The Talented (And Elusive) Ms. Highsmith

A crazy drunk racist lezza

Trailer for the documentary.

The graphic novel:

I like her. Great writer. Stupid bitch at R1 accusing her of being racist while using slurs for lesbians in the same time. These fake wokes are really the biggest idiots.

Not to mention that they would probably erase the whole history of arts if you cancel all the homophobes, racists, anti Semites, misogynist artists. No need to go far, Eminem for eg. was a major homophobic misogynist.

R4 you can’t seriously be trying to rehabilitate this self-loathing demented anti-Semite ?

Why would she need a rehabilitation R5? As far as I know her work has not been prohibited. You have to learn to separate art and artist in US, like it is done in civilized world. Cause not much art has been created by the nuns.

Thanks OP for the link/s.

Had no idea she was so beautiful as a young woman, not that it has any bearing on her sublime writing.

I like the movies made out of her books -- even the Ben Affleck one -- but when I try to read the books, they just don't grab me and I abandon them quickly.

R8, I feel the same way. Last night I finally watched “Deep Water” (I also enjoy Adrian Lyne’s films), and enjoyed it.

There was another one with Patrick Wilson and Jessica Biel.

R6 Sorry, this “bitch” (classy btw) will clarify: crazy drunk AND demented racist sapphic.

After all the terrible recent biographies she needs this hopeless thread. She’s hardly a C19th writer: she was writing after the Holocaust and should know better. But of course she wasn’t the only post-war anti-Semitic crazy lesbian writer; you tried Muriel Spark?

R7 Though it’s a bit messier and more spontaneous than his usual work I thought maybe the photo was by George Platt Lynes with his use of raking light. But this website gives credit to Harper & Brothers, so it was a publisher’s photo. That’s interesting because she was only 21, and the article says she got her start writing comic books and this would be 8 years before her debut novel?

Links to great articles to read before seeing the documentary.

Guess I don't look so bad these days...

In related news, Marijane Meaker is dead to me…

I binged her books once and only a general impression she made sticks with me through the years: she could really write.

I seem to recall an insidious sense of impending … something. Not horror, exactly, but that something transgressive, something bad was coming. But not in such a way that I wanted to stop reading to get any relief from the mood. It just made me want to read more.

I can’t argue that her personality wasn’t fucked up but as a child who had a lifelong running battle with my own mother, I do tend to excuse her for how tortured she was because I relate.

A first-rate writer of exceptional skill and cunning, not given her proper due because the lit-crit/bookchat types back in the day looked down their noses at genre fiction. They also looked down on homo love and novels where the protagonist is a relentless criminal sociopath who always gets away with it.

Highsmith was one of the very best.

Totally agree r16. Her writing was fantastic, I've read everything she ever wrote.

For those of you who have Kanopy available through your Public Library the documentary is now on that platform. It’s an interesting mix of period footage and contemporary with some interesting juxtapositions like rodeo footage. Family members of hers were big on the Texas rodeo circuit. Marijane Meeker’s footage is quite good and a dominant element in the story telling.

If your library also has Hoopla, the graphic novel is accessible through that platform. The story only covers a short period of her life revolving around the writing of Strangers on a Train, and it looks to have the potential for future installments.

Brie Larson could play her.

Love her. An exceptionally talented writer.

I read a biography and she sounded awful and weird too. Big time alcoholic, misanthrope, issues with her parents, kept pet snails in her handbag, went from woman to woman. But talented and her success was admirable.