609
8/18/53
It is curious that in the most interesting periods of one’s life, one never writes one’s diary. There are some things that even a writer cannot put down in words (at the time). He shrinks from putting them down. And what a loss! Like a lot of outrageous, apparently senseless losses in nature, due to an assumed superabundance in nature. Even experience is superabundant, but it is at times more difficult to ferret out—that is, in dull times—than in more dramatic times. But the value of diaries is their dramatic periods, when one has “perhaps” shrunk from setting down the weakness, the vagaries, the changes of mind, the cowardices, the shameful hatreds, the little lies carried out or not, which form one’s true character.
8/18/53
It is curious that in the most interesting periods of one’s life, one never writes one’s diary. There are some things that even a writer cannot put down in words (at the time). He shrinks from putting them down. And what a loss! Like a lot of outrageous, apparently senseless losses in nature, due to an assumed superabundance in nature. Even experience is superabundant, but it is at times more difficult to ferret out—that is, in dull times—than in more dramatic times. But the value of diaries is their dramatic periods, when one has “perhaps” shrunk from setting down the weakness, the vagaries, the changes of mind, the cowardices, the shameful hatreds, the little lies carried out or not, which form one’s true character.
611
9/3/53
An artist will always drink, even when he is happy (that is when he is working well and with a woman he loves) because he will always think of the woman he saw last week, or the woman who is a hundred or three thousand miles away, with whom he might have been happier, or just as happy. If he did not think of this, he would not be an artist, suffering with imagination.
9/3/53
An artist will always drink, even when he is happy (that is when he is working well and with a woman he loves) because he will always think of the woman he saw last week, or the woman who is a hundred or three thousand miles away, with whom he might have been happier, or just as happy. If he did not think of this, he would not be an artist, suffering with imagination.
613
9/28/53
[Allela] Cornell—Why does the artist commit suicide? Because he sees and longs for more intensely than other people what he cannot have—the happy home, the children, the piano, the sunlight on the lawn, the years of satisfying work ahead, each year like the other. The artist cannot make up his mind. The artist is half homosexual. The artist is torn between the partner who challenges and the partner who complies. I am thinking of Cornell, and the Grecian freshness of the world in her childhood, and the successive, warping, educational blights of her adolescence. She loved too much and loved too many, but above all she loved too much. She was wide open, and life, like a tangle of bayonets, guns at cross purposes, loves at cross purposes, hit her right in the heart. She became physically tired with the strain, to the point of delirium and insanity. She came to realize, at thirty, that to be able to paint a beautiful picture did not compensate for the husband or the lover and the children and the domestic, very ordinary peace that was not there. In a moment of exhaustion, when like a suffering Hindu she thought she glimpsed the truth, she drank the nitric acid. It is a beautiful story, really, the first three quarters. Even the last is beautiful in its psychological inevitability. It should be about 250 pages.
9/28/53
[Allela] Cornell—Why does the artist commit suicide? Because he sees and longs for more intensely than other people what he cannot have—the happy home, the children, the piano, the sunlight on the lawn, the years of satisfying work ahead, each year like the other. The artist cannot make up his mind. The artist is half homosexual. The artist is torn between the partner who challenges and the partner who complies. I am thinking of Cornell, and the Grecian freshness of the world in her childhood, and the successive, warping, educational blights of her adolescence. She loved too much and loved too many, but above all she loved too much. She was wide open, and life, like a tangle of bayonets, guns at cross purposes, loves at cross purposes, hit her right in the heart. She became physically tired with the strain, to the point of delirium and insanity. She came to realize, at thirty, that to be able to paint a beautiful picture did not compensate for the husband or the lover and the children and the domestic, very ordinary peace that was not there. In a moment of exhaustion, when like a suffering Hindu she thought she glimpsed the truth, she drank the nitric acid. It is a beautiful story, really, the first three quarters. Even the last is beautiful in its psychological inevitability. It should be about 250 pages.
626
5/26/54
Alcoholism for the writer: He carries around his wonderful gift. It is the only sure thing, and it is stronger than any bank. He can sit down any time, and with a modicum of peace of mind, write more beautifully than 999,999,999 people out of 1,000,000,000. So he drinks away the afternoons. The gift is there. It will not go. No, only something else will come: death.
5/26/54
Alcoholism for the writer: He carries around his wonderful gift. It is the only sure thing, and it is stronger than any bank. He can sit down any time, and with a modicum of peace of mind, write more beautifully than 999,999,999 people out of 1,000,000,000. So he drinks away the afternoons. The gift is there. It will not go. No, only something else will come: death.
632
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 that remains on earth, before they take off into pure space. Such people cannot live without being constantly in love. Requited or not doesn’t matter. It is a sine qua non of their creativity, their happiness of course, and their existence.
I lay with her looking at the stars. I am extremely conscious of the stars, the fact that the Great Dipper, perceived by the Chinese, is flying apart at a fantastic rate, and still, at the time of my death, will be seen to be no further scattered than it is today. Well, with her, it didn’t matter, I knew that she, and I, would be dead, or near it, in another thirty years or less. It didn’t matter, because I had discovered something with her that I had never known before. It was like a secret, a secret of living. It was peace. It was something at the core, beyond life and death, living and dying. It was something happy, because it was true and eternal, even more eternal than those stars. I hope I can be excused for saying more eternal, since we human beings cannot entirely understand the word eternal, anyway. With her, I was suffused with more beauty than I could discover on any trips to Greece or to the Louvre. With her, I knew more pleasure (which is happiness) than I should ever know with Plato, Sappho, Aristotle, or Alfred Whitehead. (Plato! All you say I should have. I had!) Her body between my hands! Her lips accessible turned to me. And that sadness waiting, Ovid, when we were done.
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 that remains on earth, before they take off into pure space. Such people cannot live without being constantly in love. Requited or not doesn’t matter. It is a sine qua non of their creativity, their happiness of course, and their existence.
I lay with her looking at the stars. I am extremely conscious of the stars, the fact that the Great Dipper, perceived by the Chinese, is flying apart at a fantastic rate, and still, at the time of my death, will be seen to be no further scattered than it is today. Well, with her, it didn’t matter, I knew that she, and I, would be dead, or near it, in another thirty years or less. It didn’t matter, because I had discovered something with her that I had never known before. It was like a secret, a secret of living. It was peace. It was something at the core, beyond life and death, living and dying. It was something happy, because it was true and eternal, even more eternal than those stars. I hope I can be excused for saying more eternal, since we human beings cannot entirely understand the word eternal, anyway. With her, I was suffused with more beauty than I could discover on any trips to Greece or to the Louvre. With her, I knew more pleasure (which is happiness) than I should ever know with Plato, Sappho, Aristotle, or Alfred Whitehead. (Plato! All you say I should have. I had!) Her body between my hands! Her lips accessible turned to me. And that sadness waiting, Ovid, when we were done.
638
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 year. At age thirty-five, she suddenly feels old, burned out, unmoored—with the only semblance of stability coming from self-discipline and work. The accolades pouring in from American literary critics for The Talented Mr. Ripley do little to bolster her self-esteem. Well into spring, Pat’s notebook entries revolve around ideas of impermanence, religion, and alcohol.
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 year. At age thirty-five, she suddenly feels old, burned out, unmoored—with the only semblance of stability coming from self-discipline and work. The accolades pouring in from American literary critics for The Talented Mr. Ripley do little to bolster her self-esteem. Well into spring, Pat’s notebook entries revolve around ideas of impermanence, religion, and alcohol.
641
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 Niagara Falls. Then in the other more relaxed and unaware hours of the day, one does advance. One steps off the precipice. A new stretch is gained. The plot advances. The characters solidify. And one can always depend upon it, the subconscious. The book will grow, as long as one concentrates those two or four hours, as long as one is, oneself, alive and living.
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 Niagara Falls. Then in the other more relaxed and unaware hours of the day, one does advance. One steps off the precipice. A new stretch is gained. The plot advances. The characters solidify. And one can always depend upon it, the subconscious. The book will grow, as long as one concentrates those two or four hours, as long as one is, oneself, alive and living.
643
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 live this!” What irks the honest man and the honest artist (a redundant term!) is that inevitably, if he is human and kind, the world—for him will be seen through the eyes of the person whom he does not entirely trust, and whose imperfections (nothing but dishonesties) he has already tried hundreds of times to correct and explain away, without success. To be bound to a warped and dishonest person, to be emotionally bound, is like being compelled to wear distorting glasses the rest of one’s life. An unbearable fate for an artist! The world is difficult enough to bring into perspective, even seen purely!
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 live this!” What irks the honest man and the honest artist (a redundant term!) is that inevitably, if he is human and kind, the world—for him will be seen through the eyes of the person whom he does not entirely trust, and whose imperfections (nothing but dishonesties) he has already tried hundreds of times to correct and explain away, without success. To be bound to a warped and dishonest person, to be emotionally bound, is like being compelled to wear distorting glasses the rest of one’s life. An unbearable fate for an artist! The world is difficult enough to bring into perspective, even seen purely!
647
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 you make allowances for everything, makes you forgive the wrong things (because other mature persons do), makes you much too sensible to attempt the difficult. Makes you stop trying practically everything, because you have had time to see something like it done better somewhere else. Worst of all, maturity destroys the self, and makes you like everybody else. Unless, of course, you have the wisdom to become an eccentric. Maturity on the other hand makes you see so many sides and reasons for everything (a form of truth, to be sure) that the direct response becomes impossible—even to things worth responding directly to.
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 you make allowances for everything, makes you forgive the wrong things (because other mature persons do), makes you much too sensible to attempt the difficult. Makes you stop trying practically everything, because you have had time to see something like it done better somewhere else. Worst of all, maturity destroys the self, and makes you like everybody else. Unless, of course, you have the wisdom to become an eccentric. Maturity on the other hand makes you see so many sides and reasons for everything (a form of truth, to be sure) that the direct response becomes impossible—even to things worth responding directly to.
653
11/15/55
N.W. [Natica Waterbury]. She will make some desperate marriage at 38, perhaps, which won’t last, but if it lasts two years may give her (or her age will) that poise and confidence in her own special personality, which she so badly needs. She is so far superior to most in an intellectual and idealistic sense. She thinks and questions, and most of us do not, most of us live nearer to the animal level. It is this inquiring and this doubt (with consequent indecision) which I most admire in her and which will always make me love her. It is the big sine qua non of civilization, of the emergence of the human race from the more bestial organisms on earth. She can never be ignoble, whatever happens to her, however the buffetings of life force her to behave. She has that which Shakespeare meant when he compared men to angels.
11/15/55
N.W. [Natica Waterbury]. She will make some desperate marriage at 38, perhaps, which won’t last, but if it lasts two years may give her (or her age will) that poise and confidence in her own special personality, which she so badly needs. She is so far superior to most in an intellectual and idealistic sense. She thinks and questions, and most of us do not, most of us live nearer to the animal level. It is this inquiring and this doubt (with consequent indecision) which I most admire in her and which will always make me love her. It is the big sine qua non of civilization, of the emergence of the human race from the more bestial organisms on earth. She can never be ignoble, whatever happens to her, however the buffetings of life force her to behave. She has that which Shakespeare meant when he compared men to angels.