Posts Tagged ‘barnard’

Joan Schenkar’s The Talented Miss Highsmith reveals the fascinating complexities of fiction writer and tortured soul Patricia Highsmith. Author of the well-known The Talented Mr. Ripley, several Ripley sequels, The Price of Salt, and many other novels, Highsmith’s penchant for writing about murder, theft, and consistent betrayal stemmed from a life of perpetual misery and anger.

Born in Texas in 1921 but raised in Manhattan, Highsmith endured a tumultuous relationship with her overbearing mother, a relationship that Schenkar examines and reexamines thoroughly throughout the book, portraying it as codependent and toxic. Depicted as resentfully joined at the hip, mother and daughter constantly seek approval from one another while simultaneously rejecting one another. Highsmith’s mother greatly disapproved of her daughter’s homosexuality, a topic that drove the pair to write exceedingly disdainful letters to one another over the course of many years. Highsmith internalized her mother’s denigratory voice, which, according to Schenkar, led to a lifetime of alcoholism, destructive relationships, and general self-loathing. An outspoken anti-Semite and racist, Highsmith navigated New York City just out of Barnard College, writing for comic books, a job that she often felt ashamed to mention to others.

For much of her career, Highsmith was content to infuse her work with mere homosexual undertones, without explicitly depicting homosexual affairs. Then, in 1952, she wrote The Price of Salt, which directly addresses a romantic relationship between two female protagonists. Highsmith was greatly concerned that the publication of such a work would negatively impact her writing career, so she published it under a pseudonym, and even as late as 1990 she expressed regret for having gone forward with publication.

Schenkar’s writing, however, is not to be overpowered by her compelling subject; the biography maintains a perfect tension between Highsmith’s own captivating story and the author’s commanding narrative. Schenkar revisits the lesbian bar scene of 1940s New York, as present a character as Highsmith herself, where Highsmith’s contemporaries exchange hushed whispers about her most controversial work, The Price of Salt, over rum-and-cokes. Highsmith sustained unconventional attitudes towards romance, often introducing her many lovers to one another while simultaneously carrying on multiple affairs, a few with men. A frantic maker of lists, a smoker, a heavy drinker, and a long-suffering anorexic, Highsmith traveled Europe and Mexico before settling in Switzerland in the later part of her life.

To read more about Joan Schenkar, click here.

The Last of Her Kind, an incredibly rich and moving story by Sigrid Nunez, is narrated by Georgette George, a middle-class freshman at Barnard College in 1968. Her roommate, the privileged and Connecticut-born Dooley Ann Drayton, mourns not having been paired with a black roommate but befriends Georgette just the same. Out of bourgeois guilt, Dooley drops her first name and decides to go by Ann; her reputation as smart, socially aware, and unrelenting quickly begins to precede her, her pre-college accomplishments intimidating Georgette. The two girls smoke together between poetry classes and late at night, Ann complaining about the white entitlement of her parents and the snobbery of their class. Georgette struggles with being away from her family and feels very out of place at Barnard, particularly in her poetry workshop.

Beautifully paced, the novel floats many years into the future, after both girls have dropped out of Barnard and assumed different lives in New York City. Over the years, the two loose touch and Georgette begins working at a beauty and lifestyle magazine in the city. But when Ann is suddenly the subject of media attention and scrutiny for a violent crime, Georgette reflects again on her friendship with Ann and their first couple of years together at Barnard.

A reflective look at the youth of the 1970s and of turbulent, racially-charged times in America, The Last of Her Kind achieves so much with its introspective narrator, Georgette. Nunez offers a careful look into the complex friendship of Georgette and Ann, exploring strained moments in their Barnard dormitory with an artful balance. Georgette’s jealousy and envy are tempered with compassion as the two girls share a very unique and unconventional attachment.

Ann Drayton is a powerful character who speaks loudly from The Last of Her Kind with unshakable ideals. Uncompromising and quick-witted, Ann’s presence on the page is palpable and, at times, frightening. Perhaps inspired by Patricia Hearst, Ann functions not only as a finely constructed fictional character but as a study of a particular 1970s revolutionary girl of privilege, greatly affected by the current affairs of her era.

To read more about Sigrid Nunez, click here.