Patricia Highsmith - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography (Read)
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Patricia Highsmith - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography
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Patricia Highsmith - biography, date of birth, place of birth, filmography, clips, Writer.
January 19, 1921, Fort Worth, Texas, USA - February 4, 1995, Locarno, Ticino, Switzerland is an American writer who became famous for her psychological detectives with a touch of noir and a series of books about Tom Ripley.
Initially raised by her maternal grandmother and lived in New York (she later called this time "little hell"), and later by her mother Mary Coates (September 13, 1895 - March 12, 1991) and stepfather Stanley Highsmith (Mary married him in 1924), who were professional actors. Patricia's mother divorced Patricia's father - Jay Bernard Plangman (1889-1975) - 5 months before the birth of her daughter. Young Highsmith was in a rather strained relationship with her mother, often offended her stepfather, although later she often tried to win him over to her side in disputes with her mother. As Highsmith herself said, her mother admitted that she tried to terminate the pregnancy by drinking turpentine. Highsmith was never used to such a love-hate relationship that haunted her until the end of her life, and described by her in the story "Turtle" (about a boy, who stabbed his mother).
Grandmother taught Patricia to read in her early childhood. Highsmith studied the extensive library of her mother and stepfather. At the age of eight, Highsmith discovered Karl Menninger's "The Human Mind" and was delighted with examining patients with mental disabilities such as pyromania and schizophrenia.
According to her biographer Andrew Wilson in the book Beautiful Shadow, Highsmith's life was not easy: she was an alcoholic, and her romances lasted no more than a couple of years, and to contemporaries and acquaintances she generally seemed cruel to the point of misanthropy. She preferred the company of animals to people; she had cats and snails. The latter, according to Highsmith, inspired her with an amazing calm; Several hundred of these mollusks lived in the writer's garden, sometimes she even took some of them with her.
Patricia Highsmith was unmarried and had no children. Patricia herself defined herself as a lesbian.
Some of her contemporaries ascribe to her an affair with the American writer Maryjane Meeker.
