Frankie's Reviews > Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950's

This memoir reads like lesbian pulp fiction and I was ENGROSSED. Utterly obsessed with Patricia Highsmith now, wow. This book paints a vivid picture of 1950s queer NYC. I learned so many cool things:

-Highsmith dated Vin Packer, one of the most famous lesbian pulp authors (and author of this memoir)
-she was also friends with Filipino writer José Garcia Villa who was apparently gay???
-she was friends with tons of queer figures from that era and I wish I could know about them all
-apparently women could be barred from restaurants just for wearing PANTS. And butches could be banned from using both the female and male bathrooms. Honestly, insane that this was only 70 years ago. My grandparents were teenagers then. This is so recent and it blows my mind how much queer history has been forgotten in 2024
-gay businessmen leaving for a weekend trip to Fire Island by wearing "tighter" trousers and cardigans in ice cream colors. So funny. Grandpa gay, things haven't changed!!
-another anecdote about Meaker stumbling towards her Fire Island villa at night, being frightened because she was being followed by a naked man, only for the lights to go on and both of them screaming because he didn't realize she was a woman 😭 helppp
-the anectode about a lesbian couple that set a timer on their lights so that neighbors would think they slept in separate bedrooms... So sad
-highsmith was not a very pleasant person; she was damn cool but also an alcoholic asshole with severe mommy issues. Carol makes so much sense now.
-lesbians have been u-hauling since the 1950s lol
-authors used to make a shitton of money... Comparatively speaking
-mixed (as in MLM and WLW) bars were rarer back then because it was so easy for straight people to stumble inside. But also, gay bar tourism was already a thing in the 50s and you could be outed just for being spotted at gay establishments
-oh and of course, lesbian pulp had to either end in tragedy or the MC becoming straight otherwise the postal service would not deliver the books! Oh publishing.