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Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: The New York Years, 1941–1950
Relegated during her lifetime to the pulpy genre of mystery, Patricia Highsmith has emerged since her death in 1995 as one of “our greatest modernist writers” (Gore Vidal). Presented for the first time, this one-volume assemblage of her diaries and notebooks—posthumously discovered behind Highsmith’s linens and culled from more than 8,000 pages by her devoted editor, Anna von Planta—traces the mesmerizing double-life of an artist who “[worked] like mad to be something.”
Beginning in 1941 during her junior year at Barnard, the diaries exhibit the intoxicating “atmosphere of nameless dread” (Boston Globe) that permeates classics such as Strangers on a Train and the Ripley series. In her skewering of McCarthy-era America, her prickly disparagement of contemporary art, her fixation on love and writing, and ever-percolating prejudices, the famously secretive Highsmith reveals the roots of her psychological angst and acuity. In one of the most compulsively readable literary diaries to publish in generations, at last we see how Patricia Highsmith became Patricia Highsmith.
Beginning in 1941 during her junior year at Barnard, the diaries exhibit the intoxicating “atmosphere of nameless dread” (Boston Globe) that permeates classics such as Strangers on a Train and the Ripley series. In her skewering of McCarthy-era America, her prickly disparagement of contemporary art, her fixation on love and writing, and ever-percolating prejudices, the famously secretive Highsmith reveals the roots of her psychological angst and acuity. In one of the most compulsively readable literary diaries to publish in generations, at last we see how Patricia Highsmith became Patricia Highsmith.
643 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2021
61 people are currently reading
2597 people want to read
About the author
Patricia Highsmith
477 books5,121 followersPatricia Highsmith was an American novelist who is known mainly for her psychological crime thrillers which have led to more than two dozen film adaptations over the years.
She lived with her grandmother, mother and later step-father (her mother divorced her natural father six months before 'Patsy' was born and married Stanley Highsmith) in Fort Worth before moving with her parents to New York in 1927 but returned to live with her grandmother for a year in 1933. Returning to her parents in New York, she attended public schools in New York City and later graduated from Barnard College in 1942.
Shortly after graduation her short story 'The Heroine' was published in the Harper's Bazaar magazine and it was selected as one of the 22 best stories that appeared in American magazines in 1945 and it won the O Henry award for short stories in 1946. She continued to write short stories, many of them comic book stories, and regularly earned herself a weekly $55 pay-check. During this period of her life she lived variously in New York and Mexico.
Her first suspense novel 'Strangers on a Train' published in 1950 was an immediate success with public and critics alike. The novel has been adapted for the screen three times, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951.
In 1955 her anti-hero Tom Ripley appeared in the splendid 'The Talented Mr Ripley', a book that was awarded the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere as the best foreign mystery novel translated into French in 1957. This book, too, has been the subject of a number of film versions. Ripley appeared again in 'Ripley Under Ground' in 1970, in 'Ripley's Game' in 1974, 'The boy who Followed Ripley' in 1980 and in 'Ripley Under Water' in 1991.
Along with her acclaimed series about Ripley, she wrote 22 novels and eight short story collections plus many other short stories, often macabre, satirical or tinged with black humour. She also wrote one novel, non-mystery, under the name Claire Morgan , plus a work of non-fiction 'Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction' and a co-written book of children's verse, 'Miranda the Panda Is on the Veranda'.
She latterly lived in England and France and was more popular in England than in her native United States. Her novel 'Deep Water', 1957, was called by the Sunday Times one of the "most brilliant analyses of psychosis in America" and Julian Symons once wrote of her "Miss Highsmith is the writer who fuses character and plot most successfully ... the most important crime novelist at present in practice." In addition, Michael Dirda observed "Europeans honoured her as a psychological novelist, part of an existentialist tradition represented by her own favorite writers, in particular Dostoevsky, Conrad, Kafka, Gide, and Camus."
She died of leukemia in Locarno, Switzerland on 4 February 1995 and her last novel, 'Small g: a Summer Idyll', was published posthumously a month later.
Gerry Wolstenholme
July 2010
She lived with her grandmother, mother and later step-father (her mother divorced her natural father six months before 'Patsy' was born and married Stanley Highsmith) in Fort Worth before moving with her parents to New York in 1927 but returned to live with her grandmother for a year in 1933. Returning to her parents in New York, she attended public schools in New York City and later graduated from Barnard College in 1942.
Shortly after graduation her short story 'The Heroine' was published in the Harper's Bazaar magazine and it was selected as one of the 22 best stories that appeared in American magazines in 1945 and it won the O Henry award for short stories in 1946. She continued to write short stories, many of them comic book stories, and regularly earned herself a weekly $55 pay-check. During this period of her life she lived variously in New York and Mexico.
Her first suspense novel 'Strangers on a Train' published in 1950 was an immediate success with public and critics alike. The novel has been adapted for the screen three times, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951.
In 1955 her anti-hero Tom Ripley appeared in the splendid 'The Talented Mr Ripley', a book that was awarded the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere as the best foreign mystery novel translated into French in 1957. This book, too, has been the subject of a number of film versions. Ripley appeared again in 'Ripley Under Ground' in 1970, in 'Ripley's Game' in 1974, 'The boy who Followed Ripley' in 1980 and in 'Ripley Under Water' in 1991.
Along with her acclaimed series about Ripley, she wrote 22 novels and eight short story collections plus many other short stories, often macabre, satirical or tinged with black humour. She also wrote one novel, non-mystery, under the name Claire Morgan , plus a work of non-fiction 'Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction' and a co-written book of children's verse, 'Miranda the Panda Is on the Veranda'.
She latterly lived in England and France and was more popular in England than in her native United States. Her novel 'Deep Water', 1957, was called by the Sunday Times one of the "most brilliant analyses of psychosis in America" and Julian Symons once wrote of her "Miss Highsmith is the writer who fuses character and plot most successfully ... the most important crime novelist at present in practice." In addition, Michael Dirda observed "Europeans honoured her as a psychological novelist, part of an existentialist tradition represented by her own favorite writers, in particular Dostoevsky, Conrad, Kafka, Gide, and Camus."
She died of leukemia in Locarno, Switzerland on 4 February 1995 and her last novel, 'Small g: a Summer Idyll', was published posthumously a month later.
Gerry Wolstenholme
July 2010
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January 22, 2026A magnificent literary feat as well as a striking historical document.
I’ve been reading Highsmith’s diaries on and off since last May. The nature of reading someone else’s diary is that it naturally ebbs and flows; flashes of brilliance and deep feeling are mixed in with accounts of the everyday that, yes, can sometimes get a bit boring. But I didn’t mind pacing myself through this one, because Pat’s voice lived in my brain for months as I read other books and watched other movies. She was a fascinating, complicated person.
A few things to highlight here. First off, we lie in our diaries all the time. I know this, as someone who’s kept one for a decade. Still, even I’ve never backdated entries—which we know Highsmith does at various points. She’s an unreliable narrator, to say the least, but a diary entry also cannot help but be honest. It captures exactly what you want to immortalize in a given moment—even if you wake up the next day and wish you’d never felt that way, wish you’d never written it. Highsmith’s diaries are meticulously crafted (as she always intended for them to be read), but they’re also heartbreakingly vulnerable.
Another thing about diaries: they are inherently selfish. The early years of Highsmith’s diaries can be startlingly uncomfortable to read, knowing the period of history she’s living through and seeing how little she thinks of it. Offhand mentions of WWII punctuate a text that is otherwise about her writerly ambitions, strained relationship with her parents, and passionate love affairs. When she makes reference to her historical context, it’s jarring. She does not seem overly concerned with the suffering of others, but this is, perhaps, a limitation of the medium. I was constantly reminding myself that, per my first point, reading someone’s diary isn’t the same thing as reading their soul, even if it can feel that way. (I should add that Highsmith was very antisemitic and racist—something that is captured in her diaries. It was challenging and complicated to read the innermost thoughts of someone who was, at times, extremely wise and insightful, and was, at times, extremely bigoted.)
Then there’s the whole “great woman” thing, which—per my review of The Slicks—I’ve been pondering lately. I was so struck by Highsmith’s orientation towards life in her early twenties: passionate, hedonistic, ambitious, convinced of her inevitable fame and fortune. Watching her carve out a path for herself—young and uncertain, yet not uncertain at all—is, put simply, very cool. She does achieve everything she wants to, of course, and it doesn’t really make her happy in the end. Of course. Reading this, I realized that I want a loosely-inspired Patricia Highsmith biopic very badly, à la The Social Network. An “it’s lonely at the top” American Dream story, but about a woman.
The last thing I want to touch on (although I truly could keep going) is her relationship with her sexuality. In the early years, she seems beautifully at ease with herself, engaging in affairs with a number of other women—many of whom are also artists. But, by the mid to late 1940s, she’s trying psychoanalysis to “cure” her sexuality, and she’s debating marriage with a man. In a footnote, the editor highlights that this is likely a result of Pat getting older and feeling the expectations of others more acutely, but also a result of the postwar culture shifting to something more conservative, traditional, binary. In any case, it was really sad to read. I am glad that she lived almost to the end of the 20th century and saw many of the gains of the gay liberation movement. I am sorry they didn’t come soon enough for her to live the life that she wanted to: at one point, she writes wistfully about having a house and a family with a woman, something that never comes to pass for her.
I could say more about all of this, but I’ll end it here, and I will recommend this to anyone interested in Patricia Highsmith, diaries, or (as I am) both.
I’ve been reading Highsmith’s diaries on and off since last May. The nature of reading someone else’s diary is that it naturally ebbs and flows; flashes of brilliance and deep feeling are mixed in with accounts of the everyday that, yes, can sometimes get a bit boring. But I didn’t mind pacing myself through this one, because Pat’s voice lived in my brain for months as I read other books and watched other movies. She was a fascinating, complicated person.
A few things to highlight here. First off, we lie in our diaries all the time. I know this, as someone who’s kept one for a decade. Still, even I’ve never backdated entries—which we know Highsmith does at various points. She’s an unreliable narrator, to say the least, but a diary entry also cannot help but be honest. It captures exactly what you want to immortalize in a given moment—even if you wake up the next day and wish you’d never felt that way, wish you’d never written it. Highsmith’s diaries are meticulously crafted (as she always intended for them to be read), but they’re also heartbreakingly vulnerable.
Another thing about diaries: they are inherently selfish. The early years of Highsmith’s diaries can be startlingly uncomfortable to read, knowing the period of history she’s living through and seeing how little she thinks of it. Offhand mentions of WWII punctuate a text that is otherwise about her writerly ambitions, strained relationship with her parents, and passionate love affairs. When she makes reference to her historical context, it’s jarring. She does not seem overly concerned with the suffering of others, but this is, perhaps, a limitation of the medium. I was constantly reminding myself that, per my first point, reading someone’s diary isn’t the same thing as reading their soul, even if it can feel that way. (I should add that Highsmith was very antisemitic and racist—something that is captured in her diaries. It was challenging and complicated to read the innermost thoughts of someone who was, at times, extremely wise and insightful, and was, at times, extremely bigoted.)
Then there’s the whole “great woman” thing, which—per my review of The Slicks—I’ve been pondering lately. I was so struck by Highsmith’s orientation towards life in her early twenties: passionate, hedonistic, ambitious, convinced of her inevitable fame and fortune. Watching her carve out a path for herself—young and uncertain, yet not uncertain at all—is, put simply, very cool. She does achieve everything she wants to, of course, and it doesn’t really make her happy in the end. Of course. Reading this, I realized that I want a loosely-inspired Patricia Highsmith biopic very badly, à la The Social Network. An “it’s lonely at the top” American Dream story, but about a woman.
The last thing I want to touch on (although I truly could keep going) is her relationship with her sexuality. In the early years, she seems beautifully at ease with herself, engaging in affairs with a number of other women—many of whom are also artists. But, by the mid to late 1940s, she’s trying psychoanalysis to “cure” her sexuality, and she’s debating marriage with a man. In a footnote, the editor highlights that this is likely a result of Pat getting older and feeling the expectations of others more acutely, but also a result of the postwar culture shifting to something more conservative, traditional, binary. In any case, it was really sad to read. I am glad that she lived almost to the end of the 20th century and saw many of the gains of the gay liberation movement. I am sorry they didn’t come soon enough for her to live the life that she wanted to: at one point, she writes wistfully about having a house and a family with a woman, something that never comes to pass for her.
I could say more about all of this, but I’ll end it here, and I will recommend this to anyone interested in Patricia Highsmith, diaries, or (as I am) both.
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November 13, 2022“We must think of ourselves as a fertile land on which to draw. And if we do not, we grow rotten, like an unmilked cow. And if we leave something unexploited it dies within us wasted. But to tax one’s powers always at their maximum potentiality—this is the only way to live at all, in the proper sense of the word.”
“We should listen to our own counsel. All we can depend on—all the wonder and value and beauty and love and faith and genius—pleasure and sorrow, hope, passion, understanding—all these are within us, in our own hearts, and minds. And nowhere else.”
“It’s important to keep the serious side underlying all our course of life: but it is equally important to temper this with the lighter side. Without it we have sterility and a lack of imagination and progress. On the other hand, completely serious people are so ludicrous that I wonder is not this attitude, in the last analysis, the lightest side. And accordingly, the lightest-minded people—who have a good fundamental intelligence—are the most serious, philosophic and thoughtful. It takes observation and judgment and independence to laugh at things which should be laughed at. However, I shall always keep the heavier side in the more influential position, because basically that is how I am.”
“Just now the world of experience seems more attractive than the world of books I have just stepped out of. I have not closed the door. I have merely left one room and gone into another. I have found a new confidence in myself. I have become a person at last.”
“Often I look at the books in the library and think about my freshman days—how I wanted to read each book over those four years. I’ll do it. And I know that, as soon as I have time, ideas and their realization will fall like rain. With regularity, one produces something. I shouldn’t be afraid”
“He’s so wonderfully thoughtful—he makes me feel quite sluggish and careless intellectually. Because his thinking is so rich. It is the most amusing task in the world—the unraveling of an idea—or the pursuit of an answer. He is what I demand most—an inspiration: because my whole preferences in people are based upon—subconsciously and consciously—a furtherance of my terrific ambitions.”
“Passed my first suicide moment this evening. It comes when one stands confronted with work, empty sheets of paper all about, and inside one’s head, shame and confusion, inside a maelstrom that will not subside, fragments that will not hang together. Showing essentially how trite and universal and eternal is every great human emotion. This was a great human emotion. When I wonder now that I have passed it, if I shall ever commit suicide, the question is, shall I ever fail myself and others in an equally important crisis in my life? Life is a matter of self-denial at the right moments. Looking ahead won’t do. We can make out a too rosy future. Successful living is self-denial without asking why.”
“One’s most stubborn addictions, one’s deepest loves, such as smoking, drinking, writing—are first unpleasant, almost unnatural things to do. Proving the death instinct at least “present” in the man on the streets, in the ecstatic results of smoking & drinking; proving the arts are born of strangeness, fascination, pain & slow acquaintanceship. Like writing, like painting, like composing music. Still, now, when the writer says, I hate to write, it is the physical effort of the brain which prompts this. He might hate drinking water when he does not want it, but he will for his health, and the inevitable condition of the body prompts it.”
"the safe space and encouragement to grow into the person she longs to be"
“The painfullest feeling is that of your own feebleness; ever as the English Milton says, to be weak is the true misery. And yet of your strength there is and can be no clear feeling, save by what you have prospered in, by what you have done. Between vague wavering capability and indubitable performance, what a difference!”
“Days without any creative work are lost days. An artist, a real artist, would work”
“Insufficient reading. I must change my habits or remain a dolt as to world literature”
“Mad people are the only active people. They have built the world. Mad people, constructive geniuses, should have only enough normal intelligence to enable them to escape the forces that would normalize them.”
“I have poked so many books into me that I am like an over-stoked oven without a match.”
“I may starve, but I will not work for another man and burn out the oil of my days. ”
“I’m constantly sad and hopeless: I think about my life and work, and the thought occurs that I will never accomplish anything. There’s no remedy. There are no miracles—neither in my head, nor from the mouth of God.”
“For future reference: In case of doldrums of mind or body or both, sterility, depression, inertia, frustration, or the overwhelming sense of time passing and time past, read true detective stories, take suburban train rides, stand a while in Grand Central—do anything that may give a sweeping view of individuals’ lives, the ceaseless activity, the daedal ramifications, the incredible knots of circumstance, the twists and turns in all their lives, which no writer is gifted enough to conceive, sitting in the closeness of his quiet room.”
“The actual time spent in creative work each day need be only very little. The important thing is that all the rest of the day contribute to this strenuous time.
”
“Put all your fears into words, paint pictures of your enemies, prose poems of all apprehensions, doubts, hatreds, uneasinesses, to defeat them and stand upon them.”
“8/30/47
There is a way.”
“We should listen to our own counsel. All we can depend on—all the wonder and value and beauty and love and faith and genius—pleasure and sorrow, hope, passion, understanding—all these are within us, in our own hearts, and minds. And nowhere else.”
“It’s important to keep the serious side underlying all our course of life: but it is equally important to temper this with the lighter side. Without it we have sterility and a lack of imagination and progress. On the other hand, completely serious people are so ludicrous that I wonder is not this attitude, in the last analysis, the lightest side. And accordingly, the lightest-minded people—who have a good fundamental intelligence—are the most serious, philosophic and thoughtful. It takes observation and judgment and independence to laugh at things which should be laughed at. However, I shall always keep the heavier side in the more influential position, because basically that is how I am.”
“Just now the world of experience seems more attractive than the world of books I have just stepped out of. I have not closed the door. I have merely left one room and gone into another. I have found a new confidence in myself. I have become a person at last.”
“Often I look at the books in the library and think about my freshman days—how I wanted to read each book over those four years. I’ll do it. And I know that, as soon as I have time, ideas and their realization will fall like rain. With regularity, one produces something. I shouldn’t be afraid”
“He’s so wonderfully thoughtful—he makes me feel quite sluggish and careless intellectually. Because his thinking is so rich. It is the most amusing task in the world—the unraveling of an idea—or the pursuit of an answer. He is what I demand most—an inspiration: because my whole preferences in people are based upon—subconsciously and consciously—a furtherance of my terrific ambitions.”
“Passed my first suicide moment this evening. It comes when one stands confronted with work, empty sheets of paper all about, and inside one’s head, shame and confusion, inside a maelstrom that will not subside, fragments that will not hang together. Showing essentially how trite and universal and eternal is every great human emotion. This was a great human emotion. When I wonder now that I have passed it, if I shall ever commit suicide, the question is, shall I ever fail myself and others in an equally important crisis in my life? Life is a matter of self-denial at the right moments. Looking ahead won’t do. We can make out a too rosy future. Successful living is self-denial without asking why.”
“One’s most stubborn addictions, one’s deepest loves, such as smoking, drinking, writing—are first unpleasant, almost unnatural things to do. Proving the death instinct at least “present” in the man on the streets, in the ecstatic results of smoking & drinking; proving the arts are born of strangeness, fascination, pain & slow acquaintanceship. Like writing, like painting, like composing music. Still, now, when the writer says, I hate to write, it is the physical effort of the brain which prompts this. He might hate drinking water when he does not want it, but he will for his health, and the inevitable condition of the body prompts it.”
"the safe space and encouragement to grow into the person she longs to be"
“The painfullest feeling is that of your own feebleness; ever as the English Milton says, to be weak is the true misery. And yet of your strength there is and can be no clear feeling, save by what you have prospered in, by what you have done. Between vague wavering capability and indubitable performance, what a difference!”
“Days without any creative work are lost days. An artist, a real artist, would work”
“Insufficient reading. I must change my habits or remain a dolt as to world literature”
“Mad people are the only active people. They have built the world. Mad people, constructive geniuses, should have only enough normal intelligence to enable them to escape the forces that would normalize them.”
“I have poked so many books into me that I am like an over-stoked oven without a match.”
“I may starve, but I will not work for another man and burn out the oil of my days. ”
“I’m constantly sad and hopeless: I think about my life and work, and the thought occurs that I will never accomplish anything. There’s no remedy. There are no miracles—neither in my head, nor from the mouth of God.”
“For future reference: In case of doldrums of mind or body or both, sterility, depression, inertia, frustration, or the overwhelming sense of time passing and time past, read true detective stories, take suburban train rides, stand a while in Grand Central—do anything that may give a sweeping view of individuals’ lives, the ceaseless activity, the daedal ramifications, the incredible knots of circumstance, the twists and turns in all their lives, which no writer is gifted enough to conceive, sitting in the closeness of his quiet room.”
“The actual time spent in creative work each day need be only very little. The important thing is that all the rest of the day contribute to this strenuous time.
”
“Put all your fears into words, paint pictures of your enemies, prose poems of all apprehensions, doubts, hatreds, uneasinesses, to defeat them and stand upon them.”
“8/30/47
There is a way.”
July 1, 2023
I'm not sure it's possible to have more fun than 20 year old Patricia Highsmith as a senior at Barnard. That being said, she manages to achieve most of her goals by age 30, and, over the years becomes more successful and more depressed. It's a wild ride, and her candor, as well as her work ethic, is astonishing. (this review is for her entire diaries that go to 1995)
January 2, 2026
Highsmith has always appeared to me to be a fascinating character, the successful author of many rather dark psychological novels. This collection of contemporaneous diary and notebook entries (the former very personal, the latter rather more writerly) cover the 1940s, Highsmith's 20s, and while it was not quite what I expected, it was nonetheless enthralling. She is brutally honest about everybody, including herself, and lays out an altogether fascinating picture of life in 1940s New York (for the most part): a succession of late night partying, drinking, and many lovers (each one the love of her life initially, by declaration, only to become irksome when won over, and inevitably left behind as Highsmith moves faithlessly on, in quick time). Amazingly, there is little mention of WWII in the first half, save for an occasional aside ("Hitler dead", that type of thing), exemplifying her total absorption and belief in herself. In between all that, and her lengthy diaries and notebooks, and her day job, Highsmith is writing, and by the end of the decade has her first successful novel published. In truth, this collection would not have suffered if the editors had gone with only the diary entries: the notebook entries often do little more than disturb the fast-paced Highsmith life flow.
November 21, 2025
-thoroughly enjoyed
-so interesting to see her ideas shift and form as she ages
-so interesting to see her ideas shift and form as she ages
August 15, 2023
Made me really, really wish I was there. And what a booze hound! And talk about promiscuous! Wonderful!
July 27, 2025
This is a formidable piece of work and I have nothing but admiration for the editors. The late novelist Patricia Highsmith was a formidable diarist and note-taker. This bulging paperback publishes a fraction -- I think the editors estimated 10% of her output - 0f her multi-lingual diaries, as well as her notebooks with snippets of prose or story ideas that later bore more famous fruit. Over the book, Highsmith went from an 18-year-old card-carrying Communist to a 30-year old bitter anti-Semite, too insecure and distracted to enjoy the first years of her big-time status.
This is not to be read straight through. Highsmith discusses just about everybody she meets and takes to bed, and there's an awful lot of each. Even with the prodigious footnotes it can be a challenge to keep track of who's who. Highsmith accumulates multiple lovers, female and male, and while she doesn't include explicit details of her assignations (at least in this edited volume), there's an unflattering look at Marc Brandel's proclivities. Highsmith also expresses both gender dysphoria and an attempt to psychoanalyze herself straight. Meanwhile, the ideas for what became "Strangers on a Train" and "The Price of Salt" germinate through the later years, and it's nifty to watch her process -- Guy Haines in the former began life as a weaker character named Tucker, and the latter was not always intended to have a happy ending. The Wikipedia page for "Strangers" says that Highsmith was upset to be lowballed by an incognito Alfred Hitchcock for the movie rights, but the journals appear to disprove that.
The danger of reading anyone's diaries, no matter how carefully curated and edited, is to get lost in a blizzard of extraneous detail, to be put off by the writer's rapid emotional swings (Highsmith's opinion of her writing changes diametrically from day to day), and to be horrified by their personal views (Highsmith defend sher anti-Semitism by noting that some of her best friends are Jewish). This is best read sparingly, dipped into and out of. Still, all the defunct NYC eateries and shops are both amazing and bittersweet to read about, and one really does want to time-travel back to the 1940s and experience this lost New York City world which helped transform the Texan into a literary icon.
This is not to be read straight through. Highsmith discusses just about everybody she meets and takes to bed, and there's an awful lot of each. Even with the prodigious footnotes it can be a challenge to keep track of who's who. Highsmith accumulates multiple lovers, female and male, and while she doesn't include explicit details of her assignations (at least in this edited volume), there's an unflattering look at Marc Brandel's proclivities. Highsmith also expresses both gender dysphoria and an attempt to psychoanalyze herself straight. Meanwhile, the ideas for what became "Strangers on a Train" and "The Price of Salt" germinate through the later years, and it's nifty to watch her process -- Guy Haines in the former began life as a weaker character named Tucker, and the latter was not always intended to have a happy ending. The Wikipedia page for "Strangers" says that Highsmith was upset to be lowballed by an incognito Alfred Hitchcock for the movie rights, but the journals appear to disprove that.
The danger of reading anyone's diaries, no matter how carefully curated and edited, is to get lost in a blizzard of extraneous detail, to be put off by the writer's rapid emotional swings (Highsmith's opinion of her writing changes diametrically from day to day), and to be horrified by their personal views (Highsmith defend sher anti-Semitism by noting that some of her best friends are Jewish). This is best read sparingly, dipped into and out of. Still, all the defunct NYC eateries and shops are both amazing and bittersweet to read about, and one really does want to time-travel back to the 1940s and experience this lost New York City world which helped transform the Texan into a literary icon.
June 5, 2023
I really appreciate Liveright publishing and goodreads for the advance copy of Patricia Highsmith's diaries. I think I was expecting more of her thoughts on life so I was kind of disappointed in the book. I guess I will look for a bio of her next. I also wanted to wait on the review until I had read some of her other books. I read "The Price of Salt" before reviewing and will say that I did enjoy her writing but not really a fan of the subject matter. After reading the Diaries and Notebooks I only can think that she was a very flighty person in her relationships. It seemed to me that the only thing she thought of all the time was who her next relationship would be with, not to say that anything is wrong with that but I guess I had the mindset that she would talk about more in her diaries than her sex life. I think the editing and little more that I learned about her in the beginning of each chapter was much better for me to read and would like to read a bio of her in the near future. Very interesting read on the insight of a very gifted author!
July 10, 2024
Such an interesting life, but the diaries got a little monotonous. I guess your issues are your issues. It took me 3 tries to finish the thing, but I'm glad I stuck with it. As a Texas native, it was a weird sensation to realize she was in and out of Fort Worth for most of her life even after moving abroad.
March 17, 2025
I finished the Normal Gossip book recently and this feels like a fitting companion piece? This book tracks Patricia Highsmith’s lesbian affairs and efforts towards success in writing from college to her second novel. Patricia is erratic, self-sabotaging, and lovable. The drama! The juiciness! I loved it. A certified honker.
June 27, 2023
I really wanted to like this book and did for a few pages. But it quickly becomes boring with the day to day journal entries. I couldn't finish it.
April 7, 2024
Yeah I understand why she had so many admirers she’s a pretty cool gal…I feel like I grew up with her in reading these entries
May 3, 2025
I must admit I couldn't finish this book. I just couldn't appreciate this biography in diary style. I couldn't relate to anything and quit almost halfway into it
December 27, 2023
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I've been a huge fan of Highsmith's fiction for years. I am a writer myself and when I am writing I can't read fiction - I can't put other's made up characters and worlds into my head when it is full of MY made up characters and worlds. So, I tend to read only non-fiction and memoirs when I am actively writing my scripts or novels. And I love reading about other writer's lives and struggles and advice on writing, etc. This collection of her diaries/notebooks was fascinating - she certainly had a hard life - being born in Texas in the 1920's and early on realizing she was gay made for a suppressed, tortured life - always fighting who she was, society and religion covering her with shame and guilt but like many great artists - she used this pain and hurly-burly and put it all into her work. The hidden rage deep inside Tom Ripley and Bruno from Strangers On A Train certainly work because Highsmith knew what she was writing about. I loved how much valuable advice her diaries and notebooks had about writing and creativity - and yet there were endless pages (like anyone's diaries) that were filled with rather frivolous entries. I thought I knew a lot about her career but was floored to read that to make ends meet she wrote for comic books. All in all, I highly recommend this 1941-1950 collection
October 21, 2024
Ive now read 2 Biographies of Highsmith, and this book - her diaries and notebooks. It is in effect, her autobiography. While I enjoyed the Wilson biography, this is the book I would buy if I wanted one about Highsmith's life.
The book has only two downsides:
1) the editor felt the need remove "Offensive comments" - this is reported as "Denying her the stage" - which is a weird way to justify censorship. I dont need some leftwing nanny/gatekeeper to "Protect me".
2) The Editor chops up the Notebooks/diaries into time periods and gives us a little summary of what Highsmith was doing during that time. But the editor annoyingly writes in the present tense, as in "Patricia publishes Strangers on a train but feels the need for peace and quiet". Annoying!
The editor also provides a "Secondary Sources" Bibliography to guide any reader in the Politically Correct direction. And many of these books have little to do with Highsmith. Did she ever meet or write about Henry Ford or Charles Lindberg? Answer: No. So, why do we have a book on Ford's antisemitism and a biography of Lindberg in the "Secondary sources?
Anyway, all this can easily skipped and one can just read what Highsmith wrote.
The book has only two downsides:
1) the editor felt the need remove "Offensive comments" - this is reported as "Denying her the stage" - which is a weird way to justify censorship. I dont need some leftwing nanny/gatekeeper to "Protect me".
2) The Editor chops up the Notebooks/diaries into time periods and gives us a little summary of what Highsmith was doing during that time. But the editor annoyingly writes in the present tense, as in "Patricia publishes Strangers on a train but feels the need for peace and quiet". Annoying!
The editor also provides a "Secondary Sources" Bibliography to guide any reader in the Politically Correct direction. And many of these books have little to do with Highsmith. Did she ever meet or write about Henry Ford or Charles Lindberg? Answer: No. So, why do we have a book on Ford's antisemitism and a biography of Lindberg in the "Secondary sources?
Anyway, all this can easily skipped and one can just read what Highsmith wrote.
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