One of the best qualities of great fiction--and all great art, really--is the way in which it establishes a version of the world so distinctive, yet so convincing, that we emerge from it enchanted, persuaded that our customary way of seeing has been no more than one aspect of an optical illusion.
Which is very much what happens in reading "The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith," a new anthology that includes five of Highsmith's seven-story collections and which has been released to coincide with new paperback editions of her classic novels, "Strangers on a Train" and "A Suspension of Mercy." In a 1970 essay that serves as an introduction to this volume, Graham Greene calls her "the poet of apprehension." And there is no one who has written about unnatural death in so many of its guises, rendering it somehow entirely natural without reducing its mystery in any way.
Highsmith is best known in this country for her casually murderous protagonist, Tom Ripley, who first appeared in her 1955 novel "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and for "Strangers on a Train," which made her literary reputation thanks to Alfred Hitchcock.
The mystery in Highsmith is the great literary and philosophical mystery: Who are we and why do we behave the way we do? "I hate labels," she said, and defied them all. Much has been said of Highsmith's "amorality," but hers is the very strict morality of the 20th century novelist, the obligation to describe human behavior precisely as it exists in the world--ridiculous, unreasonable, sometimes horrifying--without judgment or fear. She has been difficult for filmmakers--no matter how modern--who have always felt the need to invent some comforting justification for her protagonists' behavior. She was years ahead of her time. She was unflinching.
Though Highsmith has always been considered a better novelist than short-story writer, many of the stories are extraordinary, and one becomes increasingly aware of her enormous power and range. There is the early collection "Little Tales of Misogyny," in which Highsmith describes some traditionally feminine type, "The Prude," "The Victim," "The Fully Licensed Whore, or the Wife," and renders her so unattractive that she seems to deserve her predictably violent fate. Some stories seem dated, all of them the stuff of high camp. But, as usual, Highsmith is playing with us, and it is difficult to know just what she is doing here--satirizing the stereotypes or the women themselves.
