In the linen closet, the dirtiest rags. Although successive revisions and their inclusion in the list of unpublished texts to be published posthumously –after, yes, doubts about the pertinence of throwing them into the flames or not– eliminates the possibility that the eighteen diaries and thirty-eight notebooks of Patricia Highsmith ( Fort Woth, 1921-Locarno, 1995) – classic of suspense literature profusely adapted to the cinema, known above all for Strangers on a train and the pentalogy dedicated to the character of Tom Ripley, epitome of the remorseless criminal, but also author of novels of homosexual themes such as Carol or Small g: a summer idyll, all of them published in Spain by Anagrama– are considered a “find”.
However, the fact that they appeared at the bottom of the aforementioned closet –and to make matters worse in her last home, designed by herself as a mixture of a fortress and a cave in which little light and fewer visitors entered– allows us to speak of an event of extraordinary power. symbolic, as if the unconscious, to which he always gave a crucial role in his work, was profusely overflowing.
The reclusive writer, guardian of her privacy, accused of being misogynistic and misanthropic, surly in her dealings, bone for any interviewer, an enigma that invited monstrification (to see her as a morbid and immoral person, more attached to cats and snails than his peers), he left eight thousand pages for posterity –reduced in this edition to a thousand– in which he meticulously recorded his biographical steps, cursed his character, psychoanalyzed his obsessions, exorcised his demons, evaluated his trade and work, ranted against many and, above all, he desperately sought a way to reconcile creation with life and to resolve the constant tension between freedom and dependence on others.
Diaries and notebooks 1941-1995 –the first, repositories of the emotional and visceral; the second, more attentive to intellectual and technical reflection, although the borders are frequently diluted–, represent a self-portrait with a hopeless tone, fierce and unforgiving in his gaze at the world and his fellow man.
Through this turbulent ocean of confessions, vents, thoughts and literary theory, bloody early traumas appear – a castrating mother who does not hesitate to confess that she wanted an abortion, along with the vetoed same-sex attraction, which would explain her sullen ways and her precocious interest in matters such as transgression and guilt –; a youth marked by professional ambition, success at first chance and sexual voracity.
Highsmith came to elaborate tables where he classified and compared his lovers; a middle age defined by unhappy sentimental relationships –metonymic entry of 6/23/1969: “Looking back (…) the moral is ‘follow Any notion of an intimate relationship should be imaginary”–, the pulse between the distractions social and constant travel, on the one hand, and calm and concentration, on the other – entry of March 3, 1952: “These days are disconcerting, because I am not used to living without more.
You pull me out of solitude and I no longer have ideas”–, rage over unsold stories and novels or low rights, and alcoholism (entry of 19/III/1960: “And then liquor appeared in my life, when I was twenty years old (…) I think that without liquor I would have married a boring chump, Roger, and would lead what is called a normal life”, and an old age withered by growing disenchantment and isolation, drowned in reproaches and weighed down for the impossibility of finding consolation in professional success and friendships (although it must be said that at the age of fifty he already made clear the low opinion that his peers deserved of him, as this entry proves: “A reason to admire the car: it sweeps away more people than wars” (19/III/1971).
Although they appear in drops, the references to the reasons for Highsmith’s attraction to crime and suspense –“the morbid, the cruel, the anomalous fascinate me”, we read in an entry from 1942–, and his way of understanding the treatment to give them on paper, they will fill the lovers of their psychological thrillers with joy.
At the age of 21, it could be said that she presciently captures her most outstanding literary trait when, regarding her inclinations, she points out in two entries that “I am not interested in people, in knowing them. But I am most interested in a woman in a dark doorway on Eleventh Street, struggling to read the name plates by the light of a match. (…) I don’t care about humanity in individuals. I don’t care how their breath smells.”
Y: “I would be very happy if I could take the story of two perfectly normal newlyweds, brimming with good health and sexual energy, and make a good story out of it.” She never could because learning to “live with a painful and murderous hatred from very early on (I/12/1970)” led her to create Tom Ripley, through whom she wanted to “demonstrate the unequivocal triumph of evil over good” ( 10/1/1954). Highsmith forced himself to remind himself of the meaninglessness of life. We don’t know if she rests in peace or if the afterlife will seem like a prison “like life in France”, but her voice continues to rip from beyond the grave.
