Patricia Highsmith (edit name/settings)

Patricia Highsmith was a novelist, short story writer who specialized in Psychological thrillers, and Crime fiction.

Mary Patricia Plangman was born in Fort Worth, Texas. Was raised by her grandmother & mother in a boardinghouse before moving out to New York with her step dad Stanly highsmith (her birth father name was Jay Bernard Plangman who filed for divorce before the birth of Mary by 5 months)

She had a love/hate relationship with her mother & had resented her step father, gone as far as returning to her grandmother house at the age 12 for a year

Her relationship with her mother was mentally abusive; in her dairies she mentioned how at a tender age of 10 how her mother told her that she desired to abort her using turpentine oil.

This complicated affaire manifested in Patricia sexual identity, and her long history of falling in love with women’s who cared similar abusive characterizing of her mother, and later alcohol abuse. 

It’s interesting to note that their shared history is reflective tremendously in her novels & short stories were the main characters are caught in a sad pitiful relationship with his/her parental figure, which often leads to the murder of the later, it’s a sad to know that she never have forgive her mother for her misdeeds to the end of her life.

A diarist from an early age, she had a love for reading, a love that lead her to the Human Mind by Karl Menninger, which had influenced her greatly with it studies of schizophrenia, mental illness.

The effect of the book is prominent in her dairy entries & short stories were she imagines her middle class suburban neighborhoods as psychotic derange creatures capable of commenting murder (a fantasy that was transformed into Mermaid in the Golf course short story collections).

She graduate from Barnard College, where she studied literature, novel compositions, and play write, Prior to her writing carrier, she had worked as a comic book writer for the black terror Real Fact, Real Heroes and True Comics as a free lancing comic writer, and wrote stories for Captain Midnight, Spy Smasher ‘ and Golden Arrow. 

She had a close relationship with the author Truman capote who advised her to rewrite her drat for stranger in train, were he suggested doing so in Yaddo writer's colony in Saratoga Springs, New York.

The novel gained a modest success, and had Highsmith trade mark disturbing immoralists violence & psychological philosophic depth, one of reasons that lead the famous director Alfred Hitchcock to buy the novel rights anonymously, so he could buy it cheap.

Her novels themes alienated her Native land for dealing with Themes unwelcomed in her times were Crime fiction was a genre dominated my men &The Conservatives Society  view of good and evil; of which the ideas as foreign as existentialism, sexuality, absurdism, black humor, and the futility of pursuing justices were considered queer and absolutely shocking.

Hench; her sales in Europe were higher, and so was her admires; a good enough reason for her choice in settling in Europe in her middle years.

Her most well known creation was her amoral, serial killer, and con artist Tom Ripley (her alter Ego) who was immortalized in five book series called by her admires as the Ripliad series, a passive creature that enjoy leisure & luxury and only resolved to crimes when his joys & Interests are threatened.

She is considered as a pioneer in Crime Fictions and LGBT fictions as well for Her Novel The Price of Salt, a novel that portrayed A realistic women couples romantic relationship in depth and whose tale was awarded with a happy ending in time were such works were doomed to end in tragedy, or the end of their relationship by finding a suitable man.

Thos idea were influenced, and inspired by her literatures mentors; such as:

 Fyodor Dostoyevsky –Franz Kafka- Saul Bellow -Albert Camus-Andre Gide-Joseph Conrad, among others.

She spoke English, French, Italian, and some German when she toured through Europe, finally settling in Locarno, Switzerland.

She won many literature prizes including:

3 times Edgar Awards

Order of Arts and Letters Award

Grand honoree prize for black humor

O Henry award

The Grand Prix de Littérature Policière

The Dagger Award

She is Famous for Stranger on Train-The Ripley series-Price of Salt<o:p></o:p>

Biography:

Novels:

v Strangers on a Train (1950)

v The Price of Salt (as Claire Morgan) (1952), also published as Carol

v The Blunderer (1954)

v The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)

v Deep Water (1957)

v A Game for the Living (1958)

v This Sweet Sickness (1960)

v The Two Faces of January (1961)

v The Cry of the Owl (1962)

v The Glass Cell (1964)

v A Suspension of Mercy (1965), also published as The Story-Teller

v Those Who Walk Away (1967)

v The Tremor of Forgery (1969)

v Ripley Under Ground (1970)

v A Dog's Ransom (1972)

v Ripley's Game (1974)

v Edith's Diary (1977)

v The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980)

v People Who Knock on the Door (1983)

v Found in the Street (1987)

v Ripley Under Water (1991)

v Small g: a Summer Idyll (1995)

v Short Story collections:

v Eleven (1970; also known as The Snail-Watcher and Other Stories)

v Little Tales of Misogyny (1974)

v The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder (1975)

v Slowly, Slowly in the Wind (1979)

v The Black House (1981)

v Mermaids on the Golf Course (1985)

v Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes (1987)