concurrently as well as
consecutively, occasionally
with men as well as with
women. “Three nights, three
people!” she records. “She did
me at least four times,” she
notes happily.
“Sex, to me, should be a
religion. I have no other,” she
writes. “Sexual love is the
only emotion which has ever
really touched me. Hatred,
jealousy, even abstract
devotion, never — except
devotion to myself.”
Yet she was wildly
romantic, falling not just
quickly but deeply in and outof love, a pattern that
continued stressfully into
middle age, when she left
America to live in Europe,
moving frequently between
France, Italy and England.
In her forties she concludes
that “it is quite obvious that
my falling in love is not love,
but a necessity of attaching
myself to someone”.
Only thus could she be fully
engaged, temporarily anyway.
For the dismaying and
overwhelming confirmation
of these diaries is that
Highsmith had no basic
human warmth, no naturalaffection for what we all share.
She herself says so, over and
over again, quite clearly.
In 1942: “I do not care
for humanity in individuals.
I do not care to smell their
breaths.” Later that year: “I
have decided at last, that I
have a definite psychosis in
being with people. I cannot
bear it very long.”
The misanthropy becomes
florid in later life. She claims
that many people have no
souls, unlike her beloved pet
snails. “If these people were
books, they wouldn’t get
printed,” she sneers. “One
reason to admire the
automobile: it demolishes
more people than wars do.”
In one particularly nasty
late entry, she muses: “One
situation — maybe one alone
— could drive me to murder:
family life; togetherness. I’d
strike a blow in anger, and kill,
probably, a child aged from
two to eight. Those over eight
would take two blows to kill.”
Some of her worst remarks,
doubtless racist, misogynist
and homophobic, have been
omitted, her editor admits
— yet von Planta hopefully
maintains that “her life was
not, in fact, as dark as it might
appear in these pages”.
If not, it was because her
best fiction is so wonderfully
well written that it justified all
else. If some of her short
stories are superficial, little
more than deliberate acts of
unkindness, her novels have
a different energy and forged
a new direction for suspense.
These diaries show us their
origin better than any
biography could.
Highsmith grasped her own
nature early. “The morbid,
the cruel, the abnormal
fascinates me,” she admits as
a student. Acknowledging
Dostoevsky as her master, she
says: “Good and evil are
present in a single individual
in life, hence my themes,
which are self-projections.”
Writing Ripley is a special
fulfilment. “What I predicted
I would once do, I am doing
already in this very book, that
is showing the unequivocal
triumph of evil over good, and
rejoicing in it. I shall make my
readers rejoice in it, too.”
She did just that. It will be
interesting to see if the
Highsmith revealed in this
astonishing book can
successfully be recruited to
any worthy contemporary
causes or identities. cphysique, duration of the
relationship, reason for
breakdown and so forth.
Highsmith, very striking
looking when young, had
frequent short-lived affairs,CHILDREN’S
BOOK OF THE WEEK
NICOLETTE JONES
Adventures in Time:
The First World War
by Dominic Sandbrook
Particular Books £14.99,
age 10+For Remembrance Sunday,
Sandbrook recounts the
events of the First World
War through the stories
of the individuals involved,
including statesmen,
assassins, soldiers, spies
and nurses: from Gavrilo
Princip to Edith Cavell, Tsar
Nicholas to the Accrington
Pals. Character sketches
tend to highlight the eyes:
Rasputin’s, for instance,
were “blazing”, Adolf
Hitler’s “cold”. But overall
this focus on the people is
compelling and vivid.
Although there is a Boy’s
Own quality to the telling of
the exploits of those
honoured for their tenacity
on the killing fields, this
memorable chronicle never
loses sight of the terrible
pointlessness of the
conflict. So much loss is
haunting — not least the
2,000 killed on November
11, 1918, between the signing
of the peace treaty at 5am
and the 11am ceasefire.WATCH OUT FOR
Michael Rosen’s Sticky
McStickStick by Michael
Rosen and Tony Ross
Walker Books £12.99, age 3+This exceptional picture
book is a tribute to the
NHS staff (and the
personified walking stick)
who helped Rosen after
seven weeks in a Covid
coma. It manages to be
funny as well as moving.Devotion,
never — except
to myself
DEREK HUDSON/GETTY IMAGES
In and out of love Patricia
Highsmith in France in 1976