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The Talented Ms. Highsmith

Elena Gosalvez Blanco recalls her time as Patricia Highsmith's assistant in the novelist's final months.

At dinner a few days later, I asked if she had a computer, and she told me she still wrote all her work, and all her letters, on the same typewriter she had used to write Strangers on a Train at Yaddo, the artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. Hard as she was on people, she was also deeply appreciative of those who were nice to her: she changed her last name to that of her stepfather (who was kinder to her than her own father), she was thankful Dani treated her with the respect she deserved, and, as I found out after she died, she willed all her money to the writers’ colony where she wrote her first book. Pat enjoyed Purple Noon, the first movie adaptation of her Ripley, mostly because she felt that Alain Delon was a good casting choice and hoped the French film would remind Americans she existed and compel them to finally appreciate her.

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