HIGHSMITH'S WORLD

Throughout her life, Patricia Highsmith lived in voluntary isolation. She expressed that she "had trouble feeling at home anywhere" or with anyone, and thus she lived with a rather limited sense of community and social identity (Cassuto 2).

The community that influenced Highsmith the most, however, was the gay community of New York in the late 1940s and early 50s. Highsmith, after all, "was gay in the United States at a time when homosexuality couldn't even whisper its name" (1).

Gay bars were hidden in "respectable" bars, restaurants, and cafes after hours, and their locations were usually publicized only by word of mouth (Dangerfield 3). Highsmith alludes to several bars like this in her novels, specifically in The Talented Mr. Ripley, and more bluntly in reflections in Small g.

While these communities did exist, though, they were far from safe. Bar raids were common. One man reflects on a party in 1958 where, "[a]lmost eighty men were arrested. For the delectation of the public, their names, addresses, and jobs were listed in the next morning, entire, in the august Washington Post" (4).

Highsmith was not just a gay woman, though— she was a gay novelist who "came of age... during the Red Scare and the cold war, when the House Un-American Activities Committee was reaching into people's most private spaces, and Red-baiting and homophobia fed off of each other" (Cassuto 3).

"After World War II, homosexuality got caught up in political and cultural movements... the fifties brought a rigid adherance to traditional gender roles... McCarthy also targeted homosexuals as a national security threat" (Chakraborty 1).

Highsmith herself became interested in and involved with the Communist party during her college years, and thus had two possible, and probable, reasons to be brought into the Red Scare witchhunt.

In 1949, Highsmith's move to Europe, "cut her off from the elaborate social networks of New York's gay and literary worlds" (Harris 2). She became increasingly anti-social, withdrawing from most defined communities.

One of her friends later recalled that Highsmith "complained habitually about Americans and women as though she was neither one" (qtd. Cassuto 2). Biographer Andrew Wilson, who had access to many of Highsmith's private journals, notes that Highsmith "often describ[ed] herself as having a male identity" and was often accused of misogyny (Wilson 301).

The one specific community that Highsmith felt very at home in was the gay club community in 1980s Berlin. Another friend of Highsmith's said of 1980s Berlin: "In those times, Berlin was such a funny, queer place, it had such a special insular existence" (371).

However, even this "free" community did not fit Highsmith's introverted personality— it was more for the younger crowd, like her expressive lover, Tabea Blumenschein, a German, experimental-film actress.

In the end, it could be said that Highsmith had no real "community," except when she chose to. Typically, she chose, instead, to be alone at home with her pet cats and her literature (Wilson).