Beautiful Shadow (115 page)

15
Brian Glanville, ‘Sad finale to a literary life’s work’,
European Magazine
, 10–16 March 1995.

16
Joan Dupont, ‘The Poet of Apprehension’,
Village Voice
, 30 May 1995.

17
Ibid.

18
Ibid.

19
Vivien De Bernardi, Memorial address, 11 March 1995.

20
Interview with Tanja Howarth, 13 December 1999.

21
Joan Dupont, ‘The Poet of Apprehension’.

22
PH, Cahier 34, A Toast, 1979, SLA.

23
Interview with Tanja Howarth.

24
PH, Cahier 32, 7/30/73, SLA.

25
James Campbell, ‘Murder, She (Usually) Wrote’,
New York Times
, 27 October 2002.

26
Interview with Tanja Howarth.

27
Margaret Caldwell Thomas,
Women of Mystery
, ed. Martha Hailey DuBose, quoted in Ed Siegel, ‘Killer Instinct’,
Boston Globe
, 27 January 2002.

28
Ed Siegel, ‘Killer Instinct’.

List of Illustrations

1 Highsmith’s maternal great-grandfather, Gideon Coats. (SLA)

2 Minna Hartman, Highsmith’s grandmother, taken in 1885. (SLA)

3 Daniel and Willie Mae Coates, Highsmith’s maternal grandparents. (SLA)

4 Mary Coates, Highsmith’s mother. (SLA)

5 Jay B Plangman, Highsmith’s father. (SLA)

6 Mary with Patsy. (SLA)

7 Mary with Stanley Highsmith, whom she married in 1924. (SLA)

8 Patsy on the veranda of her grandmother’s house in Fort Worth. (SLA)

9 Pat while at Barnard College, New York. (SLA)

10 Highsmith, age twenty-one, just after leaving Barnard, photographed by Rolf Tietgens. (SLA)

11 Kate Kingsley Skattebol. (Courtesy of Kate Kingsley Skattebol)

12 Rolf Tietgens. (SLA)

13 One of the nude photographs of Pat taken by Rolf Tietgens in 1942. (Rolf Tietgens / SLA)

14 Virginia Kent Catherwood. (Temple University, Urban Archives, Philadelphia)

15 Novelist Marc Brandel, Highsmith’s fiancé. (Courtesy of Naomi Brandel)

16 Farley Granger as Guy and Robert Walker as Bruno in Hitchcock’s film of
Strangers on a Train
released in 1951. (Warner Bros, courtesy Kobal)

17 Highsmith sailed from New York to Europe in May 1949. (SLA)

18 Kathleen Senn, the ‘real-life Carol’. (Courtesy of Priscilla Kennedy)

19 Ellen Hill, with whom Highsmith had a torturous four-year relationship. (SLA)

20 Lynn Roth and Ann Clark. (Courtesy of Ann Clark)

21 Alain Delon in Clément’s 1959 film
Plein Soleil
. (Canal + and Jacques-Eric Strauss / BFI Stills, Posters and Designs)

22 Highsmith’s inscription in a copy of
Ripley Under Ground
. (The Charles Latimer Collection, University of British Columbia)

23 Dennis Hopper in Wim Wenders’ 1977 film
Der amerikanische Freund
(
The American Friend
). (# Road Movies Filmproduktion GmbH, 1977/ BFI Stills, Posters and Designs)

24 Matt Damon as Tom Ripley in Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film
The Talented Mr Ripley
. (# Miramax Films / BFI Stills, Posters and Designs)

25 Jonathan Kent and Highsmith in a 1982
South Bank Show
. (# LWT / BFI Stills, Posters and Designs)

26 The actress Tabea Blumenschein, whom Highsmith met in Berlin. (SLA)

27 Highsmith with Monique Buffet. (SLA)

28 Highsmith lived in France for thirteen years. (Bassouls/Sygma)

29 Highsmith in the summer of 1994. (Ingeborg Lüscher)

Acknowledgements

This book could not have been written without the help of Highsmith’s literary executor, Daniel Keel, president of Diogenes Verlag, Zurich, and his trusted editor, Anna von Planta. They gave me unrestricted access to Highsmith’s most personal of journals – her diaries – and permission to quote from both her unpublished and published works. I cannot thank them enough for this and for their continued support while researching and writing the book.

     The bulk of Highsmith’s papers – diaries, notebooks, letters, essays and sketches – are held at the Swiss Literary Archives (SLA), Berne, which gave me permission to publish material from their vast collection. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to all the staff at the SLA, but in particular Dr Thomas Feitknecht, Ulrich Weber, Stéphanie Cudré-Mauroux and Lucienne Schwery. In addition to their first-rate curatorial skills and utmost professionalism I would also like to thank them for their friendliness and hospitality. They made my frequent visits to the Swiss capital even more enjoyable.

     I also consulted archival material in a number of private collections. Thank you to Ronald Blythe, Edith Brandel, Peggy Lewis, Christa Maerker, Janice Robertson, and Francis Wyndham for making their correspondence available to me.

     Acknowledgement is also due to the following for the use and publication of other archival material: Barnard College, New York; Bloomsbury Publishing, London; Calmann-Lévy, Paris; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, (the Harper & Row archives); Edinburgh University Library (Koestler Archive); Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin, (which holds the Alfred A. Knopf, Harper, and William A. Bradley Literary Agency collections); the New York Public Library, (
The New Yorker
records); Temple University, Paley Library, Urban Archives, Philadelphia; Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin, for access to the Gore Vidal Collection (now held at Houghton Library, Harvard University); and Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York. In particular I would like to thank Donald Glassman, archivist at Barnard College; Elisabeth Laye at Calmann-Lévy; Jean Ashton at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York; Tara Wenger at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin; Wayne Furman, Office of Special Collections, the New York Public Library; Brenda Wright and Sarah Sherman, Temple University, Urban Archives; Benjamin Brewster, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin; and Lesley Leduc at Yaddo.

     Other curators, libraries and institutions which have provided invaluable help include: Douglas Anderson and Tammy Hiltz at the Ashtabula Reference Library, Ohio; Blaine County Court Records Library, Idaho; National Library, British Film Institute, London; Dr Christopher Fletcher, the British Library, London; British Library Newspaper Library; Fort Worth Public Library, Texas; Fort Worth Independent School District, Texas; Walt Reed at Illustration House, New York; Julia Richman High School, New York; New Hope Public Library, Pennsylvania; New York Historical Society; Birgitta H. Bond at the James Michener Arts Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania; PS 122 Queens, Astoria, New York; the Queens Borough Public Library, New York; Ridgewood Public Library, New Jersey; Tarrant County Records Library, Fort Worth, Texas.

     For permission to quote further copyright material, I would like to thank the following: Jean-Etienne Cohen-Séat, president of Calmann-Lévy; Richard Ovenden, Edinburgh University for the unpublished letters and diaries of Arthur and Cynthia Koestler; and Olivia Kahn, the sister of the late Joan Kahn.

     I must also acknowledge the help of Anna von Planta, Ulrich Weber and Lucienne Schwery, who rendered sections of Highsmith’s diaries written in idiosyncratic French, German, Spanish and Italian into clear, concise English.

     A large number of people agreed to talk to me about their memories of Patricia Highsmith and I would like to thank each of them for their time, honesty and insight. Every one of them made a special contribution to this book. Interviews have been conducted with the following: Marion Aboudaram, Tobias Ammann, Irma Andina, Larry Ashmead, Bettina Berch, Vivien De Bernardi, Ruth Bernhard, Ronald Blythe, Tabea Blumenschein, Jack Bond, Edith Brandel, Craig Brown, Susan Brynteson, Monique Buffet, Peter Burton, Mary Cable, Frederique Chambrelent, Heather Chasen, Ann Clark, Roger Clarke, Dan Coates, Don Coates, Betty Curry, David Diamond, Burt Diethelm, Julia Diethelm, Sarah Dunant, Joan Dupont, Maggie Eversol, Gary Fisketjon, Brian Glanville, Hester Green, Barbara Grier, Madeleine Harmsworth, Tanja Howarth, Anita Huber, Peter Huber, Richard Ingham, Buffie Johnson, Deborah Karp, H.R.F. Keating, Daniel Keel, Priscilla Kennedy, Jonathan Kent, Michael Kerr, Linda Ladurner, Carl Laszlo, Charles Latimer, Peggy Lewis, Bee Loggenberg, Patricia Losey, Ingeborg Lüscher, Christa Maerker, Muriel Mandelbaum, Anne Morneweg, Gudrun Mueller, Phyllis Nagy, Ulrike Ottinger, Otto Penzler, Phillip Powell, Tristram Powell, Donald S. Rice, Janice Robertson, Barbara Roett, Bruno Sager, Marilyn Scowden, Rita Semel, Kate Kingsley Skattebol, Roger Smith, Anne Elisabeth Suter, Alex Szogyi, Peter Thomson, William Trevor, David Williams and Francis Wyndham.

     I would also like to thank the following for their letters to me: Pamela Anderson, Larry Ashmead, Thomas Beckman, Vivien De Bernardi, Michel Block, Ann Clark, Philip Davis, Jennifer Dewey, Joan Dupont, Dorothy Edson, Maggie Eversol, Donald Glassman, Neil Gordon, Charles Latimer, Henry Lea, Sir Michael Levey, Marijane Meaker, Patricia Schartle Myrer, Janice Robertson, Kate Kingsley Skattebol, Winifer Skattebol, David Streiff, Gore Vidal, and Wim Wenders.

     Throughout the book I have quoted from a number of newspapers, magazines and critical journals. I would like thank the following writers: Naim Attallah, Hugo Barnacle, Helen Birch, the late Brigid Brophy, Craig Brown, Joan Juliet Buck, James Campbell, Susannah Clapp, Diana Cooper-Clark, Michael Dobbs, Joan Dupont, Geoffrey Elborn, Duncan Fallowell, Victoria Glendinning, Grey Gowrie, the late Ian Hamilton, Ena Kendall, William Leith, Craig Little, Blake Morrison, Gerald Peary, Margaret Pringle, Terrence Rafferty, Frank Rich, the late Lorna Sage, David Sexton, the late Barbara Skelton, Lucretia Stewart, the late Julian Symons, William Trevor, Sally Vincent, Janet Watts, Francis Wyndham. I would also like to thank Bettina Berch for her permission to quote at length from the transcript of her unpublished interview ‘A Talk With Patricia Highsmith’, 15 June 1984; Natasha De Bernardi for sending me ‘The Eye Reflecting the Whole’, her thesis on Highsmith; and Lucienne Schwery for ‘Der Nachlass Patricia Highsmith’.

     Acknowledgement is also due to a number of broadcast sources including the BBC Information and Archives; LWT; Sebastian Cody at Open Media, London; Donald L. Swaim’s interview for
Book Beat
(CBS Radio), Archives & Special Collections, Ohio University Libraries; and the National Sound Archive, London.

     For use of the photographs in the book I am grateful to the following: Associated Newspapers; Bantam Press; Naomi Brandel; the British Film Institute; Canal +; Ann Clark; Alberto Flammer; Priscilla Kennedy and her family; the Kobal collection; Bee Loggenberg; London Weekend Television; Ingeborg Lüscher; Miramax Films; Road Movies Filmproducktion GmbH; Kate Kingsley Skattebol; Jacques-Eric Strauss; Temple University, Urban Archives, Philadelphia; and, of course, the Swiss Literary Archives.