Activity

7/3/55

Maturity descends like a slowly collapsing cake, enveloping the individual, pinning his arms, pinning his legs, making walking difficult. Maturity makes one look at a new landscape and say, “well, it’s not bad, it’s not good—but I wouldn’t know what changes to make in it.” Maturity makes …

4/30/55

The irking dissatisfaction of living with someone whom one is not thoroughly in love with, does not love thoroughly and unquestioningly. Ah, that nagging inner question, that defiant exclamation: “Surely I am not fated to live with her the rest of my life! I can’t believe I am fated to l…

3/30/55

The making of a book, from the germinating idea. You look ahead, two, four or five hours a day, and progress what seems like one inch on the plot. The brain refuses to advance into thin air, consciously, just as one would refuse consciously to walk off the edge of a precipice above Niaga…

In December 1955, The Talented Mr. Ripley is published by Coward-McCann. The book is well received and nominated the following year for an Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America. Despite being back on the road to success, Patricia Highsmith finds herself in a dark place in the new …

9/21/54

Oh, the imaginative, the too imaginative men, who are always in love, but never requited, only noticed, boasted, their flowers and dedications received! Like Beethoven, Gide perhaps, Goethe, all the impulsive ones, who instinctively want to hitch the tail of their rocket onto something t…