Square peg author, still in search of a fit

Graham Greene adored her work. Is Patricia Highsmith about to be appreciated for more than Ripley?

“I never think about my ‘place’ in literature, and perhaps I have none,” Highsmith once said. Her work, while respected, is usually relegated to a rung below those who wrote in roughly her sphere like James M. Cain (whom she admired, rightly, as “a kind of genius”) and Jim Thompson. Do the travails of both her life and career have anything to do with the fact that her sex life was condemned as a perversion and punishable as a crime in the country of her birth? Highsmith was not prone to self-pity or self-martyrdom, and it’s hard to imagine that she would say so. In any case, it’s a question that can never be definitively answered. The question that can be answered is what other writers and artists and cultural treasures might have fallen through the cracks in the pre-Stonewall era. Carol is certain to bring new readers to Highsmith, and once they dig in, they will be ravenous for more.