TOM RIPLEY 

Little Felonies
Ripley
Alter Ego
Hardly, My Dear
Miss Greene
Fear And Loathing
Aftertaste

________________________

LITTLE FELONIES

“He was imagining
being another person”
—Patricia Highsmith
RIPLEY’S GAME
______________

Life’s little felonies—
certain overarching ideas

Like the idea of the double—
murder & malevolence
___________

The desire to stalk—
and to keep secrets

His obsession with pursuit—
forging, getting away with it
____________

Counterfeiting his fiction—
keeping alive his imagination

Transgressive motifs—
poured into everything

RIPLEY

Writing for him was—
a stalking game of fiction

An elaborate game of—
pursuit, escape, disguise
_____________

He had the mind of—
a criminal genius

Look at me, Ripley said—
you’re one of my victims
________________

He momentarily enjoyed—
being his own fictive kept man

Casa Highsmith his House—
High on Haunted Hill

ALTER EGO

His alter ego—
his evil twin brother

The cat with 9 lives—
classic Highsmith themes
____________

The other person exactly—
the opposite of himself

The unseen part of him—
somewhere hidden inside
_____________

Waiting, waiting—
waiting to ambush him

STRANGER ON A TRAIN—
and other gay encounters

HARDLY, MY DEAR

“It’s a large part of Ripley’s
indistinct charm and
unadmitted sexuality that
he begins his career by
preferring to imitate the
boy rather than being,
in Noel Coward’s phrase,
“mad about the boy”
—Joan Schenkar
THE TALENTED MISS HIGHSMITH
_________________

“Hardly, my dear”—
take another look at

Miss Matt Damon—
pretending to play
_________________

Tom Ripley the imposter—
hardly the victim, my dear

Unmistakably fag—
hopelessly homo
______________

Alain Delon must’ve—
been ashamed of it all

Seeing his version of—
PURPLE NOON queered!!!

MISS GREENE

“The poet of apprehension—
not fear”—Graham Greene
___________

Highsmith creates a world—
without moral endings

Disillusioned private dicks—
unlike straitlaced Marlowe
_____________

Miss Raymond Chandler—
shocked by Highsmith’s haughtiness

Whose motives are so much—
more decadent, gay, devious
___________

Motives more intriguingly faggy—
the bad guy hoodlum winning

The poor innocent victim—
gets the electric chair

FEAR AND LOATHING

Suddenly we realize maybe—
we’re all murderers too

Perhaps we belong dead—
STRANGERS ON A TRAIN
____________

Forged checks, fake identities—
suddenly a sense of fear

Are we not on the run too—
running away from who we are
_____________

We have to learn to live with it—
nagging our nerves at night

Inescapably always true—
the tremor of forgery ours