RARA-AVIS: Highsmith
Joshua B Lukin (jblukin@acsu.buffalo.edu)
Fri, 13 Feb 1998 16:00:26 -0500 (EST)
There are also movies of _The_Glass_Cell_,
_This_Sweet_Sickness_, and
_The_Blunderer_. Supposedly, Hitchcock and Wenders were the
only adapters
of her work whom Highsmith liked.
I was very disappointed in the fifth Ripley novel, finding it
almost
completely devoid of substance. Does anyone feel the same about
this or
any of PH's other late novels (I'm kind of ambivalent
toward
_A_Dog's_Ransom_)?
Another question: a publisher-friend of mine is looking to
reissue some
out-of-print Highsmiths from the Fifties. He contacted Penguin
to find
out who has the rights to them and was directed down a blind
alley. Can
anyone advise as to whom he should contact?
The Observer, reviewing Philip Dick's
_Humpty_Dumpty_in_Oakland_,
remarked, "It is often difficult to disentangle delusion from
reality, as
in a novel by Patricia Highsmith." I think too that books from
this era
in Dick's life (ca. 1960) contain a bleakness, domestic
despair, and
paranoia-erupting-into-sudden-violence that contribute to the
appeal of
Highsmith's work.
Just a thought or two,
Josh
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