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“There was a wooden walk that led half across the beach, which Tom knew must be hot as hell to walk on, because everybody was lying on a towel or something else, but he took his shoes off anyway and stood for a moment on the hot wood, calmly surveying the groups of people near him. None of the people looked like Richard, and the shimmering heat waves kept him from making out the people very far away. Tom put one foot out on the sand and drew it back. Then he took a deep breath, raced down the rest of the walk, sprinted across the sand, and sank his feet into the blissfully cool inches of water at the sea’s edge. He began to walk…Tom saw him from a distance of about a block �� unmistakably Dickie, though he was burnt a dark brown and his crinkly blond hair looked lighter than Tom remembered it. He was with Marge. ‘Dickie Greenleaf?�� Tom asked, smiling…��
- Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

Like many people around the world, my wife and I are just trying to get through the coronavirus pandemic as best we can. Most weekends, that means sitting in the basement once the kids are asleep, drinking cheap wine and watching Schitt’s Creek. One recent night, after finishing season three, I logged out of Netflix and switched to live television. When I did, we saw that Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film version of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley was just starting.

A stylish, gorgeously filmed movie, filled with incredible performances, we were immediately drawn in, our plans to go to bed at a reasonable hour shelved. We popped another cork, drank some more wine, and somehow decided that it would be fun to do a husband-wife buddy read of Highsmith’s entire series.

I forgot about that idea for several days, until Ripley novels started showing up in the mail. Abiding by the dictum that one should always do sober what one said they’d do drunk, I picked up the first entry in the five-novel Ripley saga to begin the journey.

By this point, The Talented Mr. Ripley needs very little introduction. At its center is Tom Ripley, a young, charming sociopath who is absolutely convinced that he is entitled to more than the world has given him. Early on, Tom is tapped by a wealthy shipping magnate named Herbert Greenleaf to go to Italy �� all expenses paid �� in order to convince his son Dickie to return to America.

Things do not go as planned.

When Tom arrives in the seaside town of Mongibello, he subtly insinuates himself into Dickie’s orbit. Dickie is a playboy expatriate, the kind who sincerely believes that money doesn’t matter, because he has a lot of it. Unsurprisingly, Tom finds Dickie’s louche existence to be impossibly charming: lazy afternoons on the beach; cocktail hours that stretch for days; and drunken sprees in Rome. Tom soon forms a close bond with Dickie, much to the chagrin of Marge Sherwood, a friend of Dickie’s who is quietly in love with him.

It is hard to say much more plot-wise without giving away the whole thing. This is, after all, a taut, lean, and efficient thriller of less than three-hundred pages. In terms of pacing, it is effortlessly propulsive. After looking down to start the novel, I don’t think I looked up again until I was halfway through. Highsmith has a wonderful way with tension, of carefully tightening the mood so that �� as a reader �� it’s really hard to disengage.

I don’t think it spoils anything to say that The Talented Mr. Ripley is full of darkness and violence. Indeed, this is a somewhat pulpy novel that is given a high sheen by Highsmith’s literary skills. The characterizations of the supporting cast, especially Dickie Greenleaf, Marge Sherwood, and Freddy Miles, are savagely precise. Meanwhile, the settings are fully-realized. There are times when this felt like a travelogue of Europe in the fifties, when vacationing was a high-class artform.

But make no mistake. The Talented Mr. Ripley works because of its inimitable protagonist.

Tom Ripley is simply a fascinating creation. Though Highsmith writes in the third-person, Tom is the only person to whom we are given internal access. The entirety of the story is run through him, and the tale hinges on his complex personality. I’m not sure how, but it absolutely works.

Of course, you can’t discuss Tom without mentioning his sexuality, a facet of his characters that threatens to subsume him. When Tom was young, he was raised by an abusive aunt who called him a “sissy.�� Throughout the proceedings, others outright suggest that Tom is gay, though he denies this. It’s no small point, since the novel was written �� and is set �� at a time when homosexuality was both stigmatized and criminalized.

Highsmith �� herself a lesbian �� never gives a direct answer. Certainly, there are some implications that Tom is attracted to men. More specifically, the animating factor in The Talented Mr. Ripley is Tom’s desire to be Dickie Greenleaf. Mostly, I found Tom to be curiously asexual in matters of physical desire. He seems far more interested in indulging his appetite for fine art, fine literature, and foreign languages.

Nevertheless, the sexuality angle is important, because it has given The Talented Mr. Ripley a hint of controversy. In particular, Highsmith has been accused of conflating Ripley’s sexual preference with his psychopathy, as though both “deviancies�� �� and homosexuality was once labeled as such �� were inextricably entwined.

I am sure there is a mountain of secondary literature on this topic, but I have made no effort to explore it. For what it’s worth, I never sensed that Tom’s actions were driven by his sexuality. That is, there was no cause and effect relationship between sexual orientation and criminal behavior. Indeed, one of the first scenes in The Talented Mr. Ripley shows Tom pretending to be an IRS agent, tricking unsuspecting taxpayers into sending him checks for unpaid taxes. Tom, however, has no intention of cashing these checks. He just likes the amusement. Thus, before any homoerotic tension is introduced, Tom is already established as a man who likes to try on other identities as though they were articles of clothing. In short, Tom Ripley is not �� for example �� anything like Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs, a man whose bad acts seem a manifestation of his sexual identity.

(The Minghella film takes the book’s subtext and makes it textual, doing so in a rather unsubtle manner. Thus, the film and the book make very complimentary pieces).

To the extent that Tom Ripley is viewed as a gay character, time has probably done The Talented Mr. Ripley some favors. When Highsmith first published this back in 1955, there were not nearly as many portrayals of gay men and women in literature as there are today. Many of the portrayals that did exist lacked nuance or sympathy. Now, however, gay characters are much more prevalent, and have taken many different dimensions. They are allowed the same broad scope as heterosexual characters, meaning that while some are good, some are also bad, even murderous (the novels of Sarah Waters spring to mind on this latter point). In 1955, Ripley might have stood out as a negative stereotype or an unfortunate symbol. Today, it’s easier to see him as a villain who just happens to be gay.

No matter how Tom is defined, he holds the page. As the leading man, I was on his side the whole time, no matter what he did. I’m not proud to admit it, but I was cheering for him, in the same way I cheer for the burglars in a heist film. Except in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Tom is playing a deadlier game. In any other universe, Tom would probably be the big baddie. Here, he is the hero of the piece, and Highsmith’s magic act was in getting me to care so deeply about a person who doesn’t care about anyone else at all.