Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires

The Life of Patricia Highsmith

Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires

The Life of Patricia Highsmith

Richard Bradford (Author)

Paperback ₹799.00 Ebook (Epub & Mobi) ₹639.00 Ebook (PDF) ₹639.00

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Description

NOMINATED FOR THE H.R.F. KEATING AWARD, 2022.

'My New Year's Eve Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle – may they never give me peace' – Patricia Highsmith (New Year's Eve, 1947).

Made famous by the great success of her psychological thrillers, The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train, Patricia Highsmith is renowned as one of the most influential and celebrated modern writers. However, there has never been a clear picture of the woman behind the books.

The relationship between Highsmith's lesbianism, her fraught personality – by parts self-destructive and malicious – and her fiction, has been largely ignored by biographers in the past. As an openly homosexual writer, she wrote the seminal lesbian love story Carol for which she would be venerated, in modern times, as a radical exponent of the LGBTQ+ community.

Alas, her status as an LGBTQ+ icon is undermined by her excessive cruelty towards and exploitation of her friends and many lovers. In this biography, Richard Bradford brings his sharp and incisive style to one of the greatest and most controversial writers of the twentieth century. He considers Highsmith's bestsellers in the context of her troubled personal life; her alcoholism, licentious sex life, racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and abundant self-loathing.

Acknowledgements
Introduction

1. The Beginning
2. Barnard
3. Boarding the Train
4. Yaddo and Consequences
5. Carol
6. Ellen
7. Ripley
8. Marijane
9. 'So Much in Love'
10. Eccentricity
11. France
12. Animals and Us
13. 'It's Good You Never Had Children'
14. Her Last Loves
15. 'I'm Sick of the Jews!'
16. Those Who Walk Away

Primary Sources
Suggested Further Reading
Index

Product details

Published	21 Jan 2021
Format	Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition	1st
Extent	272
ISBN	9781448217915
Imprint	Bloomsbury Caravel
Illustrations	8 pages of black and white photographs
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Author

Richard Bradford

Richard Bradford is Research Professor in English…

This book is as snappy as an alligator … those who wish to see Patricia Highsmith devoured will no doubt applaud it.

Mail on Sunday
What makes the present biography poignant, is that there's no redemption for a life of restlessness, despair, and torturous, doomed affairs.

Los Angeles Review of Books
Serial biographer Richard Bradford has written a captivating biography that carves out its own space... Bradford entertainingly deduces aspects of her literary characters from Highsmith's own experiences… His lucidity is evident, his research thorough and his writing always immensely readable. Anyone interested in Highsmith would enjoy this book...

The Sydney Morning Herald
Bradford's comprehensive investigations into the devils, lusts and strange desires in the works and life of Patricia Highsmith inspire further reading of her masterpieces.

Out in Perth
Bradford writes in this engrossing biography, “an incomparable individual,” for she was-among other things-an alcoholic and an equal-opportunity hater (…) he gives careful attention to her individual books, praising some, criticizing others (“ponderous and fatiguing”). Though it breaks little new ground, the book is a happy mixture of biography and criticism. Near its end, Bradford, in judgment, refers to Highsmith's "execrable true self.” Readers will find it hard to disagree.

Booklist
Bradford's caustic wit helps to make this shortish book an entertaining summary of Highsmith's life.

Daily Express