CLUES 44:1 is out now with all kinds of crime writing fun, including a review by me of a new book that looks at links between Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett — and does it well. Introduction: Allusions and Illusions Spotlight on… Indian Crime FictionTARUN K. SAINT Rethinking Democracy and Detective Fiction: The…
Tag: Patricia Highsmith
Surreal Noir Ep 5 on YT
EPISODE FIVE [Original air date 24 Nov 21] Episode Five: Noirvember musings include stalkers, loneliness, travel and cows. Well, one cow anyway. This month noir fans watch the whole range of films that fall under that capacious umbrella, often including neo-noir along with the traditional black and white films from the 40s and 50s. *Content cautions for…
Surreal Noir: Ep3 on YouTube!
Episode Three is now live! Original airdate 22 Sep 21 Episode Three: Traveling – Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith introduces the concept of criss-cross for the perfect murder. As these things always go, it’s not so perfect after all. Highsmith is seldom interested in ‘whodunit’ and instead follows up on what happens next. Traveling…
Ripley & Saltburn
I’m off to the EUPop conference soon — my last formal academic conference (probably, maybe–except for pop culture…) — and because I won’t get around to other things before I depart, here’s a peek at my slides for that talk on two related topics (with a bunch of other things [surrealism!] shoehorned in because that’s…
Ripley on the ‘flix
I had equal parts of anticipation and dread for this new adaptation of Patricia Highsmith‘s The Talented Mr Ripley especially as it was by schmaltzy Spielberg’s pal who wrote Schindler’s List and the film Hannibal. I take it all back: he read the book — or rather books as it became clear. Even better, he…
Surreal Noir: 14 Sep 22
Tonight’s episode was inspired by seeing Loving Highsmith, so I chose to read at random from Patricia Highsmith’s diaries and journals. Her cahiers (as she always called them) came in two flavours: daily recaps of what she had done and where she had gone and how she felt about it all, and in the more…
Review: Loving Highsmith (2022)
I meant to go to Film Forum on Saturday to see a screening of this with a Q&A after with the director Eva Vitija and Megan Abbott, but alas something I ate on Friday made it inadvisable, so checking the Zeitgeist website I found it was playing down in Newburgh. I had never been to…
Surreal Noir: 19 Apr 22
Tonight, it’s SURREAL NOIR at NoBounds Radio. Episode Nine: My text for this episode is Leonora Carrington’s ‘My Mother is a Cow’ which you can find in the collected stories. It features surrealism, ritual, goddesses, sacrifice, skin, magic, and a bit of Graves’ The White Goddess. If this sounds familiar, it’s adapted from the talk…
Out Now: Stalking the Stalker
My essay ‘Stalking the Stalker: Jamie Thraves adapting Patricia Highsmith’s The Cry of the Owl‘ is out now in Film International. You can get the essay via your library or purchase from the journal. Thanks Matthew and the crew. Here’s an overview: The 2009 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Cry of the Owl faces the…
Surreal Noir: 22 Mar 22
Tonight, it’s SURREAL NOIR at NoBounds Radio. Episode Eight: It’s Women’s History Month, so a variety of things including adaptations of Patricia Highsmith’s Deep Water (no, I haven’t seen the brand new one yet but I did hear someone refer to it as Gone Girl 2.0 which is encouraging. All texts mentioned: Leave Her to…