Highsmith's persecuted liberals

Patricia Highsmith's
1972 'A Dog's Ransom'
opens with the dog's murder

her 1977 'Edith's Diary'
opens with an attempt
on a pet cat's life

both are peculiar meditations
on the uncomfortable status
of leftists in the USA

in the first case
a young cop
with a psych degree from Cornell

in the second
a Bryn Mawr alumna
who freelances for respectable
lefty magazines

the cop's story is a sort of
chemistry experiment
where a drop of something
with a mildly basic pH
is added to a mildly acidic solution
(ie, idealist among cynics)

and a gradual series
of individually innocuous missteps
each rubbing against the grain
escalate over a few short weeks
into major tragedy




in the other
over two decades
(1955-1975)
the leftist can't catch a break

isolated in a small town
with a bad-seed son
(the abovecited cat-smotherer)
and an ungrateful invalid in-law

her husband runs off
back to the city
with a younger woman

but instead of breaking out
she turns inward
stoically nurturing her ingrates
building a fantasy life in her diary
finding catharsis in competent sculpting

alienating her few lefty friends
with increasingly unconventional
political stances

until in the last 50 pages
based on clues we have to seek
between the lines

her friends all conclude
she's gone mad

and apparently she has

Highsmith's 1960 "This Sweet Sickness"

How Kelsey sees himself:

prince charming
falls for annabella at the ball
and secretly builds her
a beautiful new castle
while keeping his identity hidden
under a modest disguise

but when he finally comes
to claim her hand
he finds a hideous troll
has gotten there first
and cast a spell on her

now
the prince could simply
slay the troll
but if he hasn't first
broken the enchantment
there's a risk she might blame him
for the loss of her hideous beloved

so he maintains the secret castle
as a shrine to her perfection
and tries in letters
to discover a formula of words
that can awaken her from the spell
not omitting
frequent insults about the troll

but the troll sees the insults
and rushes to the old palace
to challenge the prince
but no one knows where he is just then
(worshipping at her shrine)
except a servinggirl, Effie
who'd once secretly followed him there

SPOILERS (highlight with mouse to read)


so Effie tells the troll where to go
and in the ensuing fight
the troll is killed

now the prince dare not
let annabella learn
he's the one who's killed her husband
so he flees the shrine
leaving the dullwitted sheriff
to inform her that
a mysterious stranger did the deed

the prince meanwhile consoles annabella
with growing hopes
and starts building a new shrine/palace

but when he then finds
she's married yet another troll
his mind becomes unhinged
he blames and strangles Effie
and leaps from a tower:

"Thinking no more about it,
he stepped off into that cool space,
that fast descent to her,
with nothing in his mind
but a memory
of a curve of her shoulder, naked,
as he had never seen it."
END SPOILERS

Highsmith's version
isn't told explicitly as a fairy tale
but rather from the pov
of a charismatic young scientist
in 1950s new england
whose fairytale delusions gradually
spiral out of control

he's Highsmith's least likeable protagonist yet
like in some early Nabokov novella
and there's precious few
nicely observed details, alas
to keep the reader's interest
(though that Nabokovian last sentence
quoted in the spoilers above
almost makes it all worthwhile)

and in retrospect, too
a charming portrait of Annabelle
comes into focus
as a modern girl
who runs from suffocatin' shrines
frankly preferring trolls
but still sufficiently flattered
that she keeps her conquered prince
on a long leash

Tradecraft and faith in leCarre and Highsmith

le carre's new 'mission song'
is getting mostly positive reviews
praising its unprecedented good humor
but they neglect what seems to me
its happiest virtue:
tradecraft is back

for the first time since Smiley
JlC offers his special delight
of showing how things must work
behind the veil of official secrets

this time from the novel perspective
of the spies' own house translator




in my 11-dimensional
rating system for thrillers
tradecraft is collaped into infotainment

authors using their novels to make
unfamiliar domains
painlessly familiar
with Patk O'Brian the acknowledged titleholder

a related dimension
is 'texture'
which can be as mundane
as scents and sounds 'painted on'
to enhance realism

(Graham Greene famously
traced his characters' routes
in person
noting plausible details)

because it's a peculiarity
of human memory
that we can easily recognise
and appreciate
that a detail is appropriate

but only the rarest novelists' minds
can summon such credible details
(rather than obvious cliches)
on command

the 'nicely observed detail'
for an experienced reader of fiction
brightens the page

and even one such
detail per page
is an occasion for gratitude

so Patricia Highsmith's
1965 'The Story-teller'
is cause for celebration

profligately piling on
almost one detail per sentence
(did they come so easy for her?
or did she work that much harder?)
maintaining our fascination
thru an unhurried exposition of the plot

but the astonishing eventual payoff
is a profound parable
on The Artist's Faith

for the story recounts the
Job-like trials
of a writer of thrillers
who researches a plot
by walking thru the motions
of having murdered his wife

and then of course she's disappeared
and his playacting
increasingly incriminates him

but at any moment
he could defuse those growing suspicions
simply by explaining the truth
while he chooses instead
to live out the full drama
as if he were guilty

keeping true to his muse
and tracking events and reactions
as the whole world seems
to be rising up against him
real relationships destroyed
his future imperilled

so that the reader screams
'make this stop!
just tell them!'

and i'm reminded
of one of Joyce's paradoxical claims
that he had greater
faith
than any modern man

which the catholics
(against all evidence)
have used to argue
that he was always secretly catholic

and he contrasted faith with doubt
declaring the world to be
suspended in doubt

every choice an existential crisis
leading the world either
towards heaven or hell

and i think Joyce's Faith
(as the world screamed
'make finnegans wake stop!')
was simply that life
can become more heavenly

that Earth wasn't created
as an inevitable human hell
where an artist could only shrug
like vonnegut's cynical
'hi ho'

so it alarms me to see
lately across the blogosphere
a growing association between progressive politics
and the universal religion-bashing
of Dawkins&co

because real faith
is infinitely better than cynicism