When Patricia Highsmith published The Talented Mr. Ripley in 1955, she created a new kind of antihero: elegant, amoral, adaptable, and disturbingly successful. Tom Ripley not only survives but thrives, slipping into identities, murdering when necessary, and always convincing us — against our better judgment — to follow him. Over five novels (collectively known asContinue reading “Ripley Part II: The Many Lives of Tom Ripley: From Highsmith’s Novels to Screen Legends”
Tag Archives: Patricia Highsmith
Ripley Part I: The Two Talented Mr. Ripleys: Page, Screen, and the Art of Ambiguity
Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley is one of the most enduring crime novels of the twentieth century. Published in 1955, it introduced Tom Ripley, a young conman who insinuates himself into the lives of the wealthy and, through a combination of charm and violence, takes their place. The book was a revelation: not aContinue reading “Ripley Part I: The Two Talented Mr. Ripleys: Page, Screen, and the Art of Ambiguity”
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”
My World of Interiors 