RARA-AVIS: Highsmith

From: Carrie Pruett ( pruettc@hotmail.com)
Date: 27 Sep 2001


Brad wrote:

>I still can't figure out how she does it, but I think Highsmith is >able to
>heighten tension instead of diminish it through the bland and
> >inconsequential habits of Ripley.

Interesting; it may be that he's an extreme species of antihero - 'cause a lot of supposed antiheroes (Parker, Keller, Hannibal Lecter, Tony Soprano) still have at least some of the qualities we associate with "heroes"
(intelligence, wit, great skill, dreams and hopes and fears). Whereas Ripley, at least in TMR, isn't particularly extraordinary in any way and basically drifts around one step at a time without much will or motivation, beyond survival and perhaps a moment's amusement. Just not a protagonist I could work up much interest in. Maybe I'll try some of the stories and see if they work any better for me.

Carrie

_________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp

--
# To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
# majordomo@icomm.ca.  This will not work for the digest version.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 27 Sep 2001 EDT