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Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith
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About This Book
'My New Year's Eve Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle - may they never give me peace' PATRICIA HIGHSMITH (New Year's Eve, 1947) Made famous by the great success of her psychological thrillers, The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train, Patricia Highsmith is lauded as one of the most influential and celebrated modern writers. However, there has never been a clear picture of the woman behind the books. The relationship between Highsmith's lesbianism, her fraught personality – by parts self-destructive and malicious – and her fiction, has been largely avoided by biographers. She was openly homosexual and wrote the seminal lesbian love story, Carol. In modern times, she would be venerated as a radical exponent of the LGBT community. However, her status as an LGBT icon is undermined by the fact that she was excessively cruel and exploitative of her friends and lovers. In this new biography, Richard Bradford brings his sharp, incisive style to one of the great and most controversial writers of the twentieth century. He considers Highsmith's bestsellers in the context of her troubled personal life; her alcoholism, licentious sex life, racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and abundant self-loathing.
Reviews
"Bradford's apparent distaste regarding her many lesbian encounters makes for an uncomfortable reading experience."
"Though it breaks little new ground, the book is a happy mixture of biography and criticism."
"Bradford becomes oddly derisory about Highsmith's fiction—each new novel, he complains, seems more inept and implausible than the last—but he is even more hostile to the woman herself, in an ultimately tedious, dull-edged and deadening way ..."
"With little sympathy for his subject, Richard Bradford sees the origin of Highsmith's plots in her destructive relationships with women of higher social standing."
"It's characteristic of this intelligent but alienating text, which works better as literary criticism than biography, that Bradford feels no need to display any compassion for such a sad, lonely end."
"Bradford is much less interested in [a] sociological approach, preferring to pathologise Highsmith instead."
"Sympathy for her, here and elsewhere, is lacking from this biography ..."
"Still, fans of Highsmith's work are sure to gain a deeper appreciation for the exceptional writer and her complicated life."
"Highsmith was what William Hazlitt called 'a good hater,' and in this respect alone Bradford and his subject are well suited ..."
"More convincing is Bradford's appraisal of Highsmith's genius as a writer ..."
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