The guest is as creepy as her own version of Highsmith. Like Highsmith, she seems devoid of the capacity for empathy. If you are going to spend a big chunk of your career writing about someone, especially someone who clearly suffered as much as Highsmith did, and you can't even view that person as a human being (she sprung full-formed from the womb? and is not to be viewed as having "developed" even in the sense of being profoundly affected by the extremely difficult circumstances of her formative years?), but only care whether (to quote the guest's constantly repeated mantra) Highsmith was "interesting," you have a serious deficit. I hope this biographer has spent at least a little time asking herself why she is drawn to this particular subject's life story. Her affected way of speaking was also bizarre.

Patricia Highsmith was hardly the first modern writer to publish a "lesbian novel" in the U.S. Radclyffe Hall's famously "scandalous" "The Well of Loneliness," for example, was published in the 1920's.

Hall was British. Did Ms. Schenkar mean American writer?

Leonard -

Your guest is wonderful to listen to. Great conversation.

I've read between 8-10 Highsmith novels, and I've never been more infected with paranoia. Could your guest talk about Highsmith's take on sexuality in The Price of Salt as well as the homosexual themes in the Ripley novels.

Does Ms. Schenkar discuss Highsmith's bigotry and whether she attempted to put it into her books?