The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith [Hardcover]

Patricia Highsmith (Author), Graham Greene (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2001

In a Cruel Twist of irony, Texas-born Patricia Highsmith is only now, six years after her death, being recognized for her inestimable genius in her native land. With the savage humor of Evelyn Waugh and the macabre sensibility of Edgar Allan Poe, she brought a distinct twentieth-century acuity to her prolific body of noir fiction. Called "the poet of apprehension" by Graham Greene, Highsmith was unrivaled in capturing the ways in which our seemingly benign neighbors can become the psychopaths next door. Now, five of her classic short story collections are combined in a single volume, The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith, with a foreword by Graham Greene. With Selected Stories, W. W. Norton is proud to bring out the first in a series by Patricia Highsmith -- a master of suspense and an American literary icon.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Penzler Pick, September 2001: One of the truly brilliant short-story writers of the 20th century, Patricia Highsmith has at last received the acclaim she never had while alive.

The release of the excellent film The Talented Mr. Ripley appears to have brought Highsmith many readers who may have heard of her but had never read her books. In spite of the fame of Strangers on a Train, published when she was still in her 20s, Highsmith never enjoyed commercial success in the United States (though she was a huge bestseller in Germany and Austria).

Now, six years after her death at the age of 74, Norton is reissuing her novels and has compiled this giant collection of her short fiction, incorporating the complete text of five previously published collections. This volume also includes an introduction by Graham Greene, somewhat truncated from its original (and uncredited) publication in The Snail-Watcher and Other Stories (1970). It is abbreviated because, oddly, none of the stories from that excellent collection are included in the present omnibus, and Greene makes reference to what is perhaps Highsmith's most famous story, "The Snail- Watcher."

Even lacking this masterpiece and the equally unsettling "The Terrapin," there are many distinguished tales of horror and, as Greene accurately defines them, apprehension.

In "The Hand," the first story in the collection originally published as Little Tales of Misogyny, a young man asks the father of his beloved for her hand and is given it--in a box. Equally unappealing events befall the women (and, indeed, the men) skewered in the other stories in this aptly titled volume, most of which are so short that they are mere vignettes, each startling in the terse clarity of the prose and the matter-of-factness of the fates meted out to the protagonists.

"The Dancer" is strangled in quiet rage by her partner, who walks away from her lifeless body as an audience cheers the performance. "The Coquette" is murdered by the two lovers she had set against each other, and they are let off by a judge who had also been tortured by her coquetry. He forgave their infatuation with her, "a state that inspired his pity, since he had become sixty years old," as Highsmith cruelly explains.

"The Black House," the title story of another collection, introduces a pleasant, happy, and charming young man who is, of course, doomed. He tests his courage by entering a dark house, reputedly haunted and the scene of young lovers' trysts as well as the vicious murder of a boy, and finds it empty and unthreatening. When he describes his adventure to his friends at the local pub, he is killed for a transgression that remains unknown to him.

This important book may not be for everyone, but if you don't mind a sense of unrelenting doom and are willing to risk nightmares of dread, you will find the prose dazzling and the fiction memorable. --Otto Penzler

From Publishers Weekly

In his foreword to this big posthumous collection, the late Graham Greene deemed the inimitable crime novelist Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley; Strangers on a Train) "the poet of apprehension." Although the short story doesn't allow Texas-born expatriate Highsmith to take menace to the creepy heights achieved in her novels, this volume shows the range and depth of her misanthropy. Divided into sections that sort the cruelty of humans into different guises, the stories range from the abuse and neglect of innocent animals and children (Highsmith demonstrates a tenderness toward innocents that balances and highlights her dark world view) to the stupidity or deadly self-indulgence of different characters including a man who spends his entire life writing novels in his head. The evil that Highsmith probes can be subtle. In "The Network," for example, a middle-aged woman in Manhattan serves as the den mother of city dwellers cleaving together out of a common fear of the dangers of New York. The woman is shown busily spinning a web of fear and bad feeling under the guise of doing good. Other stories are at the opposite end of the subtlety scale. In "Slowly, Slowly in the Wind," a hotheaded tycoon marches inexorably toward a crime laid out in the first pages with the beautiful precision of a place setting by Martha Stewart. As with the productions of that gifted hostess, the thrill here is in the unexpected flourishes. In every story, Highsmith demonstrates her brilliant and inimitable talent for making even the coldest characters galvanizing. Entertaining enough for the beach, this collection should be compulsory for students of the psychological thriller. (Aug.)Forecast: Hefty enough to daunt casual film-influenced readers, this collection will thrill hardcore fans, and should backlist well.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 724 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (August 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393020312
• ISBN-13: 978-0393020311
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,183,270 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was the author of more than twenty novels, including Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt and The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as numerous short stories.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Talented Patricia Highsmith, August 25, 2002

By 

Charles S. Houser (Binghamton, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith (Hardcover)

My interest in Patricia Highsmith was sparked by the two movies based on her novel "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (the Matt Damon picture and "Purple Noon" in which Alain Delon plays Tom Ripley). I have read a couple of the other Ripley novels, but continue to prefer the first one over any of the sequels. In researching Highsmith on the Internet, I saw a collection of stories called "Little Tales of Misogyny" listed in her bibliography. Needless to say, the title intrigued me. Though many of the stories in "The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith" have been continuously in print, I have been unable to find a copy the Misogyny Tales.

The Misogyny Tales take up about 60 pages of this 724-page collection, each tale being only 3 to 5 pages long. It's hard to know what to make of them. Each story features a female character who embodies a specific aspect of the feminine personality; Highsmith allows this quality to unravel to the fullest extent possible, always to the detriment of those who live with or near the protagonists. The titles of the indivdual stories will give you an idea of the range of topics covered: "The Invalid, or, the Bedridden," "The Middle-Class Housewife," "The Breeder," "The Perfect Little Lady," "The Prude," "The Victim," etc. As damning as these stories are of their protagonists, in most cases the reader is likely to be somewhat in awe of the misguided heroines (as we are of the amoral Tom Ripley). Highsmith draws these characters with quick bold strokes using indelible ink. The reader is not given time to warm up to any of the characters and in the end they function more as archetypes than as full-blown fictional characters. Does Highsmith have nothing but contempt for her own sex? Possibly (think of Marge Sherwood in "The Talented Mr. Ripley"). Does she resist feminist rhetoric and politcal correctness? Certainly (you need only read "The Victim" to be convinced of this). Can she write in an honest and thought-provoking way? Absolutely! In some ways her attacks on middle-class convention and mores remind me of the stories of H.H. Munro (Saki) and Shirley Jackson--ironic and hard-hitting at the same time. Even when being her most brutal, she leaves room for pathos.

According to the dust jacket, Highsmith turned to writing short stories later in her life (beginning in the 70s). "Little Tales of Misogyny," interestingly, was first published in German (1975) before being published in English (1977). My only wish is that with a book of this nature (one spanning the author's entire career) that the date of authorship was given for each story. (It helps to know, for instance, that "Little Tales of Misogyny" was written during the height of the 70s feminist movement.)

The book, by the way, is very handsomely typeset and bound, worthy of an author whose recognition and esteem seems to be growing since her death in 1995. Graham Greene's Preface is brief but insightful.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a weird and wonderful collection, October 18, 2001

By 

David M. Scott "David Meerman Scott" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith (Hardcover)

Highsmith's catalog, laden with unpredictability, tension, apprehension, strangeness and irrational viewpoints are classics ripe for a celebrated re-emergence

Norton has accepted the challenge with an announced 15-book initiative that should eventually bring nearly all of her work back into print. The initial release includes as the cornerstone a weighty volume of over 60 short stories written throughout her career, now collected together for the first time: The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith. Also re-released in trade paperback are novels Strangers on the Train and A Suspension of Mercy.

Norton's flap copy glows, "Compelling, twisted and fiercely intelligent, The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith is a landmark collection, showcasing her mastery of the short story form." What a weird and wonderful collection this is. The comprehensive volume brings together stories from Highsmith's five previously published collections: The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder; Little Tales of Misogyny; Slowly, Slowly in the Wind; The Black House; and Mermaids on the Golf Course. Much has been made of Highsmith's personal life, including her sexuality, expatriate lifestyle in Europe, and the misunderstanding and ignorance of her fellow Americans. Was she compelled to live in Europe because her works are too twisted for her countrymen? Or maybe they were ahead of their time?

In the Animal stories, beasts and bugs are plotting and intelligent creatures who coldly calculate (in the first person no less) the exploitation or destruction of the neighboring humans. You've got to love being inside a caged elephant's head as she sucks up a huge trunk of water and sprays the people staring at her or a cockroach's mind as he explains the merits of the crumbs on the various floors of the hotel he lives in. In a way, Highsmith relates to animals more warmly than she does people. The collection also includes a series of very short stories, vignettes actually, written in the third person and detailing the women of a suburbia that Highsmith obviously deplored. In stories such as The Perfectionist or The Perfect Little Lady, Highsmith paints a landscape that's a nice and neat on the surface but full of wickedness and murder underneath.

True mystery takes the reader into an unpredictable, twisted and scary world. Highsmith writes true mystery. This is most certainly NOT the formula PI novel with a simpleton murder and nice and neat search for the culprit. Highsmith doesn't rely on simple cat and mouse tension. Instead, she's a master of an unpredictable world, a cold and dark place where even you, the reader, are capable of murder. These are not feel-good works. The good guy usually loses, (that is if you can find a good guy). But the reader wins big because the work is so utterly interesting. Highsmith can rightly be called a master. She disturbs you. And she does it in a totally entertaining way.

David Meerman Scott
Author of Eyeball Wars: a novel of dot-com intrigue

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant, wide-ranging, if uneven talent., March 3, 2002

By 

Miles D. Moore (Alexandria, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith (Hardcover)

Patricia Highsmith came late to short fiction after decades of novel-writing, and Joyce Carol Oates opined in the New York Review of Books that Highsmith had little talent for the form. The stories here certainly are uneven. Stories such as "Blow It" and "Something the Cat Dragged In" seem too formulaic; "Old Folks at Home" starts from an unbelievable premise and curdles quickly from its mean-spiritedness; "Please Don't Shoot the Trees" is warmed-over Ray Bradbury; most of the "Little Tales of Misogyny" are total throwaways. Highsmith's best stories, however, are breathtaking, and put the lie to Oates' blanket condemnation. My favorite stories in this collection are "Not in This Life, Maybe the Next," "The Cruelest Month" and "The Romantic," all touching and perceptive portrayals of women who have lived too much in their imaginations. "The Pond" and "The Kite" are brilliant and moving fantasies of bereavement; "Chorus Girl's Absolutely Final Performance," about the mistreatment of a zoo elephant and her final vengeance, would make stones weep. And that isn't even counting the tales of horror and suspense that were Highsmith's specialty. There are wonderful, Shirley Jacksonish tales of communities turning on their own ("Not One of Us," "The Black House"), Hitchcockian tales of murder ("Slowly, Slowly in the Wind," "A Curious Suicide," "The Button"), tales of conspiracies gone awry ("When in Rome," "Under a Dark Angel's Eye"). Highsmith's meticulous plots, wide knowledge of the world and bracingly acid view of life ensure that there are many more gems than duds in this book.