Difference between revisions of "Not a Desire to Have Him, But to Be Like Him"
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− | + | ''Beautiful Shadow: A [[Life]] of [[Patricia Highsmith]] by Andrew Wilson · Bloomsbury, 534 pp, £25.00'' | |
+ | For me, the [[name]] 'Patricia Highsmith' designates a sacred territory: she is the One whose [[place]] among writers is that which [[Spinoza]] held for Gilles [[Deleuze]] (a '[[Christ]] among [[philosophers]]'). I learned a lot [[about]] her from Andrew Wilson's biography, a book which strikes the [[right]] [[balance]] between [[empathy]] and critical distance. Wilson's [[interpretations]] of her [[work]], however, are often vapid. Can one really take seriously remarks such as: 'Highsmith's [[fiction]], like [[Bacon]]'s painting, allows us to glimpse the dark, terrible forces that shape our lives, while at the same [[time]] documenting the banality of [[evil]]'? Much more pertinent are the observations he [[quotes]], such as Duncan Fallowell's perspicuous characterisation of Highsmith as 'a combination of painful vulnerability and iron will'. Or the anecdotes that illustrate her [[complete]] [[lack]] of tact, her [[openness]] about her [[fantasies]] and prejudices (although a [[leftist]], she preferred Margaret Thatcher to the usual [[feminist]] bunch). Or the ethico-[[political]] grounds - already, in 1954, she was describing the US as a 'second Roman [[Empire]]' - on which she based her decision to make her home in 'old [[Europe]]'. As Frank Rich put it, she 'made a life's work of her ostracisation from the American mainstream and her own subsequent [[self]]-reinvention'. | ||
==Source== | ==Source== | ||
− | * [[Not a Desire to Have Him, But to Be Like Him]]. ''London Review of Books''. Volume 25. Number 16. August 21, 2003. <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n16/zize01_.html> | + | * [[Not a Desire to Have Him, But to Be Like Him]]. ''[[London]] Review of Books''. Volume 25. [[Number]] 16. August 21, 2003. <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n16/zize01_.html> |
Latest revision as of 10:20, 1 June 2019
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