Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires

‘My New Year’s Eve Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle — may they never give me peace’ PATRICIA HIGHSMITH (New Year’s Eve, 1947)Made famous by the great success of her psychological thrillers, The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train, Patricia Highsmith is lauded as one of the most influential and celebrated modern writers. However, there has never been a clear picture of the woman behind the books.The relationship between Highsmith’s lesbianism, her fraught personality – by parts self-destructive and malicious – and her fiction, has been largely avoided by biographers. She was openly homosexual and wrote the seminal lesbian love story, Carol. In modern times, she would be venerated as a radical exponent of the LGBT community. However, her status as an LGBT icon is undermined by the fact that she was excessively cruel and exploitative of her friends and lovers.In this new biography, Richard Bradford brings his sharp, incisive style to one of the great and most controversial writers of the twentieth century. He considers Highsmith’s bestsellers in the context of her troubled personal life; her alcoholism, licentious sex life, racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and abundant self-loathing.

This book is as snappy as an alligator … those who wish to see Patricia Highsmith devoured will no doubt applaud it., What makes the present biography poignant, is that there’s no redemption for a life of restlessness, despair, and torturous, doomed affairs., Serial biographer Richard Bradford has written a captivating biography that carves out its own space... Bradford entertainingly deduces aspects of her literary characters from Highsmith’s own experiences… His lucidity is evident, his research thorough and his writing always immensely readable. Anyone interested in Highsmith would enjoy this book..., Bradford’s comprehensive investigations into the devils, lusts and strange desires in the works and life of Patricia Highsmith inspire further reading of her masterpieces., Bradford writes in this engrossing biography, “an incomparable individual,” for she was—among other things—an alcoholic and an equal-opportunity hater (…) he gives careful attention to her individual books, praising some, criticizing others (“ponderous and fatiguing”). Though it breaks little new ground, the book is a happy mixture of biography and criticism. Near its end, Bradford, in judgment, refers to Highsmith's "execrable true self.” Readers will find it hard to disagree.

Richard Bradford is Research Professor at Ulster University and Founder and Director of the Ulster Literary Biography Research Centre. He taught at St Edmund Hall after completing his doctorate at Oxford and has since then held posts in the University of Wales and Trinity College, Dublin. Currently he is Visiting Professor at the University of Avignon. He has published more than thirty books, including eight well-reviewed trade biographies of writers. His recent life of Hemingway and biography of Orwell are published by Bloomsbury.