diving back into Highsmith's brain with This Sweet Sickness

0393323676
W.W. Norton, 2002
originally published 1960
282 pp

paperback

"The Situation. It was all part of the one Situation, after all."

The more Highsmith I read, the more reluctant I become to label her work as crime fiction. The problem in trying to categorize her work is that she's a writer who doesn't pigeonhole easily, so I have just quit trying.  But since there's murder involved here, as in most of the books I've read (with the exception of her The Price of Salt), this seems like the appropriate place to talk about her work.

This Sweet Sickness is Highsmith's seventh book and somewhere around page 90 I had to put it down for a day because of the knots forming in my gut. Somehow I just knew that this story was going to end very badly and well, I wasn't wrong.  This book unnerved me to the max and reaffirmed my belief that it is dangerous indeed to stay in this woman's brain (or that of her main character here) for any length of time.

David Kelsey is an intelligent, successful chemist who lives in a small town in New York.  He has a room in a boardinghouse there during the week; over his weekends he goes to a lovely home he owns, which he'd bought under the name of William Neumeister, "who had never failed at anything, at least nothing important... "  His fellow residents at Mrs. McCartney's boardinghouse know nothing about either Neumeister nor Kelsey's home -- when asked where he goes every weekend, he tells them he is visiting his mother at a nursing home. What no one knows is that David's mother is dead and has been for a while.  It seems that David goes home each weekend looking for letters from the only woman he's ever loved, Annabelle.  He's also fixed the place up in a style he knows Annabelle will love. But David absolutely refuses to accept or to deal with "The Situation," which

 "was the way it was and had been for nearly two years...like a rock, say a five-pound rock, that he carried around in his chest day and night."

David's "situation" is that two years earlier, Annabelle had married Gerald Delaney.  That doesn't seem to bother David, though -- in his mind, he had "won Annabelle," who, in Neumeister's house, "lived with him here, he imagined," "her presence in every room."  Everything he does is for Annabelle, and his obsession with her grows as he pursues his dream of having her as his wife.

first US edition cover from Wikipedia

The US first edition cover speaks volumes about what's inside this novel, but once again I turn to
Andrew Wilson, Highsmith's biographer who reveals that Kelsey is a sort of "Nietzschean hero," which should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone who's read Highsmith. He also reveals that Highsmith herself "conducted an imaginary love affair," and notes Highsmith's diary as recording that "without her" (the woman about whom she fantasized), "it would have been a different book."

Quite frankly, This Sweet Sickness is one of the most disturbing novels in Highsmith's lineup to this point, and reader beware -- there is absolutely nothing uplifting or redeeming to be found here, which normally doesn't bother me, but with Highsmith I've found that reading her work has to be done in small doses.  I'm totally not surprised that Hitchcock bought the television rights to this book, which eventually became an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour called "Annabel"   (season one) starring Dean Stockwell.  Maddeningly, I can't find a copy to buy anywhere, nor can I find anything but a VHS copy of the movie based on this book (1977) starring Gérard Depardieu, "Dites-lui que je l'aime."

Enter at your own risk, but then again, that's true of every Highsmith novel. Her books definitely get an NFE (not for everyone) rating from me -- but I can't help myself.  I love her. 

...and we're back with another novel by Patricia Highsmith: A Game for the Living

0871132109
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994
(originally published 1958)
282 pp

paperback

"You are about to find out who is responsible for this...but it doesn't matter in the least...It's just a silly game -- a game for the living."  (198)

Right off the bat, I will admit that this is not one of my favorite Highsmith novels.  It's a departure from her usual stuff, which is okay, but she really wasn't all that terrific at putting together an existential whodunit novel which, when all is said and done, describes what I think she was attempting with A Game for the Living. I'm not the only one who has an issue with this book -- according to her biographer, Andrew Wilson, Highsmith herself "came to regard A Game for the Living ... as one of her worst novels," and she wrote in her Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction that this novel "was the only really dull book I have written."  

As the book begins, you actually do find yourself in Highsmith land. Set in Mexico, two very different men are in love with the same woman, both are her lovers, and both are very civilized about the whole thing.  She is also very accommodating; there are no fights between the two men (who are friends), and everyone seems to accept the situation as it is. But, when one of the men returns home from a trip and finds her dead in bed, things start to change.  He, Theodore, is positive that the other man, Ramón, is Lelia's murderer -- after all, he knows that Ramón is prone to violent outbursts.  Theodore has even come between the two a few times when Ramón was on the verge of hitting her.  Ramón had also said that someday he'd "give her up" or "kill himself."  Theodore also realizes that 

"between killing oneself and killing the object of one's passion was not much difference...Psychologically, they equated sometimes."

The two do a sort of mental and emotional dance wondering if the other one is guilty, and matters don't improve when Ramón decides to confess.  But far from being the end of the story, his confession is actually just the beginning.  The limits of friendship are constantly tested in this novel;  Highsmith also uses the novel to explore the nature of guilt.  It's also a book that examines religious belief (which I enjoyed) and art (which I also enjoyed).  Yet, while many of these same themes are to be found in her other novels, looking at it as whole, the book  is a kind of a trainwreck of poor plotting, very little in the way of character development outside of the two main characters, and a lack of intensity that for me is the hallmark of a Highsmith novel.  And then there's that beyond-flat ending.

If my lack of enthusiasm is showing, there are plenty of reasons why.  The biggest one is this: I didn't feel this book like I have the others. If you're a regular Highsmith reader, you know what I mean. I'm at the point where now I have to take breathers between reading her novels because they're so dark and so intense, but I didn't get that here.

I'd say try it but proceed with caution. Do not make this your first Highsmith novel or you may never go back to another one.

"a ballet of the wearing of the nerves": Deep Water, by Patricia Highsmith

9780393324556
Norton, 2003
originally published 1957
271 pp

paperback

"...I don't waste my time punching people on the nose. If I really don't like somebody, I kill him."

So sayeth Victor (Vic) VanAllen,  the main character in Deep Water, which Highsmith described in her Cahier (via Andrew Wilson's great biography Beautiful Shadow) as  focusing on " 'the sniping, griping ambushing,' that can exist between people who are supposed to love one another, locked together 'in a ballet of the wearing of the nerves.' "  Frankly, that describes this book perfectly, but that "wearing of the nerves" is also a great way to describe how I felt during and after reading this novel. Once again, Highsmith had me feeling sympathetic toward a character not too unlike Tom Ripley; even though eventually I'm supposed to be outraged and shocked at things he does, it's still sort of difficult not to feel something for this guy.   I'm really starting to worry about myself here, and that is not a joke.  If there is one thing at which Highsmith excels -- actually there are many things but for me this one is numero uno -- it is her ability to make a reader to see things from the points of view of the psychopaths who populate her books. To them, what they're doing makes perfectly good sense -- we may not believe in real life that murder is any sort of solution, but somehow it's like you can seriously understand why her  people feel compelled to do the things they do.  I often find myself rooting for these people to succeed -- and then I realize that I'm cheering on a murderer who has not one  iota of conscience. But I can't help it. And that's why I'm a wee bit concerned.

The reason Vic comes across as a sympathetic character is because of his wife, Melinda. Vic runs a small but very successful press that produces only a few books each year, beautifully bound but dreadfully dull. The books that come from his press tend to reflect Vic's character -- on the outside he is well put together, but inside he is dreadfully dull, for example, raising snails as a hobby, also into such pastimes as "bee culture" and "cheesemaking."  Melinda, who doesn't at all share his interests, carries on with a number of men, flaunting them in Vic's face by either bringing them home and having them stay until the wee hours of the morning or not coming home because she's stayed with them; she also cares very little that their neighbors and circle of friends all get what's going on. Vic, whose philosophy is that

"everybody -- therefore a wife -- should be allowed to do as she pleased, provided no one else was hurt and that she fulfilled her main responsibilities, which were to manage a household and to take care of her offspring..."  

realizes that because Melinda has a reputation for playing around,  he's acquired a near-saintlike reputation among their acquaintances, which as Highsmith tells us, "flattered Vic's ego."  However, he also admittedly has "an evil side," that he keeps "well hidden."  For example,  he takes near-joyous pleasure in telling one of Melinda's new boyfriends that he'd actually killed one of her previous lovers (referencing an actual murder that has been in the newspaper), a joke that turns into rumor and circulates through Vic's friends. It's not true, of course, but it sends the boyfriend running yet keeps him wondering.  Vic outwardly turns a blind eye to what's going on with Melinda and her series of lovers, but inwardly he's seething -- and this being a Highsmith novel, that pressure isn't going to stay bottled up for long.  When Melinda's latest boy toy is invited to play the piano during a neighbor's party, somehow he ends up dead in the swimming pool -- and Melinda begins to wonder if Vic may have had a hand in his death.

Deep Water is Highsmith's exploration of  "the diseases produced by sexual repression;" as she notes (again from Beautiful Shadow), 

"From this unnatural abstinence evil things arise, like peculiar vermin in a stagnant well: fantasies and hatreds, and the accursed tendency to attribute evil motivations to charitable and friendly acts" (101)

and once again, she takes her idea and runs with it, this time creating a nearly-perfect study of a marriage that's stagnating and in decline. Vic is almost too perfect -- a great dad, househusband, sympathetic employer, and perfect neighbor -- as opposed to Melinda, whose flaws we see from the outset. It is definitely not hard at all to feel pity for Vic as he puts up with his wife and her multiple affairs, and this is really where Highsmith gets into my head.  I always seem to side with the "bad" guy; she makes it so easy to understand his point of view and actually feel a huge amount of sympathy for him.

Highsmith isn't for everyone, and as I'm discovering, it's becoming sort of necessary to space out reading her novels to maintain a measure of my own sanity. At the end of this one, I put the book down and walked away from it in a funk.  She has this way of burrowing deeply into my skin as she burrows into the minds of others -- and it's not always a comfortable feeling, even though so far, I'm absolutely loving her work.  It's not often an author can have that effect on me, but she manages to do so with every novel, at least so far.

definitely and most highly recommended.   Strangers on a Train or The Talented Mr. Ripley are her most famous books, but this one will definitely have anyone squirming throughout the story.

Highsmith again: this time, The Blunderer. Oh, that ending!

9780393322446
W.W. Norton, 2001
(originally published 1954)
265 pp

paperback

While the rest of my crime novel collection is screaming at me (most notably a new novel by Mallock, The Faces of God and Jan Costin Wagner's newest release), I'm bound and determined to make this a Highsmith summer. So far it's just been Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt, and this one;  these are only three novels out of several, but I'll get there. If not over the summer, then well, before the year is out for sure.   As I posted in a status update yesterday afternoon on goodreads (at page 209),

"I just love Patricia Highsmith's work. I'm sitting here reading this today, and my tension level has been ratcheted up more than a few times throughout this story. I so want to peek at the end to make sure everything comes out all right, but this is Highsmith, so I know it won't."

and as things turned out, I was right. But that's Highsmith for you:  things don't always go the way you think they should in her books.  She often does a 180 in terms of reader expectations;  in this case, she ended up  leaving me a lot more unsettled at the end than I was throughout the story.

The Blunderer examines three different men in terms of two of Highsmith's favorite themes, guilt and justice. The first, Kimmel, is a bookstore owner who specializes in obtaining pornography. He's also a murderer [which is not a spoiler since you see the whole thing unravel right away upon opening the book and it's on the back-cover blurb] who believes he's gotten away with killing his wife and feels no remorse; the second is an attorney, Walter Stackhouse, whose neurotic ballbuster of a wife Clara  is driving his friends away little by little because of her disapproving attitude and crazy imagination.  Unlike Kimmel, Walter only thinks about getting rid of his wife, and on reading the story of Mrs. K's death, becomes obsessed with the way the job was done.  At the same time, he also becomes more and more convinced of Kimmel's guilt, becoming fascinated with Kimmel himself, and trots off to his bookstore to take a look at him.  When Clara turns up dead (also on the back-cover blurb) in much the same fashion as Kimmel's wife, enter the third party of this strange triangle, the overzealous, overreaching, and over-aggressive  police detective investigating Mrs. Kimmel's death.  While Kimmel sails along sure of himself as far as the law is concerned, Walter isn't so fortunate -- he is the titular "blunderer," whose stupid mistakes he's made along the way are enough to cause havoc for Walter in so very many ways.

first American edition cover, 1954

While there are definite similarities between this novel and Strangers on a Train (as in an examination of guilt, the psychology of the individual,  and the doppelganger-ish, growing obsession between two men),  unlike SOAT, the ending of this one is a definite shocker.  But before reaching that point, what I find most interesting about this book just may be the way in which the reader is pretty much manipulated the entire way through the story.

As in the cases of  both The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train, I found myself constantly being thrown off kilter while reading, but that's what makes Patricia Highsmith such a fine writer, and it's likely why her books are still quite popular half a century or more after they were first published.  I don't want just crime, investigation and solution in my reading, and she more than satisfies my need for dark inroads into the psyche.  The Blunderer is one I'd most certainly recommend to readers of darker fiction.

It ain't the movie, folks: Strangers on a Train, by Patricia Highsmith

9780099283072
Vintage, 1999
272 pp

paperback

"And Bruno, he and Bruno. Each was what the other had not chosen to be, the cast-off self, what he thought he hated, but perhaps in reality loved."

Strangers on a Train is another case where most people have seen the movie but haven't read the book or didn't know there was a novel behind it.  In this case, if you've seen the movie, and then go to read Highsmith's book, you end up with two different entities.  The basic plot is the same -- two men, total strangers, meet on a train; one (Bruno) is a psychopath and in conversation things eventually come around to the concept of the "perfect murder." Bruno will get rid of the woman who stands in the way of the other man's (Guy Haines) path to happiness, and Guy in return, will get rid of Bruno's father. Guy has no intention of carrying out his side of Bruno's imaginary bargain, but Bruno kills Guy's wife anyway.   I can see why Hitchcock got involved with this movie -- it seems tailor made for the man.  But this is where movie and novel take different paths. Actually, the book and movie part company very early on. 

There's really no need to rehash the plot of this book since it is so very well known, but it's worth saying that the strength of this novel  is in Highsmith's ability to very quickly bring the reader inside of her characters' heads. The same is true in her Talented Mr. Ripley .  In Strangers on a Train, she examines the very complex relationship between two men, strangers before they had that fateful meeting on the train, but whose lives afterward become inescapably interwined.  The reader sees what drives each man not only individually, but also in the complexity of the ties that bring them  "closer than brotherhood," even when they are not together. The quotation at the beginning of this post, to me, is critical in trying to comprehend this tangled and tortuous relationship (and I could talk forever on the topic  but I'll spare you),  but the true genius of this novel is that most of what creates the tension and suspense in this story plays out in the space of their minds. Sure, there are the physical scenes where Bruno kills Miriam and Guy reciprocates, but even here, you are taken step by step through the entire process of killing as seen through the respective characters' eyes.  As the story progresses and you feel that all-too human need to sympathize with someone, you begin to realize that sympathy becomes an elusive, rather slippery concept in terms of the two main players. 

If I had read Strangers on a Train as my first foray into the mind of Patricia Highsmith, I would have bought every single book she ever wrote just praying that that they'd all be this good.  I had to disagree with someone recently who complained that the book just didn't have enough "action," because frankly, action is not what Highsmith's writing  is all about, a point evidently lost on the person but whatever. Anyone who picks up one of her books should know that she's going to dive right into the psyche and pull out whatever's there for all to see -- and then you're along for the ride as she slowly starts the dissection.  I can't speak highly enough about this book. Highsmith is genuinely in a class of her own.  

reading Ripley, part one: The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith

0679742298
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 1992
(originally published 1955)
290 pp

paperback

"He was versatile, and the world was wide!"

Tom Ripley is an extremely disturbed man.  Knowing what we know about him, we probably wouldn't want him to come to dinner, live in our neighborhood, date our daughters or our sons, handle our investments -- in short, after we've gotten to know him, we discover he is someone we would avoid like the plague.  But all of the above are judgments made from our outside,  reader point of view.  Rereading this novel taught me a valuable lesson -- when accepting an author's invitation to enter the mind of a paranoid psychopath, you may not like where things are heading, but you've made the choice to be party to his point of view for the time being.  Reading The Talented Mr. Ripley demands that you step into Ripley's brain in order to more fully understand this guy and what makes him tick.  It's the best and imo the only  way to wrap your head around what he does and why he does it.

The first page of this book isn't even over before it becomes clear that Tom Ripley is probably not an upstanding citizen. After he orders a gin and tonic at a bar the next thing on his mind is whether or not the police would send a guy who looked like a

"businessman, somebody's father, well-dressed, well-fed, greying at the temples," 

to effect his arrest. Arrest?  Then -- a reprieve...he's not getting taken away for "grand larceny or tampering with the mails or whatever they call it," but rather, the man who seems to be interested in him has a job for him.   The crime that has pushed his paranoid self to believe he's going to be arrested is tax fraud -- a sort of shakedown operation that benefits Ripley not at all since everyone he's hustled has paid by check and not cash. The "businessman" turns out to be Herbert Greenleaf, father of Dickie, and under the mistaken assumption (which is never corrected)  that Tom and Dickie are close friends, Greenleaf senior wants Tom to go to Europe and convince his son to come home. For Tom, it's the perfect opportunity to start over -- to leave behind his old life.  Raised by his Aunt Dottie, whom he cannot stand (but from whom he still accepts regular checks out of necessity), he grew up in an emotionless environment seeking approval which was never offered; his adult self gains acceptance at parties where he makes an idiot out of himself to make people laugh. This voyage is his chance at escaping -- and he takes it.  His "transformation" begins on the ship, where he decides to play the part of "a serious young man with a serious job ahead of him," but the biggest role of his life awaits him in the small seaside village of Mongibello, where he manages to worm his way into the life of Dickie Greenleaf, with deadly results that will follow Tom as he makes his way around Europe.

[possible spoiler ahead -- do  not read if you don't want to know]

So, getting back to reading this book from the point of view of a paranoid psychopath who has added killing to his repertoire, while in the mind of Tom Ripley, it's easy to understand exactly why he does the things he does.  First, there's Tom, who has zero self esteem and zero self confidence, who is looking to be more than he has been in life so far, and who just wants to be free to live the perfect life.  In Tom's mind, Dickie is a symbol of the freedom that Tom desires -- his life is the one Tom wants for himself, so much so that in his mind, he wants to be Dickie. There's Dickie himself -- the spoiled, self-absorbed son living off of his parents' money, free to do what he likes when he likes, only having to please himself and no one else.  Then there's Marge, who is in love with Dickie who doesn't fully appreciate or love her back, but she keeps waiting for him to come around. Marge is the object of Tom's jealousy; she is an impediment to the happiness that in his mind, he and Dickie could share. So it should absolutely come as no surprise to anyone that when Dickie changes course in his relationship with Tom, Tom takes steps to take care of the situation.  By this time we're so into Tom's head that what he does seems necessary as well as logical.  And here's where I seem to differ from so many people that have read this book -- since I'm seeing things from Tom's point of view, it's almost impossible not to want to see him succeed after everything he's done to get what he wants.  How many people actually take the chance to not only change their lives, but to experience the very freedom that Tom has achieved?

Back in the real world, outside of Ripley's mind, of course the guy's a pathological killer, an amoral bad guy  who will stop at nothing to get what he wants.  He's the ultimate manipulator, the worst kind of bad guy, and someone you would want to never encounter.  But none of that is applicable while you're inside of his world, where good and evil do not exist, where things just sort of follow a logical progression necessary to achieve his ultimate goals.   In fact, it's easy to understand why everyone does what they do in this novel, and that's why it works so well, and why it has remained a classic over the last sixty years.