It’s a classic work of twentieth century lesbian fiction: The Price of Salt by Claire Morgan—later released as Carol by the author’s real name, Patricia Highsmith. But what is the story behind Patricia Highsmith? Who was she, and how did she come to write such a monumental book? This sapphic graphic novel attempts to answer some of these questions.
About the Book & My Review of It
In Flung Out of Space, Grace Ellis and Hannah Templer tell Highsmith’s story. Ellis writes in the authors’ note how Highsmith was known as a suspense and psychological thriller writer—Carol was her exception, a landmark in the history of queer fiction writing. But here’s the catch: despite her incredible writing career, Highsmith, in Ellis’s words, “was an appalling person. She was deeply anti-Semitic, racist, and misogynistic, even by the standards of her time… her hatefulness is an important piece in understanding who she was as a person… [but] Pat had a magnetic personality and could be charming when she wanted to be.” Highsmith was kind of like her characters, “charismatic sociopaths who are worryingly easy to root for. The fact that she was a terrible person contributed to her success.” Ellis acknowledges that, although Highsmith contributed greatly to the history of queer literature, and was a brilliant writer of her time, she was not a hero, either.
I summarize the author’s note here because for me, reading it shaped the way I interpreted this story. I had all the complications of Highsmith’s morality in the back of my mind through all her ups and downs. So here’s a brief summary of her story in the way that Ellis and Templer tell it, and my feelings as I read:
Patricia Highsmith is a scandalous, unlikeable woman. She’s biting, nasty, blunt, and isn’t afraid to say what she thinks. When the novel opens, she is working for a comic company, even though she personally believes comics are a low-class form of writing, a joke to the rest of the literary world. What she truly wants to do is write “real books”, and she ends up writing her first novel that she will ask her agent to sell for her. She even has to pick up a job at another comics industry in order to pay for psychoanalyst sessions.
So, why is she seeing a psychoanalyst? Patricia is a lesbian, although in her words she “has a condition”—as if lesbianism were a disease, she truly believes something is wrong with her, and goes to the psychoanalyst in order to try and get “cured.” It’s not surprising, given the time period and the perception of homosexuality in social and clinical circles, that she feels this way. While she initially resists men, she eventually grows so determined to be heterosexual that she forces herself into getting a fiancée.
But, from a reader perspective, it’s not just about having sympathy for Patricia. This is especially considering how much of a jerk she is to those around her—including her boss and the decently nice guy who works with her. And, regardless of her queerness, she’s not sexually moral at all: she keeps a list ranking all the women she’s slept with, she sleeps with women who are married, and she tries to come on to her psychoanalyst in a seriously inappropriate way. But she also faces prejudice from the men in her life because of her lesbianism. All of this to say that Patricia’s snide personality, her prejudices, her womanhood, and her queer sexual orientation make for one seriously complicated moral debate. (The last line of Ellis’s author note: “If you read this book and end up conflicted about Highsmith and her legacy: good.”)
Patricia ends up falling in love with a woman named Virginia, who she meets in a therapy group for homosexual women. The two have sex a few times, but Virginia is married: and when her husband finds a tape of Virginia and another woman, he prevents her from seeing female lovers again. Patricia is devastated. Now having a job in Bloomingdale’s to pay her rising expenses, she sees a beautiful woman in the store and develops a fantasy that turns into a brand-new novel: The Price of Salt. It hurts reading about all of her rejections, one after another, because of the book’s lesbian content and happy ending—even though as a reader I know it wasn’t exactly ethical the way she got there. Like Ellis explains, Patricia is alarmingly easy to root for.
The book does end with Patricia finally getting the book published, as pulp fiction and under a pen name. It’s already becoming popular as that point. But it’s not a total fairy tale ending for Patricia: the last woman she interacts with criticizes her for writing under a pen name. This is symbolic of Patricia’s complicated life and legacy: Never a good person, but nevertheless a contributor to the queer literary canon as we know it.
Overall, Flung Out of a Space is an incredible read. Told through clever, witty dialogue and stunning duotone art, this story is unforgettable, and a read you won’t want to miss out on.
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