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# One Vicious Author
- URL: https://thedailyeudemon.com/53427/
- Published: 2023-03-26T06:44:00.000Z
- Updated: 2023-04-26T12:05:40.000Z
- Author: Eric Scheske
- Tags: Books, Biography, #wpChunk

You remember the 1987 movie, *Throw Mama from the Train*?

I learned last night that it was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 movie, *Strangers on a Train*, which was in turn based on the novel by the same name.

The author of the novel?

Patricia Highsmith, a nasty woman whose biography makes Ellen Degeneres look like Maria von Trapp.

“\[S\]he was a predatory lesbian, in addition to being a professional homebreaker; a nasty drunk; an emotional sadist; and an equal-opportunity bigot who seems to have detested every group except the American and European *gratin*. Arabs, Jews, the French, Catholics, evangelicals, Latinos, blacks, Koreans, Indians both dot and feather . . . the list goes on and on.”

When I read that, I was like, “Wow. She didn't like Catholics?! That bitch!”

So I had to keep reading.

(New TDE readers, please note: my prose occasionally lapses into irony.)

It turns out she had a rough childhood. She was an abortion survivor (her mother tried to terminate the pregnancy with turpentine) and a divorce survivor (her parents divorced when she was six months). She speculated later that she was sexually assaulted as a child but couldn't recall, or didn't divulge, details. For her entire life, she was filled with murderous rage.

But she could apparently write: 22 novels and numerous short stories.

And when she wasn't writing, she was traveling and trying to get married women to have lesbian affairs with her. She loved to break-up marriages.

Like I said, she was an awful person.

Anyway, if you want to read more about this awful person, check out [this review](https://newcriterion.com/issues/2021/2/vicious-highsmith?ref=thedailyeudemon.com) of [*Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires*](https://amzn.to/36CYcq0?ref=thedailyeudemon.com), a brand new biography about Patricia Highsmith released a few days ago.