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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by RERO DOC Digital Library 466 NOTES AND QUERIES 2013 (72–85), Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen FIONA PETERS, Anxiety and Evil in the Writings Eighty-Four (1949) are both cogently pre- of Patricia Highsmith. Pp. viii þ 206. Farn- sented, especially in terms of the former’s ham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2011. £55.00 fraught publication context and the latter’s (ISBN 978 1 4094 2334 8). preoccupation with totalitarianism and human frailty within the context of Orwell’s IT is because Patricia Highsmith is an enigma own rapidly failing health. that her writing, according to Fiona Peters, has One of the most interesting sections of this received little critical attention. In Anxiety and short book is its concluding chapter which con- Evil in the Writings of Patricia Highsmith siders Orwell’s critical reception during his Peters contends that it is due to the impossibil- own lifetime and posthumously. The latter ity of categorizing her work (2)—floating be- has developed in diverse directions since his tween the genres of crime fiction and serious death in January 1950 when Stephen Spender literature—that she has been wrongfully described him as ‘a kind of English Candide of denied her place in particularly American aca- the twentieth century’ and Bertrand Russell la- demic discussion (3). Beneath the flatness and mented the personal cost of his innate ‘love of clarity of the language, Peters unearths com- humanity’ on his own health and personal re- plex characters with their evil obsessions lurk- lationships. The impact of various biographies ing under a conventional fac¸ ade (5). and film, theatre, and operatic versions of his Throughout her study, Peters employs a works is succinctly summarized, as is the so Lacanian psychoanalytical framework that is called ‘1984 countdown’ during the early- supposed to shed some light on the motiv- 1980s and the build-up to his centenary in ations and ethics of the characters. In particu- 2003. It is also noted how firmly Orwell is lar, she introduces Lacan’s concept of the still fixed in the English cultural imagination, ‘sinthome’. This, according to Slavoj Zˇizˇek, is for example, in Simon Schama’s comparison of a ‘psychotic kernel evading the discursive net- Sir Winston Churchill and Orwell as the two work’ (27). All Highsmith’s characters experi- great architects of the twentieth century in his ence ‘jouissance’ through their sinthomes in The History of Britain: The Fate of Empire specific ways, offering them a reprieve from (2002). Similarly, Orwell himself would prob- the oppressiveness of the Symbolic. ably have been both intrigued and delighted by The first of Peters’ three lengthy chapters the experience in October 2009 of hundreds of focuses on three of Highsmith’s early novels, Amazon Kindle owners who found one morn- Deep Water (1957), The Cry of the Owl (1962), ing that their selections of Orwell had mysteri- and This Sweet Sickness (1960). The protagon- ously disappeared from their new-age reading ists retreat from the symbolic universe of the devices (due to his publisher withdrawing elec- middle-class ideal, the happy suburban families tronic dissemination rights). Rodden rightly (13) into their respective ‘waiting rooms’. No concludes that Orwell has entered the twenty- final escape from this stifling universe is first century as the ‘most widely read, serious allowed to these characters, but their retreat English-language writer and most frequently into psychosis allows them at least to ‘achieve cited political journalist of the twentieth-cen- distanciation from the, for them, unbearable tury’ and this Cambridge Introduction offers a pressure of a desiring universe’ (35). The valuable service in making the complete range second chapter focuses on exile as a different of his writings readily accessible to all inter- type of waiting room. In her analysis of The ested readers. Tremor of Forgery (1969), Edith’s Diary (1977), MICHAEL G. BRENNAN The Price of Salt (1952), Found in the Street University of Leeds (1986), and Little Tales of Misogyny (1975) doi:10.1093/notesj/gjt119 the focus lies on exile in the sense of relocation ß The Author (2013). Published by Oxford University Press. in space, as well as femininity. While exile in All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] space mirrors Highsmith’s own exile from and Advance Access publication 11 July, 2013 unease with America, the grotesque female 2013 NOTES AND QUERIES 467 bodies of Little Tales of Misogyny ‘force the the Good, and thus the disinterested, ethical masquerade of femininity into the public realm’ (63). Frankly, this argumentation is arena’ (139) and reveal it as a fantasized con- highly disturbing, as it is something that struct of the phallic, symbolic order. The final could have come from the lips of Anders chapter is devoted to the Ripley novels. Unlike Breivik. It does not help that Peters tries to the other protagonists, Ripley is much better at corroborate her statement with an equally dis- negotiating his way in the symbolic universe turbing Zˇizˇek quote: ‘The truly first choice is without belonging to it. His acts of Kantian the choice between ...yielding to one’s patho- ‘radical evil’ are a means to an end to protect logical leanings or embracing radical Evil, an the sanctity of his waiting room. Furthermore act of suicidal egoism that ‘‘makes a place’’ for he functions as sinthome for Highsmith her- the Good’ (63). self, since, ‘because she writes Ripley, she is At times her attempts to salvage Lacanian able to withstand her life’ (149). dogma despite contrary evidence in the texts Peters’ Lacanian approach takes her very are simply irritating: ‘While individual sexual far in explaining the mechanisms leading relationships are, of course, possible within a to the protagonists’ social marginalization psychoanalytic theorisation, and they do occur and eventual isolation from the other. in Highsmith’s novels, Lacan stresses the im- Highsmith’s protagonists suffer from anxiety possibility of the sexual relationship as such’ because they realize that their image of the (135). What Peters fails to point out, is that other is fantasized, that they never reach the Kierkegaard’s Christian notion of love differs other as such. This is most convincingly fundamentally from Lacan’s claim that ‘love is argued in the Ripley chapter, in the reading a form of suicide’ (74), ‘a drive inherently at- of the murder of Dickie Greenleaf in The tached to the death drive’ (115). In Lacan’s Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) ‘Thus the gaze atheist theory God is relegated to the uncon- that Tom mistakes for Dickie’s look is his scious, the sinthome. Love as transcendence own projection’ (169). From that moment does not exist. It would have been helpful if on Ripley suffers from anxiety in a Peters had pointed out that one allusion of Kierkegaardian sense precisely because he the ‘sinthome’ is to Saint Thomas, the doubt- hovers between aesthetics and ethics. The ing apostle. While it is true that Lacan’s theory difference between Ripley and the other and Highsmith’s work thus remain in the protagonists is that, while the others slide bleakness of the here and now—and like into psychosis, he can fill the void with Saint Thomas doubt transcendence, Peters’ at- ‘objects and interests’ (160). However, tempt to displace the transcendent dimension Ripley never reaches the space of the ethical of Kierkegaard’s ethical act into the world of as he ‘cannot understand that he must love’ Highsmith’s suffering anti-heroes is unconvin- (155). cing. Her ‘impressive range of secondary ma- Unfortunately, it is precisely with the ques- terial’, as the blurb on the back of her book has tion of the ethical that Peters’ Lacanian read- it, is unfortunately too narrowly psychoanalyt- ing straitjackets Highsmith’s texts into a ical to recognize the error. While Peters’ read- meaning that they do not contain. This is ing offers a fresh and valuable perspective on most blatantly the case in her reading of Highsmith’s work, it ultimately fails to con- Vic’s murder of his wife in Deep Water: ‘If vince any but the most devout, already con- the murders are really against his own inter- vinced, Lacanians. DANIEL COJOCARU ests, then it might be argued that these are eth- University of Zurich ical in the sense that they are pursued in search of an ideal rather than for his individual doi:10.1093/notesj/gjt142 ß The Author (2013). Published by Oxford University Press. satisfaction. ...Vic’s murders are evil acts inso- All rights reserved. For Permissions, far as they violate and destroy the humanity of please email: [email protected] the other person. Yet, from Kant onwards, the Advance Access publication 3 July, 2013 choice for evil has been theorised in terms of.

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