Tom/Pat.
Michael Dirda, This Woman Is Dangerous:
There was a time when readers were outraged that Highsmith never judges Tom, indeed quite likes him, even identifies with him as a fellow artist. (She occasionally signed letters or books "Tom/Pat.") Like Oscar Wilde, Highsmith insisted (in Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, 1966) that
art essentially has nothing to do with morality, convention or moralizing.... I find the public passion for justice quite boring and artificial, for neither life nor nature care if justice is ever done or not.
In this regard, Anthony Minghella's 1999 film of The Talented Mr. Ripley not only shows the young Tom as motivated largely by homosexual feelings (rather than envy and cupidity) but also further distorts the character by making sure he's punished and his spirit broken. This isn't the Tom of the novels, who never feels anguish or regret about anything. The best approach to life, Highsmith seems to say, is a kind of blithe nonchalance. Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first burden with guilt.
YES!!yesyesyesyes!
There was a time when readers were outraged that Highsmith never judges Tom, indeed quite likes him, even identifies with him as a fellow artist. (She occasionally signed letters or books "Tom/Pat.") Like Oscar Wilde, Highsmith insisted (in Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, 1966) that
art essentially has nothing to do with morality, convention or moralizing.... I find the public passion for justice quite boring and artificial, for neither life nor nature care if justice is ever done or not.
In this regard, Anthony Minghella's 1999 film of The Talented Mr. Ripley not only shows the young Tom as motivated largely by homosexual feelings (rather than envy and cupidity) but also further distorts the character by making sure he's punished and his spirit broken. This isn't the Tom of the novels, who never feels anguish or regret about anything. The best approach to life, Highsmith seems to say, is a kind of blithe nonchalance. Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first burden with guilt.
YES!!yesyesyesyes!