DEEP WATER by PATRICIA HIGHSMITH - CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

  Tom Ripley, the sociopath serial killer of the series that involved him was required reading for me at college just when I was burning out of reading, and so I didn't appreciate Patricia Highsmith in that moment.   The Talented Mr. Ripley film changed my mind and  Iwent back into reading that book over as well as all those that followed in which Tom got away with murder.


Other of Highsmith's fictions have been turned into films as she catches on with a new generation.  Deep Water - which I listened to as an audio book - is not one in which the killer gets away with it, but as I begin to understand what Highsmith was up to with noir, I realize she is playing with the fantasy all of us must have had for at least one second of our lives.  And so the reader, safe under the covers on a dreary afternoon, with that necessary plate of crackers and cheese from Trader Joes, and a glass of wine too, listens well and explores the dark side of human nature and wonders for a while - suspense building - exactly when the character will be driven to murder - or at least stand up for himself already.  And as in other Highsmith works, when he does get to it, he does so efficiently.  In this case there isn't a lot of calculation revealed.  Rather we wonder how a husband in a loveless and sexless marriage that he still wants, can take his too youthful wife's blatant cheating, her bringing home of men into their home.  He pretends that this open relationship not of his making is actually all right with him.


If it were not this, it would be something else because we all stay too long in some situation that has the potential to break us, wishing and hoping it were not so.


Here is the small town with it's own conceits and protections.  It's cliques.  It's phoniness.  It's sexism.  Husband, Vic, is perhaps a "strange bird," but there are those who like him and those who don't, those who believe his wife, those who do not.  Those who would not blame him; they would kill their wives if they were caught cheating.  Is he just suspicious?  Well he has his reason for staying cool and staying married and that is their daughter and to compensate her for her cold and indifferent mother.  You get the idea this young woman married him just because, that motherhood was her duty.


Highsmith manages to convince us Vic is a weird character not just because he retreats to his own bedroom every night, sometimes in the wee hours as he has sat up with his wife and the man she brought home all night just daring them to go to her room with him awake.
In there are his pet snails.  They seem to do the most fornicating - very slowly.


But do we "like" him?  Aren't we encouraged as writers to write characters who are likeable - or at least understandable - or at least worth our empathy?  Well Vic is a passive man and he is a literary snob involved in the publishing business - makes me wonder who Highsmith had in mind as she wrote him.  As she likes to do there is ambiguity about her male characters' sexuality.  Does Vic also need marriage for cover?  What kind of love is his?  Did he drive his wife into the arms of other men because he doesn't want sex with her?


Will his wife manage to seduce someone who believes her and catch him before he murders again since we are pretty sure he could get the hang of it?


And so Dark Water implies the tides of emotion, the noir, as well as where the dead guy ends up, waiting to bob up into view, which he does.  And until then, you will probably enjoy the anxiety of the suspense.


C 2018 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

BEHIND THE CANDELABRA AUTHOR SCOTT THORSON WRITING HIS NEXT BOOK : I CAN'T WAIT!

September 22 2025 :  Just a note that Scott Thorson passed away.

Scott Thorson (January 23, 1959 – August 16, 2024)

BEHIND THE CANDELABRA AUTHOR SCOTT THORSON
 HAS ANOTHER BOOK IN HIM: I CAN'T WAIT TO READ IT !

By Christine Trzyna

 

Settle down into your too soft sofa because this too is a tale. 

You might even want to make some microwave popcorn before you begin to read.

Years ago I had a Movie Buddy, A Platonic Male Hetero Friend.  We saw some of the movies  ("film") together that remain favorites of mine to this day.  We used to read an institution in LA called The LA Weekly on say, Wednesday when it came out, to figure out what we might see on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday night.

There was this one film critic at the LA Weekly who hated just about every movie we  loved.  We started reading his column to see what he HATED!

Then we'd go see that movie.

We could afford to go. 

We could afford the tickets, the gas, the parking, and afterwards, some pie and ice cream with coffee or tea, and tips to the waitress, at a diner.  All of which now would be a luxury and why so many people stay home and watch DVD's.

I do so miss the BIG SCREEN.  To me the Big Screen is a Big Part of the Movie Experience.

Years went by and my friend started having to always have his way, the final say, when it came to what movie to see.  His tastes had changed.  He liked more violence and kink than I could stand.  He was always arriving last minute and running late and driving like a hellion over the canyons and scaring the hell out of me that we'd be killed on a curve on Laurel Canyon.  (As much as I would want to be reincarnated to live in a house on a curve of a road in Laurel Canyon, it would be better to have a PAST LIFE rather than a FUTURE LIFE there! I let him drive my car on the freeway once and broke out in a cold sweat, clawing the seat as we almost shaved the side of another car. )  This was the beginning of the end of our Movie Buddyship and then our friendship.

...  So now you've eaten half that popcorn and you're saying "Wait a minute! What does this have to do with "Behind the Candelabra?"  and Scott Thorson? ...

I'll tell you.

I thought the movie was fantastic, me with the mom who used to say of Liberace "He's not gay he just loves his mother!" and have seen it TWICE.  (Maybe I should have a film rating system that gives five stars to only the few films I've seen twice or want to see again?)  It seems that movie has the magic something and that I wasn't the only one who loved it.

As I watched this film I was thinking back to being in the theater with my long ago Movie Buddy,  Platonic Male Hetero Friend, and such Romantically Sweet films such as "Crossing Delancy Street."  We all wanted the Amy Irving character to forget the Literary Bore and get out of her Snobby and Low Paying Independent Book Store job and marry the Pickle Man! 

My friend was so involved in that film - that near-end part where the Pickle Man has been stood up waiting for this woman at her Bubbie's apartment. She's gone to read the unpublished pages of the Literary Bore and escaped his seduction.  She's realized how stupid she's been and races to meet the good man who really wants her, but thinks she got there too late. From where he stands he sees her shed a tear and only then he renters the room.

My friend's words out loud -"Kiss her!  Kiss her!" - filled the quiet theater.

What would my friend, who has since imported a bride from a Communist Country and married, and who is no longer my friend, think of "Behind the Candelabra?" 

Did anyone yell "Kiss him!  Kiss Him!" at the screen? 

"Behind the Candelabra" takes place in the past but as a genre in film I'd say it is where Romance is at presently in film, for gone are the days of Sweet Romance. 

And...

IT SEEMS TO ME THAT "BEHIND THE CANDELABRA"  FILM WAS MADE FOR THE BIG SCREEN!  Liberace and his sets and Vegas were larger than life.  (We the lurid want to see Matt Damon's hot body on the big screen too!  We the lurid have loved Matt since he played that quite possibly gay character, Ripley, by intentionally confusing author Patricia Highsmith, in "The Talented Mr. Ripley." )

I read Scott Thorson's memoir, "Behind the Candelabra" when it came out years ago and read it again last spring when I heard the film was in production.  I wanted to know more about one of my mom's favorites!  I can't wait to read Scott's second book.  (He worked on the first one with another writer, Alex Thorleifson,  incorrectly called a "ghost writer" since he is credited.) This second book is also already written and will contain his relationship with Michael Jackson and other secrets.

I ALSO WANT TO READ SCOTT'S THIRD BOOK, the one he has yet to write.

This third book is going to be the Biggest Challenge of His Life, and Scott's life has been and is challenged.  First, while the movie and its stars gained traction, he had no home to go home to but the Bunny Ranch, a legal brothel where the owner, Dennis Hoff and some of the sex workers paid to bail him out of jail and for a good attorney. Then Scott was removed to a Reno location where he's having trouble staying with the program.*  As is he's in treatment for colon cancer.  Between the terms of his probation and the cancer, he is unable to attend to promoting "Behind the Candelabra" book or the movie, which appears to up for awards.  

Scott needs a Big Challenge of the Positive Kind.  I believe writing can heal a writer, or at least move one towards understanding what  has happened in life so you can go from there. 

Scott, if you're reading this, YOU HAVE A THIRD BOOK.

While I had a Movie Buddy, a Platonic Male Hetero Friend, I worked in a business where I had lots of contact with gay men and even some Platonic Male Homo Friends.  None as flamboyant as Liberace, but it seems to me that the much older man with the much younger man was sort of the reality in that crowd.   (I even remember some of them saying that underage boys "knew" what they were "doing" when they got involved with older men, which today we are sensitized to understand as child molestation.)  The movie and what Scott lived reminded me of those days and that scene, that time and place in the gay world that needs to be written about.

While watching "Behind the Candelabra" I was remembering an era, a time and place that is gone - for good.  That time is the time before AIDS!  Oh sure, there are writers who have lived it and written it, and many of them are dead.  Most of them have not enjoyed a mostly heterosexual readership or viewership. 

*update September 9th.  Scott has been rearrested for testing positive for illegal drug use and is back in the pokey.  His attorney says he thinks some of the medications he's taking for cancer may have triggered a false positive...


C Christine Trzyna 2013 - 2026 All Rights Reserved.

IS YOUR LIBRARY UNABLE TO BUY BOOKS DUE TO BUDGET CUTS?

Recently I checked to see if any of the books I suggested for purchase at my local library system had been. None were. (I am particularly dying to read THE TALENTED MISS HIGHSMITH (about a favorite writer of mine Patricia Highsmith) by Joan Schenkar. Ah well, there is near no money to buy any new books. If the library buys ONE copy of a book it will suffice and we can be put on an electronic waiting list for our turn to read it.

I WONDER IF THIS WILL FORCE READERS LIKE ME TO COME UP WITH FUNDS TO BUY MORE OF OUR OWN BOOKS or if DONATIONS to the LIBRARY of BOOKS will be taken more seriously and provide the library with books to be put on shelves and loaned out rather than books to be SOLD at library book sales?