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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'.

* [[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>