Diaries and Notebooks

Patricia Highsmith’s first novel was picked up by Hitchcock and was a world-wide success. Her second novel was meant to tell everything about her true inside and dare what no-one had dared to write before: a lesbian love-story with a happy ending. But when she eventually relented to publish it under a pseudonym, it was a decision that would shape her life more than she could have guessed at the time. Henceforth she would vent her inner life either encoded in her future novels or – unbeknownst to most – in the 18 diaries and 38 notebooks she kept throughout her life. The way she talked about her journals – especially her notebooks – indicates that she always meant to bring them into the open one day. Her journals reveal a most complex life that might help explain why her novels were so much more than just crime novels: world literature.