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The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith
by Joan Schenkar
Patricia Highsmith, one of the great writers of 20th Century American fiction, had a life as darkly compelling as that of her favorite "hero-criminal," talented Tom Ripley. In this revolutionary biography, Joan Schenkar paints a riveting portrait, from Highsmith's birth in Texas to Hitchcock's filming of her first novel, Strangers On a Train, to her long, strange, self-exile in Europe. We see her as a secret writer for the comics, a brilliant creator of disturbing fictions, and erotic predator with dozens of women (and a few good men) on her love list. The Talented Miss Highsmith is the first literary biography with access to Highsmith's whole story: her closest friends, her oeuvre, her archives. It's a compulsive page-turner unlike any other, a book worthy of Highsmith herself.
"Starred Review. Schenkar's research is impeccable, and she makes excellent use of the voluminous Highsmith archives in Switzerland and interviews with Highsmith's friends, ex-lovers and literary contemporaries." - Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week
"An imaginative, definitive Highsmith biography, great for literature students, Highsmith fans, and mystery readers." - Library Journal
"A comprehensive, nuanced evaluation of Highsmith Country." - Kirkus Reviews
"The Talented Miss Highsmith is a definitive portrait of a writer who was, Schenkar notes, not just an outsider artist but an 'outsider everything.' Schenkar gives a fascinating and enriching tour of the world in which Patricia Highsmith lived, especially the dark, dessicated, and lonely hallways of her mind, creepy corridors in which her works grew, one after another. This biography takes us to these dangerous places in innovative and stirring style. It's a hell of a book - and vice versa." - Barnes & Noble Review, Leonard Cassuto
"This is no ordinary literary biography. Ms. Schenkar, also a playwright, is not one of those thorough, respectful scholars who let the facts and the literature speak for themselves. Hers is an unusually assertive voice, which makes it well suited to Highsmith…Her approach is innovative…And her sensibility is sufficiently ghoulish to keep her undaunted by what she calls Highsmith's "hundreds of raspingly acute portraits of quietly transgressive acts," which is a relatively mild way of characterizing the shock value of Highsmith's tirelessly misanthropic work." - The New York Times, Janet Maslin
This information about The Talented Miss Highsmith was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Joan Schenkar is the author of Truly Wilde: The Unsettling Story of Dolly Wilde as well as a collection of plays, Signs of Life: 6 Comedies of Menace. She lives in Paris and Greenwich Village
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