帕特里西亚·海史密斯

帕特里西亚·海史密斯（英语：Patricia Highsmith，1921年1月19日—1995年2月4日），美国犯罪小说家，以心理惊悚类型的作品而闻名，代表作是《天才瑞普利》系列小说，分别在1999年改编为电影《天才瑞普利》和2002年改编为电影《魔鬼雷普利》。其另一知名作品为大导演希区柯克改编之同名电影《火车怪客》。另一部小说《盐的代价》亦在2015年改编为电影《卡罗尔》。

生平

帕特里西亚·海史密斯出生于美国德克萨斯州，从小由外祖母抚养长大。海史密斯与生母及养父之间的关系充满着紧张，童年的压力成为她日后创作的重要依据。她的写作风格繁复多变化，充满人性冲突与挣扎，尤其是私家侦探这个角色更在她作品里面扮演关键的功能。她曾写道：“我从未考虑过我在文学史上的‘地位’问题，也许我也真谈不上有什么地位。我把自己看作是一个能给大家提供娱乐的人，我只想给大家讲述一个精彩且吸引人的故事。”

早在她第一部作品《火车怪客》(1950)中海史密斯就已经展现出了她惊人的才华。该书一经问世，有“悬疑大师”之称的阿尔弗雷德·希区柯克就主动同她取得联系以获得将这部小说改编成电影的权力。1951年，改编后的电影《列车上的陌生人》获得了极大的成功并成为了电影史上一部经典的作品。她的《天才瑞普利》、《猫头鹰的哭泣》等作品也多次被改编成电影。

获奖

欧亨利奖

爱伦·坡奖

1964年英国推理作家协会奖（蜜月杀机）

1993年Suomen dekkariseura外国推理作家大奖

Patricia Highsmith (born Mary Patricia Plangman; January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer widely known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley. She wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories in a career spanning nearly five decades, and her work has led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her writing was influenced by existentialist literature and questioned notions of identity and popular morality. She was dubbed "the poet of apprehension" by novelist Graham Greene.

Born in Fort Worth, Texas, and mostly raised in her infancy by her maternal grandmother, Highsmith was taken to New York City at the age of six to live with her mother and stepfather. After graduating from Barnard College in 1942, she worked as a writer for comic books while writing her own short stories and novels in her spare time. Her literary breakthrough came with the publication of her first novel Strangers on a Train (1950) which was adapted into a 1951 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Her 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley was well received in the United States and Europe, cementing her reputation as a major writer of psychological thrillers.

In 1963, Highsmith moved to England where her critical reputation continued to grow. Following the breakdown of her relationship with a married Englishwoman, she moved to France in 1967 to try to rebuild her life. Her sales were now higher in Europe than in the United States which her agent attributed to her subversion of the conventions of American crime fiction. She moved to Switzerland in 1982 where she continued to publish new work that increasingly divided critics. The last years of her life were marked by ill health and she died of aplastic anemia and lung cancer in Switzerland in 1995.

The Times said of Highsmith: "she puts the suspense story in a toweringly high place in the hierarchy of fiction." Her second novel, The Price of Salt, published under a pseudonym in 1952, was ground breaking for its positive depiction of lesbian relationships and optimistic ending. She remains controversial for her antisemitic, racist, and misanthropic statements.

Early life

Highsmith was born Mary Patricia Plangman in Fort Worth, Texas on January 19, 1921. She was the only child of commercial artists Jay Bernard Plangman (1889–1975) and Mary Plangman (née Coates; September 13, 1895 – March 12, 1991). Her father had not wanted a child and had persuaded her mother to have an abortion. Her mother, after a failed attempt to abort her by drinking turpentine, decided to leave Plangman. The couple divorced nine days before their daughter's birth.

In 1927 Highsmith moved to New York City to live with her mother and her stepfather, commercial artist Stanley Highsmith, whom her mother had married in 1924. Patricia excelled at school and read widely, including works by Jack London, Louisa May Alcott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, and John Ruskin. At the age of nine, she became fascinated by the case histories of abnormal psychology in The Human Mind by Karl Menninger, a popularizer of Freudian analysis.

In the summer of 1933, Highsmith attended a girls' camp and the letters she wrote home were published as a story two years later in Woman's World magazine. She received $25 for the story. After returning from camp, she was sent to Fort Worth and lived with her maternal grandmother for a year. She called this the "saddest year" of her life and felt "abandoned" by her mother. In 1934 she returned to New York to live with her mother and stepfather in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. She was unhappy at home. She hated her stepfather and developed a life-long love–hate relationship with her mother, which she later fictionalized in stories such as "The Terrapin", about a young boy who stabs his mother to death.