Patricia Highsmith Is Flung Out of Space in Graphic Novel Biography
The Price of Salt, adapted into the beloved film Carol, is one of the pillars of the lesbian fiction world, and rightfully so; it was the first published lesbian novel with a happy ending.
But its author, Patricia Highsmith, was a complicated and flawed woman. The new graphic novel Flung Out of Space seeks to give readers a glimpse into the life of the woman who forever changed lesbian media.Written by Lumberjanes co-creator Grace Ellis and illustrated by Cosmoknights creator Hannah Templer, Flung Out of Space tells the story of Highsmith when she was in her 20s, leading up to her first published novels: 1950’s Strangers on a Train (later adapted into a film by Alfred Hitchcock) and of course, The Price of Salt (1952).
At the time, Highsmith was a “drinker, a smoker, and a hater of life” working in comics (which she also hated), in and out of conversion therapy, having one-night stands with women, and full of self-loathing.It was during this tumultuous time, however, that Highsmith had a famous Christmas department store encounter with an older woman who became the inspiration for The Price of Salt. “While Carol is famous for not killing off its lesbian lovers, I find it equally interesting to learn that Patricia Highsmith wrote it under a pseudonym and was undergoing great personal turmoil and tragedy in her life at the time, events which fueled and inspired the fiction,” Templer says. “The fact that she wrote a parallel improved reality is relatable, poignant, and even beautiful to understand as a queer person.”But as important as The Price of Salt is, and as beautiful as parts of the story are, Highsmith was an equally terrible and hateful person.
