Dec 23, 2009

The Talented Mr. Ripley | Social Concerns

In the "Preface" to his book, Patricia Highsmith, Russell Harrison curiously qualifies the genre of Highsmith's work. Harrison writes, "For a long time, her work was, in the United States, viewed as crime or suspense fiction," but he is careful to explain that while her work is not representative of "literary realism," it does evince and "create in readers" "states of extreme psychological tension unlike anything produced by her contemporaries." Harrison's reading of Highsmith's works as psychological and social, reflecting the ways in which the "self" is created, informed, and...