| rdfs:comment
| - Patricia Highsmith was the daughter of John Highsmith and Mary Kay Highsmith. In 1996, Patricia's parents were both murdered by Cutter, who had hidden in her room when her parents were having an open house. Cutter spared Patricia's life and she was found by Frank Black. Taken to a hospital and counseled by Catherine Black, Bob Bletcher initially wanted to question the girl on what she had seen. Frank Black realized that this was the intention of the murderer, to make Patricia relieve the death of her parents. (MM: "Wide Open")
- Born Mary Patricia Plangman just outside Fort Worth, Texas, she was raised first by her maternal grandmother and later by her mother and stepfather, who were both commercial artists. Highsmith's mother Mary divorced her father five months before her birth. The young Highsmith had an intense, complicated relationship with her mother and resented her stepfather, although in later years she sometimes tried to win him over to her side of the argument in her confrontations with her mother. According to Highsmith, her mother once told her that she had tried to abort her by drinking turpentine. Highsmith never resolved this love-hate relationship, which haunted her for the rest of her life, and which she fictionalized in her short story "The Terrapin," in which a young boy stabs his mother to dea
|
| abstract
| - Patricia Highsmith was the daughter of John Highsmith and Mary Kay Highsmith. In 1996, Patricia's parents were both murdered by Cutter, who had hidden in her room when her parents were having an open house. Cutter spared Patricia's life and she was found by Frank Black. Taken to a hospital and counseled by Catherine Black, Bob Bletcher initially wanted to question the girl on what she had seen. Frank Black realized that this was the intention of the murderer, to make Patricia relieve the death of her parents. (MM: "Wide Open")
- Born Mary Patricia Plangman just outside Fort Worth, Texas, she was raised first by her maternal grandmother and later by her mother and stepfather, who were both commercial artists. Highsmith's mother Mary divorced her father five months before her birth. The young Highsmith had an intense, complicated relationship with her mother and resented her stepfather, although in later years she sometimes tried to win him over to her side of the argument in her confrontations with her mother. According to Highsmith, her mother once told her that she had tried to abort her by drinking turpentine. Highsmith never resolved this love-hate relationship, which haunted her for the rest of her life, and which she fictionalized in her short story "The Terrapin," in which a young boy stabs his mother to death. Highsmith's grandmother taught her to read at an early age. Highsmith made good use of the extensive library of her mother and stepfather. At the age of eight, she discovered Karl Menninger's The Human Mind and was fascinated by the case studies of patients afflicted with mental disorders such as pyromania and schizophrenia. In 1942, Highsmith graduated from Barnard College, where she studied English composition, playwriting and the short story. Living in New York City and Mexico between 1942 and 1948, she wrote for comic book publishers, turning out two stories a day for $55-a-week paychecks. With Nedor/Standard/Pines (1942–43), she wrote Sgt. Bill King stories and contributed to Black Terror. For Real Fact, Real Heroes and True Comics, she wrote comic book profiles of Einstein, Galileo, Barney Ross, Edward Rickenbacker, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, David Livingstone and others. In 1943-45 she wrote for Fawcett Publications, scripting for such Fawcett Comics characters as Golden Arrow, Spy Smasher, Captain Midnight, Crisco and Jasper. She wrote for Western Comics in 1945-47. At the suggestion of Truman Capote, she rewrote her first novel, Strangers on a Train, at the Yaddo writer's colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. The book proved modestly successful when it was published in 1950. However, it was due to Hitchcock and his 1951 film adaptation of the novel that Highsmith's career and reputation catapulted. Soon she became known as a writer of ironic, disturbing psychological mysteries highlighted by stark, startling prose. Other filmmakers — primarily European — followed suit as several Highsmith novels, including The Blunderer (1954), This Sweet Sickness (1960), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) and Ripley's Game (1974) were adapted for films. She was a lifelong diarist, and developed her writing style as a child writing entries in which she fantasized that her neighbours had psychological problems and murderous personalities behind their facades of normality, a theme she would explore extensively in her novels. Highsmith included homosexual overtones in many of her novels and addressed the theme directly in The Price of Salt and the posthumous Small g: a Summer Idyll. The Price is known for its happy ending, the first of its kind in homosexual/lesbian fiction. Published in 1953 under the pseudonym Claire Morgan, it sold almost a million copies. The inspiration for the book's main character, Carol, was a woman Highsmith saw in Bloomingdales, where she worked at the time. Highsmith found out her address from the credit card details, and on two occasions after the book was written (in June, 1950 and January, 1951) spied on the woman without the latter's knowledge.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)