Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950's
Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950sbegins like a brainy, romantic novel complete with exotic settings, fast-paced dialogue, and a who’s who of the 1950s New York literati. All this should not be surprising given that Marijane Meaker’s tale of her two-year relationship with famed mystery novelist Patricia Highsmith comes from a pen that has crafted more than 40 works of fiction and non-fiction.Meaker’s touch is light and clear. She backlights her memoir with glimpses of the New York scene of the era: the Mafia-controlled lesbian bars, the rise of Fire Island, the rage for Freudian psychoanalysis. She doesn't attempt a detailed literary biography, nor is the book a complete psychological portrait of Highsmith. But Meaker, a self-proclaimed lover of pseudonymous disguises, does peer beneath Highsmith’s public mask to reveal her constant despair over a disapproving mother, her fascination/obsession with Germany, and her discomfort around intellectuals. This, and Meaker’s persistent jealousy and constant fear that her beloved Pat would leave her to write in Europe slowly edges the narrative into darker territory. Inevitably, the lovers part, as each author kills off the other, albeit in fictional form, with their first post-relationship murder mysteries.Meaker closes the book by describing her difficult 1992 reunion with Highsmith. Meaker depicts her ex-lover as a hard-drinking, grizzled, chain-smoking, bigoted woman recently returned from Europe and recovering from a bout with lung cancer. Far from the bright beginnings of young love in the 1950s, this segment provides a depth absent from the earlier, more novelistic chapters and provides a glimpse of what a further, more complete biography might have to offer.--Patrick O’Kelley