB:
Private collection of Ronald Blythe

SLA:
Swiss Literary Archives, Berne

TU:
Temple University, Paley Library, Urban Archives, Philadelphia

WBA:
William A. Bradley Literary Agency Archive, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin

YA:
Yaddo Archive, Saratoga Springs, New York

Highsmith dated her cahier entries using the American dating system unless otherwise indicated.

Introduction

1
Søren Kierkegaard, ‘Repetition’, quoted in Walter Lowrie,
A Short Life of Kierkegaard
, Princeton University Press, 1942, quoted by PH, Cahier 19, SLA.

2
PH, Afterword,
Carol
, Bloomsbury, London, 1990, p. 260.

3
Ibid.

4
PH, Cahier 19, 7/1/50, SLA.

5
PH, Diary 10, 21 January 1951, SLA.

6
Susannah Clapp, ‘The Simple Art of Murder’,
The New Yorker
, 20 December 1999.

7
PH, Diary 2, 24 May 1942, SLA.

8
PH, Cahier 20, 9/14/51, SLA.

9
Craig Brown, ‘Too Busy Writing to be a Writer’,
Daily Telegraph
, 29 January 2000.

10
Janet Watts, ‘Love and Highsmith’,
Observer Magazine
, 9 September 1990.

11
Ibid.

12
Interview with Daniel Keel, 27 October 1999.

13
Interview with Carl Laszlo, 22 August 1999.

14
Interview with Barbara Roett, 5 May 1999.

15
Interview with Vivien De Bernardi, 23 July 1999.

16
John Wakeman, ed.,
World Authors 1950
–1970,
A Companion Volume to Twentieth-Century Authors
, The H.W. Wilson Company, New York, 1975, p. 642.

17
PH, Cahier 18, inside cover, undated, SLA.

18
PH,
Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction
, The Writer Inc., Boston, 1966, p. 50.

19
PH, Cahier 15, 3/18/47, SLA.

20
Harper’s Bazaar
, February 1989.

21
Terrence Rafferty, ‘Fear and Trembling’,
The New Yorker
, 4 January 1988.

22
Ibid.

23
The Late Show
, BBC2, 7 February 1995.

24
Interview with Daniel Keel.