"I feel miserable when I can't write," said Patricia Highsmith of herself. She was not lacking in inspiration, she has ideas "as often as rats orgasms."
Rather, her problem was that she was writing psychological detective novels and short stories on an assembly line - and feeling miserable despite the success.
There was something dark in the nature of this great writer that could be attractive but also very hurtful.
Patricia Highsmith, born January 19, 1921 in Texas, felt abandoned as a child.
The parents divorced shortly before she was born;
All her life she suffered from a complicated relationship with her mother, from severe depression, ailments of all kinds and alcoholism.
If there was any great, unadulterated love for highsmith at all, it was probably for the slugs.
She found the first two as a young woman in New York, where she also attended zoology courses while studying literature, in a "bizarre hug" and was so fascinated that she took the lovers home with her.
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Author Highsmith (1948 in London): Master of the tension arc
Photo:
AP
Highsmith later kept several hundred of the animals, did not want to give them up and had to develop criminal energy in real life if necessary: France, where she lived from 1967 to 1981, banned imports, probably to protect the local gastronomy.
So, on several trips, the author smuggled a handful of snails - hidden under the bosom - across the border.
And tucked the little slugs with a head of lettuce in her giant handbag when she went to cocktail parties.
Friendly, happy, caring - Patricia Highsmith certainly wasn't all of that.
Highsmith was mostly ill-tempered with people around her.
As a rabid racist and anti-Semite, she barely left out a prejudice, also hated gays and even had women on the kieker, in any case exposed many female characters in her stories to contempt.
Killer with no morals or remorse
She even wanted to have her own inclination towards women treated away.
Affairs and mostly short relationships with many women and few men followed.
Preferably when it has broken other couples apart.
She incorporated her relationship with a married woman into “Salt and His Price” (filmed in 2015 with Cate Blanchett under the title “Carol”), but initially published the novel under a pseudonym.
As a lesbian author of literature about women with a happy ending or, well, a not entirely devastating ending, she didn't want to go down in history.
After all, her reputation was shaped by psychopaths like Tom Ripley.
She had her greatest successes with her extremely exciting, black-humored psychological works in Europe.
"The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1955) was her most popular character, later in four other novels.
This type of killer takes whatever he thinks is his or her without moral or remorse, be it someone else's life.
They are not classic crime stories in which a brave detective strives to expose the killer.
Highsmith masterfully leads us over a limit: Evil triumphs over good - and we also keep our fingers crossed for him.
Army with animal appetite
Highsmith signed some letters "aka Ripley".
In her works, however, she is more likely to be found completely unadulterated when it comes to snails.
She wrote her own fascination with animal sex on the body of two protagonists and pioneered the romance similar to her own story.
In the short story "Der Schneckenforscher" (The Snail Researcher), Peter Koppert saves two mating snails from the saucepan and keeps the little animals that reproduce happily.
When he learns that the sensuality of snails is unparalleled in the animal world, he is so spellbound that Ms. Koppert can no longer object to the hobby.
Perhaps her husband is one of the
American males
that Highsmith writes about elsewhere.
Maliciously translated as "American males", the author is convinced that these creatures have absolutely nothing to do with a
girl
.
Instead, they prefer to pursue their snail voyeurism in Highsmith's universe.
But there is a limit to watching: once left to its own devices, Koppert's snails swell into an army of immense appetite.
Like feelings that accumulate under a silent surface, this slimy wave has to break a path and sweep away the helpless hero.
Unemotional, indifferent, unstoppable: this is how a Highsmith's murder goes.
Between humor and horror
A marriage in »Still Waters Runs Deep« is even more shattered: Vic Van Allen apparently passively endures the humiliating parade of his wife Melinda's lovers.
To compensate, he can observe the only happy couple in the book, snails of course: "Edgar leaned down from a small stone to kiss Hortense on the mouth, and Hortense had stood on the end of her foot and swayed slightly under his caress, like a slow dancer enchanted by the music. "
How the two snails adore and fit together perfectly, this realization strikes Vic at an astonishing moment.
After all, the animals have just extended strange protrusions on their heads in order to ram lime needles into each other's bodies.
This is part of the mating ritual of some land snails, but it can cause deep wounds.
If that is the requirement for a happy marriage, Vic might still have a chance.
But what do the snails at Highsmith stand for?
Fiona Peters is a professor of crime literature at Bath Spa University in the UK and sees the animals in the tradition of classic horror literature because they cannot be clearly assigned.
Readers should vacillate between humor and horror, unsure whether to laugh, feel disgusted or fearful.
With their soft, malleable bodies, snails are also considered shapeshifters, so they fit perfectly into the repertoire.
Tom Ripley also slips into a new identity, while Vic Van Allen plays the murderer when a lover of Melinda dies.
In his social environment, as an offended husband, he is even forgiven for the suspected act of violence.
When he actually kills, however, there is no sign of mad jealousy.
Highsmith masterfully describes this murder as almost casual and playful.
Feelings?
Snails, it's your turn
On the other hand, when it comes to emotional outbursts and dramatic gestures, the snails have to deal with it.
In the short story "The Search for So-and-so Claveringi"
Highsmith uses the motif of the overly ambitious scientist, popular in horror and horror literature: the zoologist Avery Clavering recreates giant carnivorous snails on an otherwise uninhabited island so that they will henceforth bear his name.
He actually finds the animals, but kills the male.
Clavering gathers valuable knowledge.
But he can no longer convey it to the professional world: The animals actually eat meat - and they can be incredibly fast, especially angry females.
"A wonderfully macabre ending that turns people's tendency to eat snails upside down," writes crime professor Fiona Peters.
"The tables turn when Clavering runs into the sea and finally realizes his fate": He will drown and at the same time be grated to death by the fatherless baby snails.
That's only fair, after all, snails are first starved by humans, then boiled, chewed and swallowed.
Clavering's cruel death was perhaps Highsmith's warning to us to finally
stay
away
from the
escargots
.
Towards the end of her life, however, she had to give up her beloved snails herself.
Most recently she lived in seclusion in the Locarno district in the Swiss canton of Ticino and died of cancer on February 4, 1995 alone at the age of 74.
"Dying or being sick is no fun," a friend later said.
"But if you take it all into account, I would say that it was one of the less severe traumas of her life."
Icon: The mirror
