Interview
A N DRE W W I L S O N Gustav Temple meets Patricia Highsmith’s first biographer, to discuss the enduring appeal of the grande dame of crime fiction in the centenary of her birth
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his year, the centenary of Patricia Highsmith’s birth on 19th January, sees the release of the new series of the Ripley stories with Andrew Scott in the lead role. Yes, and there’s also a new film with Ben Affleck of Deep Water.
“She’d been working from the tradition of existentialist literature; she knew her Camus, her Sartre and her Kafka. But what she did so cleverly was take those very intellectual ideas and turn them into these extraordinarily suspenseful stories with very tight plots. And I think that’s one of the aspects of her genius”
That’s the book about Vic and his terrible unfaithful wife? Yes, and the swimming pool, the obsession with snails – it’s classic Highsmith! Today is Thanksgiving Day, which is appropriate for discussing Texan writer Patricia Highsmith. How patriotic was she, despite living in Europe for much of her life?
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