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Picturing Patricia Highsmith
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Picturing Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith—the prolific author of Carol and The Talented Mr. Ripley, whose works were much mined for television and film—would have turned 95 on January 19, 2016.
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Written by
Kathleen Kuiper
Kathleen Kuiper was Senior Editor, Arts & Culture, Encyclopædia Britannica until 2016. She also edited Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature.
Kathleen Kuiper
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Patricia Highsmith—author of the novel Carol, on which the recent film of the same name was based—would have turned 95 on January 19, 2016. Her novel Carol was an anomaly for her, both in its subject matter, a lesbian love affair, and in its somewhat positive outlook. It was a book that Joan Schenkar, one of Highsmith’s biographers, wrote “made her uneasy all her life.” Until Carol was published, stories about lesbian relationships were largely treated in pulp fiction. And they did not end well; usually someone died. In 1952, the year that Carol was published, lesbianism was a largely forbidden topic. And having had her debut novel, Strangers on a Train, snapped up by none other than Alfred Hitchcock (who made it into a creepy, compelling movie as only he could), she stood to lose a lot. For Carol, originally published as The Price of Salt, the budding author used the pseudonym “Claire Morgan” and remained silent on her personal life.

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Kathleen Kuiper