Posted on November 15, 2021 at 2:23 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
Author Patricia Highsmith’s diaries were to be published, warts and all.
That didn’t mean, however, that her editor simply transcribed the volumes and sent them to press.
The diaries, reports the Guardian, were initially written in “French, German, Spanish or Italian so terrible as to constitute encryption.”
But editor Anna von Planta’s work on that content was well worth her effort.
The Highsmith revealed by Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995 is every bit the character that the Guardian’s Emma Brockes expected — but her eccentricities begin to make more sense, as does their effect on her fiction (which was drafted in the notebooks referenced in the title).
Read all of her thoughts on Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks, which comes out tomorrow, in the Guardian.
Highsmith is most closely associated with The Talented Mr. Ripley and its sequels, though she wrote other hit novels that also became movies: Strangers on a Train and The Price of Salt (known as Carol since 1990).
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Categories: Today in Books