Margaret Talbot on Patricia Highsmith
The latest New Yorker has a terrific article on the late mystery writer Patricia Highsmith. Pat, a closet lesbian, used her gender preference in just one of her 20-odd books, The Price of Salt, published under a pseudonym in 1952. It's now a movie, called Carol, starring Rooney Mara (as the young Patricia) and Cate Blanchett (as Carol, her married lover).
The writer of the New Yorker piece, Margaret Talbot, intrigued me, so I checked her out (see my preceding post). As it turns out, Margaret is no spring chicken -- nor am I -- but she is enthusiastic about sexy hyper-contemporary gender themes. (Hey, Google her: you'll see.)
Here, Margaret writes deliciously about Pat, starting with her ironic title (Forbidden Love*). As a young Barnard graduate, according to Margaret's research, Pat found herself ambivalent about marrying her male suitor. A psychotherapist "suggested that she join a therapy group of 'married women who are latent homosexuals,' Highsmith wrote in her diary, 'Perhaps I shall amuse myself by seducing a couple of them.'"
If nothing else, the group evidently cured her of any desire to pursue a straight lifestyle -- Pat forgot about the suitor and soon allowed herself to be seduced by a wealthy married woman, Kathleen Senn (who, unbeknownst to Pat, soon killed herself).
Just as she began that intense affair, though, she sat down and calculatingly wrote an outline for a book (which sounds uncannily like a Barnard girl I used to date).
Before completing Price of Salt, she had moved on to another married lover, Virginia Catherwood -- "a sexual outlaw with a Main Line pedigree" -- and Pat used her to flesh out the Carol character, now played by Cate.
(Part 2, Margaret/Patricia coming up!)
_____________________
*http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/30/forbidden-love
.
The writer of the New Yorker piece, Margaret Talbot, intrigued me, so I checked her out (see my preceding post). As it turns out, Margaret is no spring chicken -- nor am I -- but she is enthusiastic about sexy hyper-contemporary gender themes. (Hey, Google her: you'll see.)
Here, Margaret writes deliciously about Pat, starting with her ironic title (Forbidden Love*). As a young Barnard graduate, according to Margaret's research, Pat found herself ambivalent about marrying her male suitor. A psychotherapist "suggested that she join a therapy group of 'married women who are latent homosexuals,' Highsmith wrote in her diary, 'Perhaps I shall amuse myself by seducing a couple of them.'"
If nothing else, the group evidently cured her of any desire to pursue a straight lifestyle -- Pat forgot about the suitor and soon allowed herself to be seduced by a wealthy married woman, Kathleen Senn (who, unbeknownst to Pat, soon killed herself).
Just as she began that intense affair, though, she sat down and calculatingly wrote an outline for a book (which sounds uncannily like a Barnard girl I used to date).
Before completing Price of Salt, she had moved on to another married lover, Virginia Catherwood -- "a sexual outlaw with a Main Line pedigree" -- and Pat used her to flesh out the Carol character, now played by Cate.
(Part 2, Margaret/Patricia coming up!)
_____________________
*http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/30/forbidden-love
.