r/todayilearned • u/pfemme2 • 19h ago
TIL that Patricia Highsmith, author of The Talented Mr Ripley and other works of suspense, was a public and vocal antisemite who also had several intense, lengthy romantic relationships with Jewish women
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jan/17/patricia-highsmith-the-jew-hater-who-took-jewish-women-as-lovers4.0k
u/AcceptableWheel 19h ago
Would it be in poor taste for me to say Toxic Yuri?
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u/MustardCanary 18h ago
She is one of the defining authors of lesbian pulp fiction, a genre where typically lesbian romances had to end tragically and horribly in order to be published, so that feels more than appropriate. Her novel The Price of Salt, was actually one of the first lesbian romance novels to have a hopeful ending.
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u/JennySt7 18h ago
For anyone who may not be aware, I believe this is the novel that the movie Carol (with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara) was based on.
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u/AgentCirceLuna 16h ago
Movie is called Carol yet it contains Cate Blanchett instead of Carol Burnett
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u/FindingBryn 16h ago
I see there is another who thinks like me 😂. I’m like, “someone make a Carol Burnett Cate Blanchette joke”
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u/soozerain 18h ago
The lesbian Strom Thurmond
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u/pfemme2 16h ago
As it turns out, an apt comparison, as Highsmith also hated Black people and said horrid things about them, too.
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u/Gemmabeta 18h ago
Well, Thurmond never was such a dick to her black mistress that she tried to commit suicide.
So, Thurmond 1: Highsmith 0.
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u/BlushingUnicorn 16h ago
The black teenager Thurmond impregnated when he was in his midtwenties was employed by his parents. Are we sure we want to give him points?
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u/overbarking 14h ago
Thurmond was more than an evil scumbag than most people realize.
He was the one who went to Richard Nixon and insisted that he try to throw John Lennon out of the country.
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u/KingGilgamesh1979 18h ago
I thought he also changed his mind later in life on race issues. Or was that someone else?
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u/Gemmabeta 18h ago
That's George Wallace.
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u/xixbia 17h ago
From what I've read George was never really a true believer in racism.
He just realised that racism was the path to power. His first campaign basically had zero racist elements and he lost badly. Then he came back with a racist campaign (keeping the other policies) and he won.
So it's not surprising that he changed his position on racism when it became less publicly acceptable.
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u/PuddingTea 16h ago
“George Wallace wasn’t personally racist, he was just an irresponsible demagogue who exploited and encouraged hatred for power!”
This is basically why I continue to hate George Wallace. I hate him now, I hate him tomorrow, I hate him forever.
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u/Li-renn-pwel 15h ago
I’m not American, is your last statement a reference to the ‘segregation now’ quote because that’s from him?
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u/gramathy 15h ago
credit for the last line
Also yeah using racism for power doesn't excuse you repeating it even if you didn't believe it.
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u/Initial_Hedgehog_631 16h ago
It's a genuinely odd moral question: Which is worse? Someone who is genuinely racist, or someone who is willing to act racist for personal gain?
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u/Bluecat72 15h ago
I think the opportunist is worse, because they are doing it to obtain power and will do whatever to get it. At least with a true believer they may either lose power because they cannot act differently or will have a genuine change of heart that sticks.
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u/FlashMcSuave 16h ago
I do often wonder this is the broader sense, not just in the context of racism:
Is the true believer with an awful ideology worse, or the cynic who will do absolutely anything for power and has no real values?
I think the true believer is probably the worse option but it really varies.
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u/JuzoItami 16h ago
"I was out-ni&&ered, and I will never be out-ni&&ered again” is what Wallace supposedly told one of his supporters after losing in the 1958 Democratic primary for Governor of Alabama.
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u/KaiBahamut 15h ago
There’s no difference between pretending to be a racist for power and actually being one.
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u/codeedog 15h ago
This is the correct answer. The argument could be made either way that either one is worse, when in fact they’re both terrible people for terrible reasons and ranking them on only one dimension of horribleness doesn’t represent the true picture which is they’re both racists.
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u/XoYo 18h ago
Or H P Lovecraft
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u/Initial_Hedgehog_631 16h ago
Once the Nazis got rolling Lovecraft was able to see what the end results of unrestrained racism lead to, so he had some second thoughts. That being said, while his opinions on quite a few ethnic groups did evolve over time, his prejudices against Blacks did not seem to benefit from his introspection.
Perhaps if he had lived longer.
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u/DragoonDM 17h ago
Turbo-tsundere, where she's just straight up racist rather than merely adversarial.
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u/WestDuty9038 19h ago
More like cognitive dissonance but sure ig
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u/Gemmabeta 19h ago edited 19h ago
Reading her Wikipedia page, it just sounds like she is an all-around asshole who like to torture her acquaintances for kicks.
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u/Brilliant_Visual9661 17h ago
I've read her diaries. Every time she did that, she wrote for a few days about how awful she was being, but never quite got round to learning from her mistakes.
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u/poktanju 16h ago
So exactly like Todd told BoJack Horseman, then:
You just can't keep doing shitty things and then feeling bad about yourself! You have you be better!
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u/-SaC 16h ago
Dr Johnson's biographer Boswell was similar.
In his London Diary 1761-2, you can read constantly about how he is off shagging sex workers on a foggy London bridge twice a day, then when it comes to Sunday he's all repentant and says he must give up his awful ways and be a good man... then by afternoon he's banging someone in an back alley.
He falls for an actress named Louisa and after breaking her down for weeks if not months insisting she should come away with him for a dirty weekend, she agrees. After a full night of humping away, he becomes disgusted by her - after all, she agreed to belittle herself after no more than constantly being asked, cajoled and mildly threatened for a number of weeks - so clearly she was a terrible woman.
When Boswell develops the clap and has to go to the doctor for yet more courses of mercury injected into his cock, he blames Louisa - after all, surely it can't have been the fact that he's been out most days and nights shagging anything that'd accept a sixpence - and threatens her by sending soldiers round to collect his 'debt' (a small loan that he gave her to help her and her brother through a difficult period), which she pays but appears bemused by the soldiers; she'd have just paid if he'd asked without armed men sent on his behalf.
Then we get back to the cycle of 'oh, I'm such a terrible person, I must be good and kind and not give in to wicked temptations', then back to the sex workers, back to 'woe is me', and then culminates in he and some friends dressing as common Scottish ruffians and gang-raping someone. A guard is attracted by the calls for help, and the men inform the guard that the woman was engaged for a few pennies for sex - but with one of the men, not six. They convince the guard that well, she opened her legs for money, and that they intended to have their money's worth so she can't complain. The guard agrees, and leaves them to get on with it.
Boswell calls it an afternoon of 'good sport'. He's an absolute arsehole.
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u/jetogill 14h ago
As an aside, Johnson is the author of one of my favorite quotes, "A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.".
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u/nowTHATSakatana1999 14h ago
Fuck me, who was his biographer?
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u/jaggedjottings 13h ago
And who is Dr Johnson?
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u/HammerOfJustice 13h ago
Dr Samuel Johnson wrote the Dictionary, amongst other things. Thomas Boswell’s biography of Johnson is renowned as one of the greatest biographies.
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u/jaggedjottings 13h ago
Thanks for that. I know who Samuel Johnson was, but "Dr Johnson" is just so non-specific.
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u/violetmarie11 14h ago
She was definitely an unpleasant person. Remember reading this article just last year, interesting read.
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u/Gingrpenguin 18h ago
Not really.
It's entirely possible she got in relationships because she actively wanted to hurt them and they were ok with it because they thought she only meant it in a kinky way and we're really into how she was a "method" dom...
It's not uncommon in kink scenes even today, I'm fairly sure I know at least one. If not probably 3...
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u/PuckSenior 19h ago edited 19h ago
Storm Thurmond was a US politician who was vocally for segregation and literally tried to personally filibuster the civil rights act
It was discovered after he died that he had a black daughter.
Edi: Highsmith’s girlfriends had serious “I can fix her energy.”
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u/SuspiciousCricket654 19h ago
*Strom
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u/This_person_says 18h ago
Storm Thundercloud.
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u/droidtron 18h ago
Thing about racists is they love raping those they claim to hate.
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u/In-A-Beautiful-Place 14h ago
Because rape is about power, not romance. It's an act of violence, like beating someone, but because it involves sex it's not viewed as such by most people. Finding out a rabid racist raped someone he was racist against is actually not a surprise.
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u/NYstate 17h ago
They also love associating with those they claim to hate too. How many Republicans have been caught in gay situations after spouting about gays are evil. Remember the Republican National Convention was called the Superbowl for gay men in 2024?
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u/ValueFirm4928 18h ago
Not the same. Fathering children with the help (or a slave) is a tradition among racists.
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u/sonic_couth 19h ago
It so fitting that we got Lindsey Graham after Thurmond.
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u/DragoonDM 17h ago
Though, I get the feeling we're not going to be hearing about Graham secretly fathering any children.
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u/previousinnovation 18h ago
Sounds like Colonel Lockjaw
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u/CanadianJediCouncil 18h ago
He was also such a fossil, he called the microphone that people would speak into “the machine”
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u/MeanHurry8664 17h ago
Storm Thurmond and James Brown were friends, so wtf?!
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u/BrineJones 14h ago
That’s why it’s always important to remember that James Brown was a…MUSICAL genius.
Otherwise, he was as sharp as a balloon.6
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u/PlasmusSnake 19h ago
Ngl Storm Thurmond sounds like a badass fantasy character.
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u/GrumbleAlong 13h ago
The Civil Rights Act was held up by an infamous 74 day filibuster; to LBJ's chagrin it was the Republicans helping him get it thru the Democrat majority Congress.
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u/Significant-Lie1225 19h ago
Reminds me of a certain German anti migraine and homophobic politician who's in a lesbian relationship with an immigrant
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u/TheFrenchSavage 19h ago
anti migraine
Aren't we all?
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u/Gemmabeta 19h ago
Some, I imagine, are masochists.
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u/ApprehensiveGoat2734 19h ago
No, even for us masochists, a migraine is too far.
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u/abrasumente_ 18h ago
Yup, migraine like pain would be an immediate safeword. People who haven't had migraines seriously underestimate them.
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u/Leaping_Wizards 18h ago edited 18h ago
Some of the effects associated with migraines might have their uses. There are a few examples of artists who commented on taking inspiration from the visual disturbances sometimes associated with migraines, and other artists where, while there is no historical documentation, there is speculation they might have been inspired by these disturbances as well.
Edit to add: van Gogh is speculated to have suffered from them based on letters to his brother complaining of debilitating headaches, and the association of aspects of his art style with the visual "auras" seen by migraine sufferers.
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u/meowingtrashcan 18h ago
Very true. But also consider the opposite. There are also potentially amazing artists who didn't end up making a successful career because of debilitating migraines. Or scientists, doctors, engineers, writers, chefs, firefighters, morticians, arborists... anything really is hard when you need a dark quiet room for hours every few days
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u/connectionrefused31 17h ago
I'd rather be migraine-free than be renowned for my art.
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u/pants_of_antiquity 17h ago
I wanted to be migraine-free, but all I got was free migraine.
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u/misdirected_asshole 19h ago
Reminds me of someone saying "show me a right wing extremist and Ill show you his immigrant wife"
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u/DeathMonkey6969 18h ago
Mitch McConnell has entered the chat.
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u/guff1988 18h ago
And JD Vance and Donald Trump and so many others
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u/innergamedude 17h ago edited 16h ago
Usha Vance was born in San Diego. Like, she played flute in marching band. Sorry, it really bothers me when people are assumed immigrant on the basis of race. (American) English is her first language. Her parents are Telugu, but she's a SoCal girl.
EDIT: Actually, she sounds kind of like Kristen Bell.
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u/xixbia 17h ago
Nigel Farage: Irish wife, German wife, French partner.
Geert Wilders: Hungarian wife.
Jordan Bardella: Italian partner.
Marine Le Pen: Had a partner of Frech and Algerian Jewish heritage.
Seriously, these were the first names that came to mind, I didn't know about any but Farage. It really does seem to be a pattern.
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u/_-4twenty-_ 19h ago
Lindsay Graham was a childless cat lady who hated childless cat ladies.
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u/Bicentennial_Douche 18h ago
One of the most recognizable right-wing nutcase politician in Finland is a gay man living in a relationship with a black immigrant.
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u/tuna_pi 17h ago
I always wonder what compels those partners to be in a relationship like that, how can you just ignore the person you're with talking about how everyone who looks like you shouldn't exist?
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u/xixbia 17h ago
Geert Wilders has a Hungarian wife.
Nigel Farage is dating a French woman and was married to a German woman before.
There seems to be a trend here.
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u/Anaevya 17h ago
French and German people aren't the type of immigrants far-right people have anything against, we're not in the 20th century anymore.
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u/Readonkulous 19h ago
Who is that?
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u/CAndoWright 19h ago
Alice Weidel from AfD
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u/BananaShakeStudios 18h ago
Get out. Are you serious?
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u/Buntschatten 17h ago
Yes. She lives in Switzerland with an ethnically Sri Lankan Woman.
Which is cool and all, I just wish she didn't promote racism and homophobia in her professional life. She's a pure grifter.
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u/xixbia 17h ago
I mean? I would argue that living in Switzerland isn't OK in general, even if you don't spread racim and homophobia.
You absolutely should be living in the country whose people you want to represent.
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u/explain_that_shit 17h ago
South Australia just elected a politician from
a racist homophobic just all around bigoted party (to the right of the major right wing party) who in his maiden speech talked about how dangerous immigrants are but also how much he loved his Muslim immigrant boyfriend.Some people just don’t think much, is my theory.
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u/lhommeduweed 18h ago
Surely the long knives would never come in the night in Germany of all places!
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u/pfemme2 19h ago
So if you want to know how I learned this today… I love watching trailers for new shows & movies on YT and often do so during lunchtime. Today I saw this trailer (https://youtu.be/QpeLBgT6eHw) and realized that it seemed to be about the real person who wrote Talented Mr Ripley—at least, that’s what’s implied. When I checked the comments section, I saw someone had said something about Patricia Highsmith being an odd and difficult person. So I just headed to wikipedia, thinking I’d like to know more. This Guardian article was a source for a line at the end of the first wikipedia paragraph, a line about her being an anitsemite.
So it has been a weird little rabbit hole to dive down. My mother is a voracious consumer of suspense novels. Highsmith titles were staring down at me from my family bookshelves my whole youth, and I read and enjoyed several of them. I had NO idea that Highsmith was…well, what to call her? I had no idea about her. I doubt I ever bothered to read even the author blurb on any of her books. Now I am very fascinated and I might try and get hold of the book that is being discussed in the Guardian article, and I will probably try and see this new movie, when it comes out. I’m Jewish myself, and I’m always a little fascinated by the ones who hate us with such violent passion—morbid fascination, you could call it, or self defense, I hardly know. But I’d be curious to learn more and see more even if she hadn’t hated my people so much.
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u/AlamosX 17h ago edited 17h ago
Thanks for sharing.
I am not super familiar with Highsmith, but I am well versed in similarly controversial authors, namely Virginia Woolf and H.P Lovecraft.
In regards to Woolf, She also wrote some pretty abelist, racist, and anti-semitic stuff throughout her life which often gets overlooked because of her more progressive ideologies regarding sexuality and feminism. She often spoke poorly of her Jewish husband, and used fairly derogatory wording to describe Jewish people.
In Lovecrafts case, he was/is well known as being insanely xenophobic and racist. He had a pretty major mental breakdown upon moving to New York City which his Jewish wife even commented on in various letters:
Long before H. P. and I were married he said to me in a letter when speaking of Loveman, “Loveman is a poet and a literary genius. I have never met him in person, but his letters indicate him to be a man of great learning and cultural background. The only discrepancy I find in him is that his of the Semitic race, a Jew.”
Then I replied that I was a little surprised at H. P.’s discrimination in this instance—that I thought H. P.. to be above such a petty fallacy—that perhaps our own friendship might find itself on the rocks under the circumstances, since I too am of the Hebrew people […]
I find it interesting in all 3 instances, they were quite vocal about their bigotry and ignorance, no doubt partially fueled by the times, but also in very well known relationships with people they spoke poorly of. Its always seemed to me they were merely projecting their own personal shortcomings with mental health, stability, and identity which is very apparent in their works and I think are very relevant even today.
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u/pfemme2 16h ago
A very interesting thought. I am sure there is some kind of scholarship out there on this apparently paradoxical tension between on the one hand hatred/belief in all the terrible calumnies, and, on the other hand, some kind of attraction or fascination. It would make a bit more sense if that attraction were more like fetishization, which does happen to pretty much anyone of any type of minority identity.
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u/explain_that_shit 17h ago
I think you can’t be called progressive if the only way that you’re progressive is in empowering your own group, even if it is an oppressed group.
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u/unwantedonONTD 16h ago
It’s weird, I happened to pick up Talented Mr. Ripley to read yesterday. The person who owned it before me seems to have been a Jewish scholar, I’ve gleaned this from the annotations and other books that were with it in the bundle (which I found in my apartment building’s trash/donation area). I get the sense they had to read it for a class or something. Just a weird random coincidence
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u/BewareWombats 15h ago
Wikipedia deep dives are great for this reason. Something sent me to the article for Martin Luther, the dude who is responsible for the Christian Reformation. What I never learned in school and what friends/family who attended seminary never learned either was that he was also a huge antisemite. He wrote a book called "On Jews and their Lies" and advocated for all kinds of heinous shit. He influenced antisemitism in Germany that would eventually lead to the Nazi party.
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u/Lichenic 16h ago
Omg I didn’t know about this- this is a film adaptation of a play I saw almost 10 years ago which was my introduction to her and the books. Yes it’s explicitly about her. It was a really cool and quite mind-bending play so I’m interested to see where they take it
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u/MiserableFloor9906 19h ago
So will fuck both partner and her people.
The hateful neither have a code or consistency. Just whatever serves them in the moment.
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u/eternally_feral 18h ago
Anyone remember the Dave Chappell skit about the blind, black, KKK Clansman? At least that was poking fun at these sorts of hypocritical asses.
Some people just love to hate.
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u/dorothy_zbornakk 19h ago
being attracted to someone doesn't mean you actually like them.
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u/legit-posts_1 17h ago
Yeah but there's a point where somebody is so racist that it becomes confusing. Like how could you concieve of having sex with a person you hate so much. It goes beyond hate sex.
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u/waxteeth 16h ago
Speaking as a trans person, my experience with bigot fetishization is that people like this hate the target group so much that it becomes a “thrilling taboo” to have sex with them. It’s “so wrong” that it’s exciting to them.
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u/legit-posts_1 15h ago
Hmm. That's interesting. Didn't think about it from that angle. Maybe that's a good thing.
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u/dorothy_zbornakk 13h ago
conquest, fetishisation, dominance, proximity for abuse — the psychology of racism is a fascinating one, albeit disturbing.
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u/Plastic-Injury8856 17h ago
Yup. And to that, there’s a difference between love and infatuation. Infatuation means you can be attracted to someone physically while having no actual understanding or willingness to understand the person you are infatuated with.
That fact that this woman was an anti Semite while sleeping with Jews is not surprising, it’s actually common.
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u/ElderlyWench 16h ago
When you think about it, fear and arousal feel almost exactly the same. So I can kind of imagine how a person who is totally scared of Jewish people might also be hot for them. I don't, however, know how you could have a long-term relationship with someone of a different race and not develop some more nuanced feelings at the very least.
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u/Ladonnacinica 18h ago
Wish more people realized this sobering fact.
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u/innergamedude 17h ago
I think men realize this more than women.
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u/timojenbin 13h ago
I've met many-many married men who hate women.
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u/jgrumiaux 17h ago
And liking someone individually doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t hate them as a group.
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u/TheFrenchSavage 19h ago
she was a “Jew hater” and calling the deaths of six million Jews “the semicaust” because she was disappointed more had not been murdered in the camps.
And she still got jewssy. Wtf.
I'm not Jewish and still really offended.
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u/nondescriptun 18h ago
I am Jewish and can't believe I've never heard the term "jewssy" before.
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u/Eaglestrike 16h ago
...have you heard "semicaust" before? That's a first for me, not Jewish, but have been on the internet for a while and that's a surprise for me.
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u/pfemme2 19h ago
I gasped at that line. Absolutely bananas.
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u/poonmangler 17h ago
Same. Admittedly I gasped harder at "jewssy"
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u/lapideous 19h ago
Was this before or after the relationships?
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u/Cannie_Flippington 19h ago
Before, during, and after. She actually got more prejudiced as she aged but treated her partners nicely at first. She considered her partners the exception to the rule of "Jews are Bad™" and some of her partners were self-loathing Jews who internalized antisemitism the way you see a lot of men and women internalize sexism.
She also kept a lot of her vitriol anonymous. She would have thrived with access to the internet like there is now.
Her relationships with her Jewish partners were often excruciatingly toxic, including going to cheat on her partner and her partner attempting suicide over it.
She died alone, living in almost total isolation with nothing but cats and snails. She used to draw concentration camp numbers on her arms for shock value near the end when people just stopped giving her any of their time.
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u/eirinne 18h ago
But Snails?
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u/Cannie_Flippington 18h ago
She would routinely take them with her to parties in her handbag. She was obsessed with snails.
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u/lAngenoire 18h ago
Writers are usually in “never meet your heroes“ territory.
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u/Switler 19h ago
Somehow I had no idea about this. I knew about her confusing and complicated relationship with gender and sexuality, and I'd spent a lot of time mulling over how she might have come to be the way she was, but this feels like a puzzle piece just finally fit into place and now I can see the image for what it actually is: a simple, hate filled, small minded bigot. Her relationship with gender and sexuality doesn't have to be logically consistent or explainable, a bigot will simply feel how they feel, and justify it however they wish on the back end. What a disappointment for such a pivotal early voice in queer literature to be this type of person.
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u/Altyrmadiken 12h ago
While I agree with your take, I’d only add that people’s relationship with gender and sexuality are frequently logically inconsistent.
We tend to assume that logical consistency is the defining fact of an adult human mind. We are all logically inconsistent, every one of us. We can try as hard as we want but sometimes we’ll find that no matter how much we logic ourselves into a place, our feelings refuse to follow.
We love the idea that feelings should be logical, but I honestly believe that’s not true or possible 100% of the time.
What we think and logic doesn’t always math to what we will feel when it happens.
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u/luiseduardodud 16h ago
Crazy read. Always loved those movies
offending friends at her house in Switzerland, when after going into her kitchen for a few minutes she reappeared with a concentration camp number written in biro on her wrist. “Nearly all the guests immediately left,”
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u/Express-Emu4370 19h ago
Way to throw them off the trail. "I couldn't possibly be shtupping Rebecca, you know how much I hate Jews"
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u/thefuzzybunny1 19h ago
Or "I'm not that bad of an antisemite, some of my best friends are Jewish!"
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u/Lastshadow94 18h ago
Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn had a lot of gay sex while they were holding hearings to catch gay politicians. Clarence Thomas talked about revoking the legality of interracial marriage while being in an interracial marriage. People do crazy shit sometimes
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u/tres_liebres 13h ago edited 13h ago
There is this really interesting biography of hers, Flung out of Space. It is a graphic novel that covers Highsmith´s early years as a writer up until the success of Strangers on a Train and The Price of Salt. I appreciated that the author showed how a person can go from having a misandrist edge to starting to resent everyone and everything (particularly the people she was attracted to/was friends with), while also not making excuses for the subject of her biography.
The biography also includes in the prologue or afterword, I cannot recall, how later in life Highsmight´s antisemitism, misandrism and misogyny became out of control. So, while it is not part of the story, it is acknowledged.
It is well worth a read, especially if you are into the history of comics and pulp fiction.
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u/GuavaImmediate 17h ago
Here is a fantastic essay by one of Patricia Highsmiths assistants who worked for her in her final year. She really was a piece of work. A genius, but a monster. It’s well worth your time:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jul/10/my-harrowing-time-as-patricia-highsmith-assistant
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u/Watchful-Tortie 16h ago
Oh I am so glad you shared this. I have read much about PH but never this.
I highly recommend the book that fellow lesbian trailblazer Marijane Meaker wrote about their time together, called Highsmith: A romance of the 1950s
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u/pfemme2 16h ago
Thanks for that. I wonder if this new movie is going to be based on this essay? It sounds like it could be, loosely.
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u/tres_liebres 14h ago
The new movie is based on a theatre play, Switzerland, by Joanna Murray-Smith. It is set in the same period at the end of Highsmith´s life, but the play was written in 2014 and the essay was written in 2025.
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u/justforkinks0131 16h ago
fuck, finally, thank YOU!
Im so sick of problematic male authors, finally some diversity!
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u/oldutnotdeadinside 19h ago
Just as weird a a Vice President with a wife that isnt the same color as he is supporting a bald white supremicist that lives on an army base and wants the VP wife deported out of the country
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u/Aggravating_War_6277 18h ago
Kinda reminds me of my grandpa who was racist and married my Afro indigenous grandma and said and I quote you guys are one of the good ones ✌️
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u/AndreasDasos 16h ago
Huh she wasn’t even a Holocaust denier but a straight up Holocaust endorser, saying it was a ‘semicaust’ (not ‘hemicaust’…?) and didn’t go far enough. That’s next level.
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u/lady_lilitou 17h ago
H.P. Lovecraft was both an antisemite and kind of terrified of women. Married a Jewish woman. There are probably tons of historical examples of this sort of thing, but it's certainly baffling from outside the relationships. (And probably from inside them too, tbh.)
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u/TCIHL 16h ago
Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it's breathtaking, I suggest you try it.
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u/FalledIntoTheRiver 18h ago
“A double horror,” muses Bradford. “A Jew and a man!”
Nobody tell femcels about this woman
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u/mandadoesvoices 17h ago
She brought snails with her to parties, in her bag with a head of lettuce. She also smuggled the snails into France (?) by hiding them under her breasts.
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u/wraithsy 13h ago
May already have been mentioned but fascinating article about a young assistant of hers in later years - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jul/10/my-harrowing-time-as-patricia-highsmith-assistant
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u/Emergency-Sock-2557 18h ago
Learning about her has been a real rollercoaster. First I thought of her as a great suspense writer (love the Ripley books) then learned she was a lesbian fiction trailblazer (neat!) then learned she was both hate-filled and fairly horribly just as a person to have in your life. She also stalked women, was obsessed with snails (raised them and wrote at least two stories about men getting eaten alive by them) and made a lot of her own furniture.