 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(January 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) |
 First edition | |
| Author | Patricia Highsmith |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Set in | Tunisia |
| Published | Doubleday & Co. |
Publication date | 1969 |
| Media type | |
The Tremor of Forgery (1969) is a psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith. [1] It was the thirteenth of her 22 novels.
American writer Howard Ingham arrives in the sweltering heat of Tunisia in search of inspiration for a new movie script he has been commissioned to write. The director with whom he is collaborating fails to appear and hears reports from home in the U.S. about infidelity and suicide. Rather than abandon the project, Howard stays and starts work on a novel. He gets to know Francis J. Adams, an aging American propagandist, and Anders Jensen, a Danish homosexual painter. While waiting for a letter from his New York girlfriend, he settled on a plot for his projected novel, the story of a banker who forges documents to steal money he then gives to the poor. One night, Ingham finds someone breaking into his apartment. He throws his typewriter at the intruder, possibly killing him. The body is dragged away by the intruder's accomplices. Ingham struggles to keep this incident secret from his acquaintances while at the same time questioning Western morality, in particular the application of its principles in a country where he lives as a stranger.
Like many of Highsmith's other novels, The Tremor of Forgery is ultimately a morality tale. Highsmith reveals that like most people, the novel's protagonist Ingham sees himself as ultimately a good person who cares about the welfare of people and loves his fiancé. However, as the novel progresses, Ingham's actions reveal that human morality is more often dictated by circumstances, and that self-interest and preservation is humanity's underlying ethos. Human emotions that drive our behavior, such as love, are by the end of the novel, portrayed as artificial constructs of society, rather than emotions that are deeply felt. This is confusing to Ingham, as he laments that the world, including his own feelings, are incomprehensible to him. [2]
"Highsmith has produced work as serious in its implications and as subtle in its approach as anything being done in the novel today." - Julian Symons
"Miss Highsmith's finest novel to my mind is The Tremor of Forgery, and if I were to be asked what it is about I would reply, 'Apprehension'." - Graham Greene
Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short story writer widely known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley.
The Member of the Wedding is a 1946 novel by Southern writer Carson McCullers. It took McCullers five years to complete, although she interrupted the work for a few months to write the novella The Ballad of the Sad Café.
Strangers on a Train is a 1951 American psychological thriller film noir produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and based on the 1950 novel Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith. It was shot in the autumn of 1950 and released by Warner Bros. on June 30, 1951.
The American Friend is a 1977 neo-noir film by Wim Wenders, adapted from the 1974 novel Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith. The film features Dennis Hopper as career criminal Tom Ripley and Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Zimmermann, a terminally ill picture framer whom Ripley coerces into becoming an assassin. The film uses an unusual "natural" language concept: Zimmermann speaks German with his family and his doctor, but English with Ripley and while visiting Paris.
The Talented Mr. Ripley is a 1999 American psychological thriller film written and directed by Anthony Minghella. An adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel of the same name, the film stars Matt Damon as Tom Ripley, Jude Law as Dickie Greenleaf, Gwyneth Paltrow as Marge Sherwood, Cate Blanchett as Meredith Logue, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Freddie Miles.
Ripley Under Water is a 1991 psychological thriller by Patricia Highsmith, the last of five novels featuring Tom Ripley, "an intelligent, cultured gentleman who dabbles in art, music and, occasionally, murder". It was the eighteenth of her 22 novels.
Thomas Ripley is a fictional character in a series of crime novels by American novelist Patricia Highsmith, as well as several film adaptations. The character is an anti-hero: he is a career criminal, a con artist and serial killer. The five novels in which he appears—The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley, and Ripley Under Water, were published between 1955 and 1991.
Morgan Scott Peck (1936–2005) was an American psychiatrist and best-selling author who wrote the book The Road Less Traveled, published in 1978.
Of Human Bondage is a 1915 novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It is generally agreed to be his masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although Maugham stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography; though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Maugham, who had originally planned to call his novel Beauty from Ashes, finally settled on a title taken from a section of Spinoza's Ethics. The Modern Library ranked Of Human Bondage No. 66 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Ripley Under Ground is a psychological thriller by Patricia Highsmith, the second novel in her Ripliad series. It was published in June 1970.
Purple Noon is a 1960 crime thriller film directed by René Clément, loosely based on the 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. The film stars Alain Delon in his first major film, along with Maurice Ronet and Marie Laforêt ; Billy Kearns plays Greenleaf's friend Freddy Miles, and Romy Schneider appears briefly in an uncredited role as Freddie Miles' companion. The film, principally in French, contains brief sequences in Italian.
This Sweet Sickness (1960) is a psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith, about a man who is obsessed with a woman who has rejected his advances. It is a "painful novel about obsessive imaginary love".
The Price of Salt is a 1952 romance novel by Patricia Highsmith, first published under the pseudonym "Claire Morgan". Highsmith—known as a suspense writer based on her psychological thriller Strangers on a Train—used an alias because she did not want to be tagged as "a lesbian-book writer", and because of the use of her own life references for characters and occurrences in the story. Though Highsmith had many sexual and romantic relationships with women and wrote over 22 novels and numerous short stories, The Price of Salt is her only novel about an unequivocal lesbian relationship and its relatively happy ending was unprecedented in lesbian literature. It is also notable for being the only one of her novels with "a conventional 'happy ending'" and characters who had "more explicit sexual existences".
North and South is a social novel published in 1854 by English writer Elizabeth Gaskell. With Wives and Daughters (1865) and Cranford (1853), it is one of her best-known novels and was adapted for television three times. The 2004 version renewed interest in the novel and attracted a wider readership.
Strangers on a Train (1950) is a psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith about two men whose lives become entangled after one of them proposes they "trade" murders.
Sentimentalism is a practice of being sentimental, and thus tending toward basing actions and reactions upon emotions and feelings, in preference to reason.
The Cry of the Owl is a psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith, the eighth of her 22 novels. It was first published in the US in 1962 by Harper & Row and in the UK by Heinemann the following year. It explores, in the phrase of critic Brigid Brophy, "the psychology of the self-selected victim".
Carol is a 2015 romantic drama period film directed by Todd Haynes. The screenplay by Phyllis Nagy is based on the 1952 romance novel The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith. The film stars Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson, Jake Lacy, and Kyle Chandler. Set in New York City during the early 1950s, Carol tells the story of a forbidden affair between an aspiring female photographer and an older woman going through a difficult divorce.
Found in the Street (1986) is the twentieth novel by the American expatriate writer Patricia Highsmith, the nineteenth published under her own name. It was published in the UK in April 1986 and in the US in 1987.
People Who Knock on the Door (1983) is a novel by Patricia Highsmith. It was the nineteenth of her 22 novels.
 | This article about a crime novel of the 1960s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |
