THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

In 1959, When Patricia Highsmith and Marijane Meaker met at a dyke bar in Greenwich Village, they were already household names to lesbian readers under their respective noms de plume, Claire Morgan and Ann Aldrich. It would have shocked their lesbian contemporaries to find these two women, whose reputations were polar opposites, in bed together.

Much of Meaker's memoir of her relationship with novelist Patricia Highsmith reads like lesbian pulp fiction from the post-World War II hey-day of paperback originals. Meaker, already in a relationship, was immediately smitten, and that night they began a two-year horizontal tango that would last longer than their romance. When it was over, and they finally split, each woman found closure by brutally murdering the fictional counterpart of the other in respective novels.

Highsmith (1921-1995), author of psychological suspense fiction, is best known these days for her series of novels featuring amoral anti-hero Tom Ripley. She has been having a posthumous revival of interest since Oscar-winner Matt Damon's 1999 performance in a film adaptation of her book, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955). Interestingly, her initial success as a novelist followed the release of the film version of her first novel, Strangers on a Train (1950), now considered a classic of director Alfred Hitchcock's oeuvre. Nine films have been made of her books. Most are versions of her Ripley novels, notably The American Friend (1978) from director Wim Wenders with Dennis Hopper as Ripley and Purple Noon (1961) starring Alain Delon from French director Rene Clement. Highsmith published more than 30 books in her lifetime and a few collections of short stories have been released since her death. She is also the subject of two new biographies.

As Claire Morgan, Highsmith published her only lesbian novel, The Price of Salt (1952), to good reviews and moderate success in hardcover; but it skyrocketed in paperback sales. Novelist Valerie Taylor, whose first lesbian novel Whisper Their Love sold two million copies, described the impact of the book at the 1974 Lesbian Writers Conference in Chicago: Claire Morgan, she said, broke the mold of lesbian formula fiction, which until then aimed sales to heterosexual males. Morgan's positive heroines, real women who overcame obstacles to their love, attracted a huge lesbian readership. The Price of Salt was also the final work considered by Oak Park native Dr. Jeannette Howard Foster Ph.D. in her pioneering opus, Sex Variant Women in Literature (1954). Dr. Foster suggested that the arguments Morgan proposed for the validity of 'variant love' presaged the swing of the literary pendulum towards 'favorable treatments of variance' in fiction.

On re-reading, The Price of Salt holds up well. Nineteen-year-old sales clerk Therese is smitten by an elegant customer and contrives to meet her. Carol is in the process of seeking a divorce. Mutually impassioned, the women take off on a cross-country jaunt, followed closely by a detective hired by Carol's husband who threatens to take sole custody of their daughter. When Carol returns to deal with husband and lawyers, Therese loses faith. She finds a career in New York and considers returning to her old boyfriend. At 21, as she is about to embark on an affair with a stage actress, Therese realizes 'it was Carol she loved and would always love ... . It would be Carol in a thousand cities.' Carol sacrifices custody of her child. The lovers see each other across a crowded restaurant, and the book ends in a Hollywood fade as they move towards each other. Few things date the novel: the copy devoted to smoking and drinking common in the era of Bette Davis movies stands out today. And as Valerie Taylor told the her audience in 1974, 'Today, the wife would find a good feminist lawyer and win custody.'

Meaker actually wrote genre pulps in the 1950s and '60s under the pseudonym, Vin Packer: but, since the early-1970s she has received dozens of awards as a writer of juvenile and young-adult fiction under the names of M. E. Kerr and Mary James. However, writing as Ann Aldrich, Marijane Meaker raised the ire of early lesbian feminists with a series of fiction and non-fiction titles that perpetuated negative stereotypes and took pot-shots at The Ladder, the nascent voice of the nation's first lesbian rights organization the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). Aldrich books were seen as antithetical to the DOB's stated purpose to raise the self-awareness, self-confidence and self esteem of lesbians. Her work was referred to as 'poisonous but entertaining,' presenting 'lesbians as disgusting or unnatural creatures,' a 'prolific and negative author ... her books hardly worth the time or price.' One feminist reviewer charged her with 'running down her relatives.' A slight exception was Aldrich's Carol in a Thousand Cities. Meaker chose the quote from The Price of Salt as the title of her 1960 Aldrich anthology of writings on the subject of female homosexuality by Freud, Simone de Beauvoir, and others. One reviewer granted that this Aldrich book 'did include some of the finer items in the field' but 'her personal contributions were as unpleasant as ever.'

Dr. Foster commented that Vin Packer's Spring Fire, had 'a sympathetic treatment which bows to orthodox standards by ending tragically.' Foster also understandably erred in identifying the writer 'an established male author'—as the rest of the Vin Packer titles were mystery or suspense fiction. It would be 1972 before lesbian reviewers would approve of Meaker's treatment of lesbians in her work by acclaiming her humorous novel, Shockproof Sydney Skate.

I learned more about Meaker than Highsmith from the current 'Memoir.' Meaker was more closeted, jealous, possessive, and unfaithful. Dissembling to her then lover of eight years she spirited Highsmith to a farmhouse in Pennsylvania to isolate her from potential competition and social or business contacts who might claim her time. Meaker, however, retained contact with her old lover and friends with whom she would confide and complain. In public she reacted furtively when Highsmith put an arm around her, wanted to walk down the street holding hands, or would reach to touch her across a restaurant table. Both left a posh restaurant without protest when refused service because they were wearing pants.

Meaker's sources for several of her Vin Packer plots were contemporary murders, a New Zealand parricide, a notorious U.S. matricide, even the Emmet Till case. Her method of writing differed from Highsmith, who drew her plots mostly from whole cloth, wrote on a rigid schedule, and did not discuss her work in progress. Meaker, although a commercial success, was envious of Highsmith's respectability as a well-reviewed mainstream hardcover author. To be fair, Highsmith seemed envious of Meaker's mass-market sales and income. Hardcover authors were paid percentage royalties doled out annually by the publisher on the sales of each copy; paperback writers of the day received two cents a copy for each book printed regardless of sales. While they were together, Meaker received an $8,000 check from a reprint run. She notes, 'I got twice what Pat did for one book.'

Meaker tantalizingly name-drops the subjects of Highsmith's conversations with her: Capote, Vidal, Ned Roerm, Janet Flanner, Cocteau; then tells nothing of what was said except that 'It was a two bottle night.' In fact, their drinking probably accounts for a lot of lapses. Meaker says she gave up the struggle to keep up with Highsmith, and while not calling her an alcoholic, recounts their drinking in detail, including the time she mistakenly took a hefty swallow of Highsmith's 80-proof morning orange juice.

Meaker describes Highsmith as 'gentlemanly' in her manners and appearance: blazer, soft shirt, ascot and slacks. She would open doors for women, rise to meet a woman, and pick up her pants by their crease before sitting down. Highsmith preferred Europe to America and felt she was more highly regarded there. There are early hints that Highsmith's Southern upbringing left her tinged with racism. When Lorraine Hansberry invited Meaker to the opening of the film version of A Raisin in the Sun, Highsmith demurred saying: 'I know the plot. Colored person thwarted, then colored person triumphant. It's not my concern.'

Still, it was disconcerting, if Meaker is to be believed, to see the 70-year-old Highsmith portrayed as racist and anti-Semitic. In a bitter epilogue Meaker makes her case recounting some letters and a final visit Highsmith paid a few years before her death. She notes that the novel Ripley Under Water (1991) was dedicated to the Intifadeh and the Kurds and suggests that Highsmith's anti-Israeli stance was 'a displacement, that her real anger might have been at American publishers who she felt were largely Jewish, and unappreciative of her work.'

In her essay 'Quintessentially noir' in the December issue of The Women's Review of Books, the late Carolyn Heilbrun concedes Highsmith's anger and moodiness but offers a different picture. She suggests '... Highsmith aging and ill becomes more loveable and more attractive, as though suffering rendered her more human. Or perhaps those who knew her in old age speak of her more kindly.' In her review of Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith by Andrew Wilson (2003) Heilbrun faults him for failing to focus on Highsmith's writing, thus leaving the author 'besmirched and the reader repelled.'

Cleis Press has done the community a service by publishing Meaker's memoir, a glimpse of 1950s lesbian life. Lesbian pulp fiction is being explored by a new generation of academics seeking evidence of earlier lesbian lifestyles. Perhaps the Paris expatriates have finally been done to death and the circles of stateside dyke divas will be open to exploration. Cleis plans to re-issue the Vin Packer novel Spring Fire next May.

Copyright 2003 by Marie J. Kuda. Portions of this review appeared previously in The Women's Review of Books, Vol. XXI No. 3.