Her great invention was Highsmith Country, the Alternate Earth where all her detail-saturated fictions are set. Ripley, but the hundreds of raspingly acute portraits of quietly transgressive acts punctuating her other novels have added a new terror to "mid-century modern." She produced an iconic character in The Talented Mr. She typed each page twice-for neatness, she said (her inner chaos required a Head Librarian's habits)-channeling the news she brought back from the ends of her nerves into the booby-trapped plots, double-gated psychologies, and reflective "realities" of her nearly 30 published volumes of fiction. "It is impossible," wrote Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995), the Dark Lady of American Letters (and double trouble for a biographer) "for me to live from day to day without putting myself to a judgement…"Īnd so, five to seven sheets of finished fiction rolled from the platen of her coffee-colored Olympia Deluxe portable typewriter every morning the keys detonating like little pistol shots under her huge hands. With the release of the new movie, The Two Faces of January, based on Highsmith's novel, we asked Schenkar to rank the best of the author's books. Joan Schenkar is the author of the must-read biography The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith, a New York Times Notable Book.
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