12/09/2022
Imagine you are a young writer in living in New York City during the 1940s. You find yourself mingling with author Truman Capote, Oscar-winning actress Luise Rainer, and top women journalists, writers, publishers, editors, and artists. You have a complicated and sometimes exhausting love life, and an internal battle balancing classwork at Barnard College, artistic output, and parties in Greenwich Village. This was the life of author Patricia Highsmith (1921–95), and in her diaries readers will find universal themes: the struggle to find meaningful employment; family strife; a desire for independence. Highsmith does not hold back her opinions of others, her tallies of lovers, or descriptions of parties. But beyond her social life, Highsmith also questions her sexuality, her gender, and relationships. Anna von Planta, Highsmith's longtime editor, acknowledges Highsmith's flaws and chose to keep entries with cruel or antisemitic comments. Thoroughly annotated introductions for each year provide helpful historical background such as the Lavender Scare, and information about the many people in Highsmith'slife. VERDICT Readers will get an intimate look at LGBTQ life in the 1940s. A great read for aspiring writers, devotees of LGBTQ history, and those who enjoy reading about an artist's evolution.—Susanne Caro
2022-11-12
The intimate revelations of a sensuous, ambitious writer.
Out of nearly 5,000 pages from the notebooks and diaries of Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995), editor von Planta and her team have culled about 20% to represent the author’s formative years as a writer. They begin with her first diary entry in 1941, when she was an undergraduate at Barnard, and conclude in 1950, with the publication of her first novel, Strangers on a Train, and the completion of her second, The Price of Salt. As this volume demonstrates, Highsmith poured everything into her private notebooks: desires, dreams, inspirations, frustrations, and more. Longing for “the unspeakably blissful sensation of being loved,” she recounts a flood of infatuations, affairs, seductions, and betrayals. “We seek forever,” she writes, “one other human heart we can touch and who can touch ours.” Aside from a chronicle of sex with many women (and a few men, one of whom became her fiance), Highsmith records her efforts to be recognized as a writer. After graduating from college in 1942, she failed to get a job at a glossy magazine—the New Yorker or Harper’s Bazaar, for example. Short-term gigs ended when she found a job as a researcher and scriptwriter for a monthly comic magazine, which supported her for several years and gave her time to work on her fiction. “I am writing like K. Boyle,” she exulted, “with many adjectives, many strong sensuous words that one feels in the body.” In 1943, she sold her first story, and the next year she took her first trip abroad, to Mexico. Her love life in New York’s queer community was energetic and fueled by alcohol. Often, she dated several women concurrently, a practice that didn’t end well, and she was drawn to successful older women. As in a previous collection, this one contains a foreword by Highsmith’s biographer Joan Schenkar and succinct introductions for each year.
A close look at a tumultuous life.
