Terrifying Miscellany About Patricia Highsmith

At the end of her life Highsmith carried a ton of snails around in her purse with her everywhere she went. There were over 300 in her house. 🐌🏚

Highsmith thought The Price of Salt (i.e. the one King Princess wrote a whole song about and Carol is based on) was corny AF. When she was old, well into her all snail all the time lifestyle, she was shocked that of all of her stories, the Price of Salt was one she received the most fan mail for. 💀

Rebecca Makkai was like, One time I had a horrible Traumatic Event happen to me at a residency, but the desk they gave me Patricia Highsmith sat at and I was like well I better finish this book before I deal with this, because I’m NOT gonna get haunted by Patricia Highsmith👻👻

Patricia Highsmith is one of those people you’re like yeah, she’s definitely a ghost. You know what I mean? Some people are like that. 

“.... Patricia Highsmith, of course, was herself a character out of a Patricia Highsmith novel.” — from a 2015 review of Little Tales of Misogyny

The woman Highsmith had an affair with that Carol is loosely based on “killed herself by drinking nitric acid in her garage years before Highsmith died”.

Her PUBLISHER! AFTER SHE DIED!: "a mean, cruel, hard, unlovable, unloving human being ... I could never penetrate how any human being could be that relentlessly ugly. ...But her books? Brilliant.”

“According to Highsmith, her mother once told her that she had tried to abort her by drinking turpentine... Highsmith never resolved this love–hate relationship, which reportedly haunted her for the rest of her life... Highsmith's mother predeceased her by only four years, dying at the age of 95.” 

When she died she left behind 8000 pages of journal entries.

“I like most men better than I like women, but not in bed... where it’s like steel wool in the face…If these words are unpleasant to read, I can assure you it is a little more unpleasant in bed.”

“In the late 1980s, after 27 years of separation, Highsmith began corresponding with (her ex) Meaker again. One day she showed up on Meaker's doorstep, slightly drunk and ranting bitterly. Meaker later said she was horrified at how Highsmith's personality had changed.”

“Highsmith was an active supporter of Palestinian rights, a stance which, according to the Carol screenwriter “often teetered into outright antisemitism."

When I’ve creeped myself out too much by thinking about terrifying things about Patricia Highsmith, I like to think about her and her weird old snail filled house in Switzerland. Getting letters from people like “this saved me” about The Price of Salt . Probably laughing, mocking them. But also maybe, deep down, secretly pleased.😱 👻 🐌 👻 🐌 😱