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| Joanna DID warn us to expect something a little different! |
Hello Literary Ladies! Just a reminder that we will be meeting this Wednesday, February (!) 2nd at 12:45 pm on Zoom for Joanna's presentation on the talented Ms. Patricia Highsmith. I have a sense that this is going to be a lot of fun! Until then, stay safe and warm! xJacquie
Christine's Minutes
On February 2, 2022, thirteen members and one associate, each of us inhabiting our allotted rectangle of visibility, joined in via Zoom, from sunny Florida to Hastings on Hudson to wildlife-rich Ossining.
In what has become a pandemic tradition, we all reported on our recent doings, readings, and concerns. Today’s topics ranged from the difficulty of discarding unwanted furniture, especially old dark wood furniture, to the ever-reliable pleasures and comforts of Jane Austen, to the low cost (by New York standards) of a cleaning lady in Mississippi, to bald eagles riding ice floes on the Hudson, to a rescued Maine coon cat called Kiki.
President Fran Greenburg rang the bell at 1:19, and thanked Sharon for being our zoom hostess. Laura Rice (filling in for Christine) read the minutes for our last meeting. Lori Walsh reported that the treasury is flush with $265.11.
Then, in a first for our Literature Club, the program was taped, so that Jacquie, who is in Poughkeepsie taking care of her mother, will be able to listen to Joanna’s talk at a later time. Clearly, our comfort level with Zoom technology has come a long way since our first on-line meeting back in March 2020.
Joanna Reisman began her program on Patricia Highsmith by intrepidly going straight to the great elephant that is in the room every time we discuss literary biography. What difference does it make when we know the life story of an author? Should it make any difference? Is our reading of any text enlightened by our understanding of the author’s character? Should not a work of literature be read for its own merits? And she did all this without mentioning Derrida.
One aspect of Highsmith’s biography that intrigued Joanna, was the writer’s unsavory reputation as “racist, anti-Semitic, lousy to the women she was in love with and those who were in love with her.” Again, the question: do we want to read the work of someone so wretched? Should we reject all art created by nasty artists? And what about authors, such as Jeanine Cummings, who dare to write about people, minorities or oppressed peoples in particular, without being a member of that group? But wait, isn’t the whole point of writing fiction to put oneself into the life, and shoes, of another, of others? Joanna bravely addressed these thorny issues.
Back to Patricia Highsmith: Her parents were already divorced, when she was born in 1901 in a Texas boarding house owned by her grandmother. She spent her first three years with her Calvinist grandmother. Then she met her soon-to-be stepfather, Stanley Highsmith. They disliked each other instantly. The new family moved to New York City, then back to Texas, and back to New York again. One summer she attended a girls’ camp near West Point and wrote in her diaries of the pleasures of skinny dipping.
For all her adult life, Highsmith kept a diary, and a cahier. The diaries were confessional, while the cahiers were used to note story ideas, and random thoughts. All of these were written in a mélange of languages. Both sets off diaries are now housed in the Patricia Highsmith Papers at the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern.
In 1942 Highsmith left Barnard and began participating in the NYC life of lesbian bars, galleries, communists, writers, and artists. Her first serious love affair was with the artist, Allela Cornell. She had uncountable love affairs all her life, mostly with woman but sometimes men. She was very prone to falling in love, often for the briefest of periods, and the aftermath was often rather unpleasant.
It is a source of great pride for our club that the idea for her famous first novel, Strangers on a Train, came while she was walking with her parents in Hastings on Hudson. Or is it?
During the 1940’s, Highsmith spent time at Yaddo, doing exactly what residents at Yaddo are famous for doing: writing, drinking, and having sex.
In 1951, the rights to Strangers on a Train were bought by Alfred Hitchcock and it became a very successful film.
Her next novel, The Price of Salt, was remarkable in being about a lesbian relationship that does not end badly. It was based on her real love affair with Virginia Catherwood. But Highsmith’s publishers rejected the manuscript. It later came out with a small press under a pseudonym. In 1953, Bantam brought it out as a 25¢ lesbian pulp edition. Not until the Bloomsbury edition of 1990 was the novel published under Highsmith’s own name. Then in 2015 there was a very successful movie version.
Around 1950 Highsmith moved to Europe. One day in Italy she saw a young man in sandals on the beach in Positano, and conceived of the character Ripley, and the concept of the Ripley novels. The Talented Mr. Ripley has been twice filmed, once with Alain Delon, and in 1999 with Matt Damon as Tom Ripley. Joanna explained how the Ripley novels were more satisfying than the movies, as they got us right inside Ripley’s head. He “is a con artist, a conniver, you find him reprehensible and yet you are rooting for him at every turn.” He is a rare hero who is essentially amoral.
A Suspension of Mercy was written in England, where Highsmith had gone to be near her lover at the time, Caroline Besterman. She otherwise lived primarily in France and Switzerland. Suspension was followed by four more Ripley novels, for a total of 22 novels and many short stories. Throughout her life, she drank heavily. Highsmith claimed to prefer animals to humans, and she was especially fond of snails, and often had several in her handbag. Eventually, she ended up in Switzerland, for tax reasons. She died there of lung cancer, in 1995.
Joanna concluded her program by explaining how Highsmith has, and most likely will, survive cancel culture: there was no hypocrisy. She never pretended to be a nice person without prejudices. On the contrary, she reveled in her honestly lived life. She was herself unapologetically awful, and she wrote compellingly about vile and obsessed characters.
Members read selections from a variety of books, including her biography by Joan Shenkar, and Highsmith’s novels.
Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording S
ecretary
On February 2, 2022, thirteen members and one associate, each of us inhabiting our allotted rectangle of visibility, joined in via Zoom, from sunny Florida to Hastings on Hudson to wildlife-rich Ossining.
In what has become a pandemic tradition, we all reported on our recent doings, readings, and concerns. Today’s topics ranged from the difficulty of discarding unwanted furniture, especially old dark wood furniture, to the ever-reliable pleasures and comforts of Jane Austen, to the low cost (by New York standards) of a cleaning lady in Mississippi, to bald eagles riding ice floes on the Hudson, to a rescued Maine coon cat called Kiki.
President Fran Greenburg rang the bell at 1:19, and thanked Sharon for being our zoom hostess. Laura Rice (filling in for Christine) read the minutes for our last meeting. Lori Walsh reported that the treasury is flush with $265.11.
Then, in a first for our Literature Club, the program was taped, so that Jacquie, who is in Poughkeepsie taking care of her mother, will be able to listen to Joanna’s talk at a later time. Clearly, our comfort level with Zoom technology has come a long way since our first on-line meeting back in March 2020.
Joanna Reisman began her program on Patricia Highsmith by intrepidly going straight to the great elephant that is in the room every time we discuss literary biography. What difference does it make when we know the life story of an author? Should it make any difference? Is our reading of any text enlightened by our understanding of the author’s character? Should not a work of literature be read for its own merits? And she did all this without mentioning Derrida.
One aspect of Highsmith’s biography that intrigued Joanna, was the writer’s unsavory reputation as “racist, anti-Semitic, lousy to the women she was in love with and those who were in love with her.” Again, the question: do we want to read the work of someone so wretched? Should we reject all art created by nasty artists? And what about authors, such as Jeanine Cummings, who dare to write about people, minorities or oppressed peoples in particular, without being a member of that group? But wait, isn’t the whole point of writing fiction to put oneself into the life, and shoes, of another, of others? Joanna bravely addressed these thorny issues.
Back to Patricia Highsmith: Her parents were already divorced, when she was born in 1901 in a Texas boarding house owned by her grandmother. She spent her first three years with her Calvinist grandmother. Then she met her soon-to-be stepfather, Stanley Highsmith. They disliked each other instantly. The new family moved to New York City, then back to Texas, and back to New York again. One summer she attended a girls’ camp near West Point and wrote in her diaries of the pleasures of skinny dipping.
For all her adult life, Highsmith kept a diary, and a cahier. The diaries were confessional, while the cahiers were used to note story ideas, and random thoughts. All of these were written in a mélange of languages. Both sets off diaries are now housed in the Patricia Highsmith Papers at the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern.
In 1942 Highsmith left Barnard and began participating in the NYC life of lesbian bars, galleries, communists, writers, and artists. Her first serious love affair was with the artist, Allela Cornell. She had uncountable love affairs all her life, mostly with woman but sometimes men. She was very prone to falling in love, often for the briefest of periods, and the aftermath was often rather unpleasant.
It is a source of great pride for our club that the idea for her famous first novel, Strangers on a Train, came while she was walking with her parents in Hastings on Hudson. Or is it?
During the 1940’s, Highsmith spent time at Yaddo, doing exactly what residents at Yaddo are famous for doing: writing, drinking, and having sex.
In 1951, the rights to Strangers on a Train were bought by Alfred Hitchcock and it became a very successful film.
Her next novel, The Price of Salt, was remarkable in being about a lesbian relationship that does not end badly. It was based on her real love affair with Virginia Catherwood. But Highsmith’s publishers rejected the manuscript. It later came out with a small press under a pseudonym. In 1953, Bantam brought it out as a 25¢ lesbian pulp edition. Not until the Bloomsbury edition of 1990 was the novel published under Highsmith’s own name. Then in 2015 there was a very successful movie version.
Around 1950 Highsmith moved to Europe. One day in Italy she saw a young man in sandals on the beach in Positano, and conceived of the character Ripley, and the concept of the Ripley novels. The Talented Mr. Ripley has been twice filmed, once with Alain Delon, and in 1999 with Matt Damon as Tom Ripley. Joanna explained how the Ripley novels were more satisfying than the movies, as they got us right inside Ripley’s head. He “is a con artist, a conniver, you find him reprehensible and yet you are rooting for him at every turn.” He is a rare hero who is essentially amoral.
A Suspension of Mercy was written in England, where Highsmith had gone to be near her lover at the time, Caroline Besterman. She otherwise lived primarily in France and Switzerland. Suspension was followed by four more Ripley novels, for a total of 22 novels and many short stories. Throughout her life, she drank heavily. Highsmith claimed to prefer animals to humans, and she was especially fond of snails, and often had several in her handbag. Eventually, she ended up in Switzerland, for tax reasons. She died there of lung cancer, in 1995.
Joanna concluded her program by explaining how Highsmith has, and most likely will, survive cancel culture: there was no hypocrisy. She never pretended to be a nice person without prejudices. On the contrary, she reveled in her honestly lived life. She was herself unapologetically awful, and she wrote compellingly about vile and obsessed characters.
Members read selections from a variety of books, including her biography by Joan Shenkar, and Highsmith’s novels.
Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording S
ecretary
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