Patricia Highsmith: Style, Menace, and the Art of Disquiet

Patricia Highsmith’s novels unfold like slow exhalations. They do not shout; they insinuate. A cigarette burns down, a train car hums, a glass of Campari is poured at a café in Naples. Beneath these ordinary gestures lurks unease, a sense that the veneer of civility is about to crack. For Highsmith, menace was not somethingContinue reading “Patricia Highsmith: Style, Menace, and the Art of Disquiet”

Italy in Highsmith’s Footsteps: A Ripleyesque Guide to La Dolce Vita

Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s novel, remains one of cinema’s most intoxicating portraits of Italy. Shot against the dazzling backdrops of Ischia, Procida, and the Amalfi Coast, the film is as much about setting as it is about identity — a world of sunlit villas, languid piazzas, and aContinue reading “Italy in Highsmith’s Footsteps: A Ripleyesque Guide to La Dolce Vita”