TT 532: Marijane Meaker’s memoir HIGHSMITH: A ROMANCE OF THE 1950's
Happy Pride
The news is not good. The Administration is shockingly reactionary and regressive. Today in New York City, the annual Pride March will be not just about gay rights but the larger issue of human decency.
Nobody writes smoother prose than Patricia Highsmith, and she was also a rare crime writer that invented new plots from a whole cloth. The most famous book is The Talented Mr. Ripley; a short story, “The Snail-Watcher,” is unforgettable.
How did Highsmith find those perfect words, over and over again, to fill those memorable and surprising pages? It turns out that she worked from first thing in the morning until about 4 PM. After finally getting up from her typewriter, she would make martinis for herself and her girlfriend. She then took another martini into her study, shut the door, and read the dictionary for an hour before returning to her partner for dinner.
This is just one of the many wonderful details in Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950’s by Marijane Meaker. Meaker is perhaps best remembered as Vin Packer: If you’ve ever thumbed through a rack of ‘50’s paperback novels, you’ve seen Packer’s name; Spring Fire for Gold Medal was the huge bestseller, although there were about twenty other Packers in that era as well.
It is uncommon for a memoir documenting a love affair with a famous author to be written by another experienced writer. Meaker’s tale of words and wounds is technical, detailed, and psychologically acute.
The subtitle “A Romance of the 1950s” alludes to how difficult it was to be gay in that era. “You could still be fired for being a homosexual, or lose your lease, your straight friends, your family—even in a big city like Manhattan, you were safer in the closet.”
The opening of the book boasts a perfect page.
