On Patricia Highsmith

Randa Jarrar explains her new obsession: Patricia Highsmith.

So, once or twice a year, I foster a mini-obsession with a female writer who is, usually, fabulous, talented, queerish, and dead (for those of you who would view this as sublimation or my way of feeling safe in a relationship, you’re geniuses! Call me).

Last winter, it was Anais Nin (following a brief but doomed affair with Gertrude Stein). Last Summer, Iris Murdoch. Before that, it was Mary McCarthy. I could go on and on.

This summer, it’s Patricia Highsmith. I am reading The Price of Salt, her “lesbians on the road/run” novel, and the controversial The Tremor of Forgery, which Graham Greene thought was her finest, and which is set in Tunisia.

Read the rest here.