The talented Miss Highsmith : the secret life and serious art of Patricia Highsmith / Joan Schenkar

Includes bibliographical references (p. [657]-660).

A Note on Biography--How to Begin--A Simple Act of Forgery--La Mamma--Greek Games--Alter Ego--Social Studies--Les Girls--The Real Romance of Objects--The Cake That Was Shaped Like a Coffin--Acknowledgments--Appendix 1 Just the Facts--Appendix 2 Patricia Highsmith's New York--Appendix 3 Charts, Maps, Diagrams, and Plans--Notes and Sources--Selected Bibliography Index

Patricia Highsmith, one of the great writers of 20th Century American fiction, had a life as darkly compelling as that of her favorite "hero-criminal," talented Tom Ripley. In this revolution ary biography, Joan Schenkar paints a riveting portrait-- from Highsmith's birth in Texas to Hitchcock's filming of her first novel, Strangers On a Train, to her long, strange, self-exile in Europe. We see her as a secret writer for the comics, a brilliant creator of disturbing fictions, and erotic predator with dozens of women (and a few good men) on her love list. The Talented Miss Highsmith is the first literary biography with access to Highsmith's whole story: her closest friends, her oeuvre, her archives. It's a compulsive page-turner unlike any other, a book worthy of Highsmith herself.