Homage to Patricia Highsmith (SPOILERS ALLOWED)

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Homage to Patricia Highsmith (SPOILERS ALLOWED)

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1Deleted
jan 4, 2015, 2:35 pm

Lots of buzz about The Price of Salt and other Highsmith novels over on the main thread, so am opening up a new one here.

I loved the novel for its style, for its passion, and for the way it looked at the complexities and realities of lesbian relationships in the 1950s without making those relationships seem sensational or kinky. (The really weird stuff she saved for Tom Ripley crime novels.)

It also did not end with the guilt-ridden suicide of either main character.

Here's an interesting piece about Highsmith by her longtime lover, Marijane Meaker, in the Guardian: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/donotmigrate/3596749/A-passion-that-turned-to...

More thoughts?

2lemontwist
jan 5, 2015, 5:01 am

I've heard (but not sure if it's true) that The Price of Salt was the first lesbian novel that didn't end in suicide / insanity / death / other horrific ending.

There's a really interesting memoir of Marijane Meaker & Patricia Highsmith in Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950's. I also tried to read The Talented Miss Highsmith but it just dragged on so much I couldn't get through it without skimming. There was a lot of fascinating stuff in there, but surrounded by too much trivia and gossip.

The woman lived a fascinating life. She was, incidentally, also incredibly attractive before years of drinking and smoking caught up with her.

3overlycriticalelisa
jan 5, 2015, 2:54 pm

i forget how the well of loneliness ended but suspect it wasn't happily since the rest of the book was such a downer. other than that...well, the price of salt certainly was one of the first if not the first to end on a theoretical high note.

i found most of the novel interesting in the characterization of carol, who was kind of cold and standoffish and unrelatable, i thought - i wondered if highsmith had trouble writing warm and loving characters because she was such a curmudgeon herself. but then at the end of the book (what i found so brilliant) all of that is called into question for me. i feel like we're given only this impression of carol, as seen through a very naive therese, who has kind of put carol on a pedestal and isn't really seeing her, so we're not really seeing carol either. and then, as therese is forced to "grow up" and mature, and when she knows herself and her wants a little better, she sees a softer, more human carol, so we do, too. making me wonder if the entire time carol was actually more likable and more real than we were given the opportunity to see...

i wanted to reread it right away to see if i'd think of carol differently the second time around, knowing this. (but didn't. too much else to get to!)

anyway, that was what i found so brilliant about it. the way she made me question the entire reading of the book in the last couple of pages. also the way she had therese figure herself out - that cocktail party and the interaction with the actress - what a brilliant and easy way to move therese from uncertainty to not just knowing and understanding her sexuality, but to push her back to carol. wrapped it all in a bow, but in a completely believable and well-written way. (and that scene also allowed for the perfectly awesome line: "Incredible. Can anyone still be only twenty-one?")

i'm already starting to question how i only gave this book 3.5 stars...

4Deleted
jan 5, 2015, 5:06 pm

One reason Carol is cold and standoffiish is because she knows she could lose her daughter. Another is the age and experience gap between Therese and herself. I thought she was very ... "chivalrous" is the word that comes to mind.

5overlycriticalelisa
jan 5, 2015, 6:20 pm

oh, totally. (and therese's whole "she chose her daughter over me" thing showed her ... lack of foresight.) but there were times when carol didn't speak when she could have, to soften some things; there was some potential weirdness in the pseudo-mothering carol does of therese (always putting her to bed); there was a hardness to carol that i didn't associate exclusively with rindy, but then i was being misled by therese.

i didn't dislike carol reading the book, but didn't like her a lot either, but from those last few pages and all the thinking i've been doing on it since, i like her a lot. so interesting (to me) how that can change so quickly...

6Deleted
jan 5, 2015, 10:30 pm

Do you think maybe Carol isn't sure whether to treat Therese like a daughter or a lover? There are a lot of ambiguous signals about what Carol wants from Therese.

7overlycriticalelisa
jan 6, 2015, 2:32 pm

i think the "ambiguous signals" were what i found off-putting about her because it never seemed to me that she was that "into" therese, but no, in the end i don't think that there was confusion for carol. yes, she called therese a "child" or maybe even it was "only a child" when therese first said she was 19, but i don't think she misplaced the mothering she couldn't do for rindy onto therese. maybe it shows her trying to stop herself from getting too attached to therese? or maybe it's how she does show she cares? or maybe it's not quite how it happened since it's therese's version of it...

8Deleted
jan 7, 2015, 3:12 pm

I don't mean that Carol wants to replace her daughter with Therese, only that she isn't sure, because of their age gap, whether she should be Therese's lover or mentor. It also strikes me that Carol is putting out feelers, offering intimacy, but in an ambiguous way to see if Therese is interested, has enough awareness of her own sexuality.

In other words, there's a dance. Carol is leading it, testing the boundaries of the intimacy that might or might not be reciprocated, and going very carefully because of Therese's age and custody of her daughter.

9overlycriticalelisa
jan 7, 2015, 8:26 pm

i think she knew she wanted her as a lover from the moment she realized that it was therese who sent the christmas note to her house. but she was cautious because of rindy and custody issues. i think it seemed ambiguous or cold because we only got a partial view of it.

we talked a lot in book club last night about how little conversation they really had, and how so much of the conversation was actually taking place in therese's head. i felt, reading it, that the conversations were all so choppy and disconnected, and in retrospect it almost seems like what was happening is that we heard part of the actual conversation that was actually happening, and more of therese's internal dialogue about the conversation as it was happening. so as she was thinking the conversation was continuing but we were missing it and only getting these thoughts of hers, and some of what was going on in front of her. and i feel like that's the entirety of how we see carol until the end.

(i'm not sure if i'm explaining this well...)

10overlycriticalelisa
Redigeret: jan 7, 2015, 8:41 pm

in case anyone was curious, in book club we also talked about:

- lots of people had real problems with carol - didn't like her or the way she treated therese
- some people felt the end wrapped up too quickly
- people had differing opinions about if therese knew she was a lesbian before carol, and what that then meant for her relationship with richard
- we talked a bit about abby, the cocktail party, the picture that used to hang in the (was it a convent or orphanage?) that was the push therese needed to "grow up"
- we talked about the great writing, but not everyone agreed it was good writing at all. some felt it was too choppy and if it had been written today wouldn't have been published (i could hardly disagree more) and others loved it
- oh, and one person grew up in that time period and said that she perfectly captured that era

11MsMaryAnn
feb 19, 2015, 5:11 pm

I recently added The Price of Salt to my wish list. Wanting to know more about Patricia Highsmith, I read her Wikipedia author page where she is not cast in the best light as far as her personal character goes. Now I am feeling rather conflicted about reading the book and wonder if it is possible to fully enjoy or appreciate her writing in light of reading about her personal life. Any thoughts?

12sturlington
feb 19, 2015, 6:20 pm

Ok, I haven't read this thread for fear of spoilers, but I bought The Price of Salt for the Kindle and will come back and read all the comments once I've read it.

13overlycriticalelisa
feb 19, 2015, 7:17 pm

>11 MsMaryAnn:

oh she sounded like a total curmudgeon, like gore vidal. i was actually wondering if she'd be able to write people well since she couldn't relate to them at all, but she can. she isn't a person i admire but i had no trouble knowing that, reading her book, and enjoying it. sometimes it's harder for me, but i guess i didn't really know too many details about her, just that she was kind of awful to be around.

sorry, i'm sure this doesn't help you...let us know if you feel like knowing about her does get in the way of your enjoyment of the book...

14Deleted
feb 19, 2015, 11:42 pm

>13 overlycriticalelisa: Gore Vidal, yes, good analogy, especially in his last difficult, alcoholic, fit-pitching years, "the Cedars Sinai Years" as he called them after his longtime companion had died.

Horrible people can make great art. Lookit Caravaggio!

15sturlington
nov 23, 2015, 11:12 am

An interesting article about The Price of Salt and the new movie based on it in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/30/forbidden-love

16Deleted
Redigeret: nov 24, 2015, 10:39 am

>16 nohrt4me2: Thanks for that link. Interesting!

Joan Schenkar (whose bio of Highsmith has received very mixed reviews) wrote in the NYT last week that a "heterosexualized" version of The Price of Salt was developed as a screenplay but never made: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/movies/solving-the-many-mysteries-of-what-beca...

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