Patricia Highsmith

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive. This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast, but it is the only version we have. It comes from the British Library's radio collection.

Speaker 20:15

The recording didn't contain the guests' eight music choices, so we've rebuilt the original show by using discs from the B B C Gramophone library. For Wright's reasons we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:26

Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Disc's website.

Speaker 20:31

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy nine.

Speaker 20:35

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:54

On our Desert Island this week is the writer Patricia Highsmith.

Presenter0:58

Miss Highsmith, could you endure prolonged loneliness?

Patricia Highsmith1:02

I think I could, uh better than most people, probably.

Presenter1:05

You have lived on your own quite a lot.

Patricia Highsmith1:08

Yes. And also um

Patricia Highsmith1:11

at some distance from uh friends or neighbors too.

Presenter1:14

How much does music mean in your life?

Patricia Highsmith1:16

Quite a bit. I I would not like to think of a day without listening to some kind of music and and in fact any kind and

Patricia Highsmith1:24

I think the reason is when I become uh lost or I get discouraged or something, any kind of music has a beat to it, whether it's classical or

Patricia Highsmith1:32

pop and it's like another kind of time that you

Patricia Highsmith1:35

So you get back I get back into a certain

Patricia Highsmith1:38

ability to to move

Presenter1:40

You play the piano yourself.

Patricia Highsmith1:42

I used to. I w I wouldn't dare speak about it, the way I play, but I it for my amusement, yes.

Presenter1:48

You play discs a lot.

Patricia Highsmith1:50

No.

Patricia Highsmith1:51

I have them at home, but, um

Patricia Highsmith1:54

Uh usually I switch on the radio to uh France musique. It's very good all around the clock. Um not late at night, but

Patricia Highsmith2:04

Very good stuff.

Presenter2:05

How did you set about choosing your 8 disc? Are you choosing nostalgically or?

Presenter2:10

Great.

Presenter2:11

Music performances.

Patricia Highsmith2:13

chose uh what I happen to like or what I consider inspired or

Patricia Highsmith2:18

thrilling somehow and

Patricia Highsmith2:20

They would that I have pleasant associations with too.

Presenter2:24

What do we start with?

Patricia Highsmith2:25

I think it was the uh Mozart uh piano concerto, wasn't it, number twenty three?

Presenter2:30

Number twenty three. Yes, why do you choose this work?

Patricia Highsmith2:32

I think it was because it was one of the first ones when I was um

Patricia Highsmith2:37

Go on.

Patricia Highsmith2:38

Twenty years older, so that I

Patricia Highsmith2:40

I liked as my favorite Mozart at that time.

Presenter3:38

Part of the first movement of the Mozart piano concerto number twenty three in A major,

Presenter3:43

Gezer Ander conducting and playing with the Camerata Academica of the Salzburg Mozartium.

Presenter3:50

You're from the United States, whereabouts?

Patricia Highsmith3:53

Texas.

Presenter3:54

How long did you stay in the south?

Patricia Highsmith3:56

Not very long until I was six years old.

Presenter3:59

Your ch

Patricia Highsmith3:59

Parenthood was

Presenter4:00

A little un unsettled, wasn't it?

Patricia Highsmith4:02

Well, um, yes. My mother she liked to change apartments pretty frequently in New York. I don't know why.

Presenter4:07

Mm-hmm.

Patricia Highsmith4:08

Various parts of

Patricia Highsmith4:09

of Manhattan.

Presenter4:10

And High Smith is in fact the name of your stepfather.

Patricia Highsmith4:12

Yes. My parents were married for two years.

Patricia Highsmith4:16

And um my mother decided to get a divorce five months before I was born.

Presenter4:22

Did you know your real father?

Patricia Highsmith4:23

Yes, I met him when I was twelve years old, very briefly.

Presenter4:26

Who brought you up, Mendel?

Patricia Highsmith4:28

My grandmother, when I was very small, I was born in her house.

Presenter4:31

Yes.

Patricia Highsmith4:32

And my mother remarried when I was three years old.

Presenter4:36

Both your parents were commercial artists. Were they successful?

Patricia Highsmith4:39

Yes, they they were successful. I wouldn't call it a great success.

Presenter4:44

So you went to New York when you were what was it, six? Six. You had a Texas accent?

Presenter4:51

Then high school, Columbia or University. What subjects did you read?

Patricia Highsmith4:55

English literature and uh English composition. Sounds very strange, but

Patricia Highsmith5:00

Short story and uh playwriting, oddly enough, which I can't.

Presenter5:04

Devil.

Patricia Highsmith5:05

To this day

Presenter5:05

So after Graduation Day, what happened?

Patricia Highsmith5:08

Well, I moved away from home into what is would be called in England a bed sitter.

Presenter5:14

Yes.

Patricia Highsmith5:14

and got some terrible job just in order to pay the rent.

Presenter5:17

When did you start to write seriously?

Patricia Highsmith5:19

Well, I suppose when I was twenty one and, you know, away from home

Patricia Highsmith5:24

I was working in the evenings because I had a full time job in the daytime.

Patricia Highsmith5:29

And then I learned how to write um these comic books which I could do freelance, meaning

Patricia Highsmith5:37

I could earn twice as much money as a job, and have twice as much time.

Presenter5:40

What sort of subjects did you specialize in?

Patricia Highsmith5:43

the science fiction a bit in those days and then uh something like Captain Marvel which was a form of Superman and

Presenter5:49

You you did the plots or the dialogue.

Patricia Highsmith5:50

Yes, the um well, the plots and the dialogue, and then one handed that to the artist.

Presenter5:56

Did you enjoy it?

Patricia Highsmith5:57

No. Uh I mean, sometimes it was fun. Uh it's like thinking up three grade B or C films every day, the plots, beginning, middle and end. It was just a way of

Presenter6:04

Not so beginning

Patricia Highsmith6:06

Playing the Ren

Presenter6:08

Let's break off at this point for your second record. What next?

Patricia Highsmith6:11

Oh yes, Rachmaninoff, the second piano concerto.

Patricia Highsmith6:15

which I think is very dramatic and, um

Patricia Highsmith6:18

I had an artist friend, a painter.

Patricia Highsmith6:21

And she was doing a portrait of me and she sometimes put it on to play, so I associate it with that and

Patricia Highsmith6:27

Uh her own seriousness.

Presenter7:27

The opening of the Rachmaninoff second piano concerto with the composer at the piano.

Presenter7:34

So you were slaving away at your comic books. When did you start to write your first novel?

Patricia Highsmith7:39

I made a bad start, um, I think age twenty three on a a novel that I

Patricia Highsmith7:44

Uh twenty-two, in fact.

Patricia Highsmith7:46

I never finished it. It became more than three hundred pages long and

Patricia Highsmith7:50

I stopped it. So I wi I was down in Mexico and I

Patricia Highsmith7:54

Absolutely ran out of money, so I had to come back.

Presenter7:56

You've gone down to Mexico to write. What was the theme of the first one? What sort of thing?

Patricia Highsmith8:00

Oh, it was rather gothic. It was about a a poor boy adopted into a a rich friend's home.

Presenter8:06

Yes.

Patricia Highsmith8:07

and uh several people living in the home and

Patricia Highsmith8:11

Something about a hidden jewel. I think it was a terrible plot. Uh Uh

Presenter8:14

Uh

Patricia Highsmith8:14

Uh

Presenter8:14

Yeah.

Patricia Highsmith8:15

Just as well, I never finished that one.

Presenter8:15

Well, I never finished that one. So it was back to plotting copy books for a bit until you were financially stable?

Patricia Highsmith8:21

Yes, but it th that is when I began to do the freelance uh uh at home, which I

Presenter8:25

Mm-hmm.

Patricia Highsmith8:26

did until I was twenty eight.

Presenter8:28

Yeah.

Patricia Highsmith8:28

And then my Strangers on a Train was published when I was twenty eight, I believe.

Presenter8:32

That was your first completed book? Yes. Was it accepted by the first publisher you sent it to?

Patricia Highsmith8:37

When it was half done.

Patricia Highsmith8:39

It certainly was not it was rejected six times by

Patricia Highsmith8:43

New York Publishers, six publishers.

Patricia Highsmith8:46

And they said um no one can bring off this ending.

Patricia Highsmith8:49

But when I did finish the book, it was taken by the first publisher, which happened to be Harper and Rowe now.

Presenter8:55

And it was bought by a celebrated film director.

Patricia Highsmith8:58

Uh yes, very soon, uh maybe thanks to a New Yorker very

Patricia Highsmith9:03

Small but good review. Uh Hitchcock uh took an interest in it and bought it.

Presenter9:08

and made a celebrated film. Now, contrary to public opinion, and unless you're a big name author, there's not a lot of money in film rights.

Patricia Highsmith9:15

That's true. Especially if the book has not had a big sale beforehand. If the book has had a big sale, then even for a first book

Patricia Highsmith9:22

Uh then the writer can

Patricia Highsmith9:24

raise the price, but uh certainly I couldn't because the book had only a moderate sale.

Presenter9:29

And you went ahead with your second novel. Now, there's a rather curious institution to

Presenter9:35

English eyes called yado. Yes.

Patricia Highsmith9:37

It's it um I would call it an artist's colony. I hate the word colony, but um it's in Saratoga Springs, about two hours from uh New York City. And it's still in New York State.

Speaker 19:46

New New York.

Speaker 19:50

Hmm.

Patricia Highsmith9:51

And it has room, I think, for something like, at present, uh sixty, sixty five.

Patricia Highsmith9:57

Writers during two summer months, or sometimes six weeks. And it doesn't cost anything, but you have to be recommended by

Patricia Highsmith10:04

Three people in your field.

Patricia Highsmith10:06

and be engaged on a certain project.

Patricia Highsmith10:09

And then

Patricia Highsmith10:11

I think about, um well, if four hundred people apply, and they they do every year, is something like sixty five are are chosen because otherwise there's no more room.

Presenter10:20

This is privately subsidized.

Patricia Highsmith10:22

It's subsidised by the Trask family who.

Patricia Highsmith10:26

used to own the land. It's hundreds of acres of pine forest. It's very pretty. Very comfortable as a private bath for everyone.

Speaker 110:30

Right.

Patricia Highsmith10:35

And

Patricia Highsmith10:36

You have breakfast around nine o'clock until nine thirty, or it's comfortable hours, but you pick up a l workman's lunch box. They ask you, Do you want tea or coffee and so forth, or what kind of sandwiches do you like?

Patricia Highsmith10:47

Then you go to your room, and no one is allowed to disturb you until four thirty.

Presenter10:52

This sounds a very civilized institution. I wish we had something like this.

Patricia Highsmith10:55

I wish so.

Presenter10:56

Yeah.

Presenter10:57

Uh you wandered to Europe quite early.

Patricia Highsmith11:00

Not too early. I I was again uh twenty eight, I think, and well, Strangers on a Train had just been published and

Patricia Highsmith11:08

I had been looking forward to seeing Europe, so I went.

Presenter11:11

And this made travel possible.

Patricia Highsmith11:13

Yes, yes.

Presenter11:14

Good. Record number three. Watch that.

Patricia Highsmith11:17

That is the coffee cantata of um

Patricia Highsmith11:20

Johann Sebastian Bach.

Patricia Highsmith11:22

And this I like because uh it's one of the few which is sung in German instead of uh

Patricia Highsmith11:27

Latin, and it's also comical.

Patricia Highsmith11:30

about, um, a young girl who whose father wants her to stop drinking coffee because it was a new institution and

Patricia Highsmith11:37

And so the song that I like, the father says she she can't get married unless she stops drinking coffee. And so she says, All right, I'll stop. I prefer to get married.

Speaker 112:19

We don't know.

Speaker 112:20

Oh yeah.

Speaker 112:23

Even if

Speaker 112:26

Oh, I'll be turning our

Speaker 212:28

Uh

Speaker 112:28

Uh

Speaker 212:29

Uh

Speaker 212:32

Till it is

Presenter12:43

An excerpt from the Bach Coffee Cantata sung by Ellie Americ. Now let's talk about some of your novels, Miss Highsmith. I think it was your third or fourth book, The Talented Mr Ripley, which introduced a running character, Tom Ripley. He's been the leading character in what, three, four novels?

Patricia Highsmith13:00

Three, yes, and I'm working on the fourth now. Almost finished it.

Presenter13:05

I said leading character and not hero, because he's not a very heroic man. He's amoral and a crook and he kills people, but he's still accepted by your readers as

Presenter13:15

an acceptable leading character.

Patricia Highsmith13:16

Some

Patricia Highsmith13:17

Yes, he he is popular, I think because of the crazy amusement value.

Presenter13:23

There is a running theme through all your work, an investigation of the sense of guilt. Now, does Ripley have a sense of guilt?

Patricia Highsmith13:31

Not in the usual sense. That's the reason he is a bit different and I think now he's killed something like eight people.

Presenter13:39

In three books. Ha have you studied criminal psychology? Not seriously. Do you mix a lot with policemen?

Patricia Highsmith13:46

No, perhaps I should. But

Presenter13:50

Now all all your books, with the exception I think of one, introduce murder most foul, and and the one without murder, the exception, Edith's Diary, your usual publisher didn't want her, I I believe, because it wasn't bloodthirsty enough.

Patricia Highsmith14:02

Oh, that was rejected by Knopf in uh the United States. Which I I well, I can't understand it.

Presenter14:10

Your books feature American men and foreign backgrounds in England, France, Italy, Greece, so on. You've been living in Europe for a long time now.

Patricia Highsmith14:18

Yes, uh about seventeen years, I think, is.

Presenter14:22

in England for quite a while.

Patricia Highsmith14:23

England nearly four years.

Presenter14:26

Generalizing women are not important characters in your book.

Patricia Highsmith14:29

Oh, that's right, because I

Patricia Highsmith14:31

Well two reasons. One, I I need uh often physical strength.

Patricia Highsmith14:36

for the plot. And secondly, uh I don't associate women with going after an an abstract objective.

Patricia Highsmith14:43

I think they're frequently stuck at home or something, as is Edith.

Presenter14:47

Yes.

Patricia Highsmith14:47

In Edith's diary, but uh again I used a woman there because it makes it more tragic that she is stuck.

Patricia Highsmith14:54

that she can't just fly off so easily th w as her husband did.

Presenter14:58

Let's have record number four.

Patricia Highsmith15:01

The Saint Matthew Passion. I like a certain chorus in it called um

Patricia Highsmith15:06

In tears of grief in English.

Presenter15:09

Yes, that that's the last chorus.

Patricia Highsmith15:10

That is um number seventy eight, as I recall.

Presenter16:16

The last chorus of Bach's S Matthew Passion, a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Carrier. Do your books take a long time to write? Your output isn't very large, is it?

Patricia Highsmith16:28

No, not compared to Seymour.

Presenter16:29

What's the interval between the appearance of your book?

Patricia Highsmith16:34

Oh, at least a year.

Presenter16:35

Hmm.

Patricia Highsmith16:35

I think sometimes two years.

Patricia Highsmith16:37

Sometimes I write short stories.

Patricia Highsmith16:40

In between.

Presenter16:40

How many drafts do you write?

Patricia Highsmith16:42

3.

Presenter16:43

That's your rule.

Patricia Highsmith16:44

Yes, because I think I don't write very smoothly to begin with, and then I often have to cut.

Presenter16:50

Are you a disciplined writer? Do you work regular hours or a certain number of words a day?

Patricia Highsmith16:54

I like to do eight pages a day. I don't always do it.

Presenter16:58

Mm-hmm.

Patricia Highsmith16:59

I mean, yeah, only this last book I had very upsetting past year and and didn't always make it.

Presenter17:05

Eight pages what, in in Longhairn, first of all?

Patricia Highsmith17:06

Don't know.

Patricia Highsmith17:07

No, I I write it on the typewriter.

Presenter17:09

You do all your end typing, all the drafts.

Patricia Highsmith17:11

Yes, I do.

Presenter17:12

And a regular time of day?

Patricia Highsmith17:14

Well, I usually say the afternoons. Uh I think I work uh four or five hours a day, sometimes six hours.

Patricia Highsmith17:20

Often I can work for an hour and a half after dinner.

Presenter17:24

Do you keep notebooks?

Patricia Highsmith17:25

Yes, very definitely I do.

Presenter17:27

Sketches for characters, ideas, situations.

Patricia Highsmith17:30

Yes, I have a a section for um ideas. Sometimes uh I make a note of three lines long and if I if I know something is turning into a novel then I I know that I'm going to make about fourteen pages of notes over a period of time of course before I

Presenter17:36

Yeah.

Presenter17:43

Yeah.

Presenter17:45

Yeah.

Patricia Highsmith17:46

Can get started on it.

Presenter17:47

and wait and see which idea ripens first.

Patricia Highsmith17:50

Well, about the novel it's a matter of working out the movement of the plot, I suppose.

Patricia Highsmith17:55

And then of course many ideas that I get, uh they're not worth turning into stories or

Patricia Highsmith18:01

But they don't interest me enough to go back to them.

Presenter18:04

How carefully do you work out the plot before you start writing? Do you just get the beginning and the end and then wait and see what happens in the middle, or have you got the whole thing more or less drafted in your mind?

Patricia Highsmith18:13

Well I have I have mainly the beginning and the end.

Patricia Highsmith18:17

And I hope there's an hyp well.

Patricia Highsmith18:19

There's got to be the the certain momentum that by the time I reach the middle it I'm usually not stuck because it keeps on going.

Presenter18:24

Yeah.

Presenter18:25

How often have you had to abandon a novel half way through?

Patricia Highsmith18:29

Only twice my first two efforts.

Presenter18:32

Your second book, I think, you published under Anorm de Plume. Why was that?

Patricia Highsmith18:36

No particular reason. I thought it was outside of the mystery genre.

Presenter18:41

Record number five.

Patricia Highsmith18:43

That is Pal Joey.

Presenter18:45

Ah yeah.

Patricia Highsmith18:45

Which I think is um a brilliant piece of popular music.

Presenter18:50

Yeah, it's a great show. Which number?

Patricia Highsmith18:52

And um what is it, in our little den of iniquity.

Patricia Highsmith18:55

Sung by Vivian Siegel and Harold Lang.

Speaker 118:59

Uh Our little death of iniquity, our arrangement is good, it's much more healthy living here, This rushing back home is bad, my dear.

Presenter19:14

I haven't caught a cold all year.

Speaker 119:17

Not one wood.

Speaker 119:20

It was ever

Patricia Highsmith19:21

It was a burden.

Speaker 119:23

Oh.

Patricia Highsmith19:23

Since antiquity, all the poets agree.

Presenter19:29

In Our Little Den of Iniquity, sung by Vivian Segal and Harold Lang from the nineteen fifty two, was it, or nineteen fifty four, New York production of Pal Joey.

Presenter19:39

Now more than most writers, Miss Highsmith, you're popular with filmmakers. We talked of Strangers on a Train, your first book. Now since then Alain Delon has played Ripley. How many films of your books have been made now?

Patricia Highsmith19:53

I think five if I count uh the blunderer, which was French, and it's called the murderer in French. And it was not much of a hit in, um it was respectable in the United States, but

Patricia Highsmith20:05

Not as much of a success as Purple Noon, the first ripley. And then there is, um, the sweet sickness which hasn't yet come to London. It's und it's French.

Patricia Highsmith20:15

called Did Louis Caujolaem.

Patricia Highsmith20:18

And

Patricia Highsmith20:19

Then the American Friend from the Third Ripley.

Patricia Highsmith20:22

And the glass cell is already made in uh Germany, but has not come to London as yet.

Presenter20:28

And there have been other novels on which options have been taken by film directors, but they haven't yet been.

Patricia Highsmith20:33

Oh, that's options I always

Presenter20:34

Oh, that's just

Patricia Highsmith20:37

few around. But the Germans just bought um

Patricia Highsmith20:41

Edith's Diary.

Patricia Highsmith20:42

Then I'm sure that will

Patricia Highsmith20:44

Get off the ground.

Presenter20:46

How much do you get involved in filmmaking?

Patricia Highsmith20:49

Oh, very, very little because I I try to keep out of it and not annoy anybody. And if they s if they ask me, uh, do I want to see the scenario? I say, Oh, sure, I'd be delighted

Presenter20:54

If they sign

Patricia Highsmith21:00

Yeah.

Presenter21:00

You don't want to write a screenplay yourself.

Patricia Highsmith21:00

You don't want to

Patricia Highsmith21:02

No, I I have absolutely no no talent at all.

Presenter21:07

You did write a treatment of of deep water.

Patricia Highsmith21:09

Yes, but nothing came of that. Not so much because my script might have been

Patricia Highsmith21:14

Dreadful, but uh because the producer um

Patricia Highsmith21:17

died, unfortunately, is Raoul Levy.

Presenter21:20

Yeah.

Patricia Highsmith21:20

Uh

Presenter21:20

Reduce.

Patricia Highsmith21:20

I committed suicide.

Presenter21:22

You've written a play. You said that you didn't think much of yourself as a playwright. You have written a play.

Patricia Highsmith21:27

I think nothing of myself as a playwright. But, uh I tried to yes, I tried to write a a play and I fortunately never saw the boards.

Presenter21:36

You talked recently about sort of filling in time, as it were, with with short stories. You have, in fact, published several volumes of them. Is there a market for short stories now? There seem so few magazines about in which they can originally appear.

Patricia Highsmith21:48

Maybe it's picking up lately. At least in Germany they one of my

Patricia Highsmith21:53

She worked with my publishing house, a girl who's almost like an agent, and she said, We have not got enough of your short stories. Can't you send us some more?

Presenter21:59

Well, this is fine. It's no longer a by-product.

Patricia Highsmith21:59

Come on.

Patricia Highsmith22:02

No, I never thought of short stories as a by product. I have quite a respect for them.

Presenter22:06

But there's a new book of them just come out.

Patricia Highsmith22:08

Yes, it's called Slowly, Slowly in the Wind.

Presenter22:11

Some of them rather gruesome. I hope so. Now, you're just finishing your fourth Ripley. Have you got an idea what you're going to do after that?

Patricia Highsmith22:13

I hope so.

Patricia Highsmith22:21

Frankly, I haven't. I think I will uh

Patricia Highsmith22:24

Relax with a few short stories after this. It's rather a long book, this Poor Ripley.

Presenter22:30

Another record, please.

Patricia Highsmith22:32

Gustav Marlowe.

Patricia Highsmith22:33

The symphony number six.

Presenter22:35

Why do you choose that?

Patricia Highsmith22:37

He sounds very troubled.

Patricia Highsmith22:39

He sounds like um present-day life in a sense, and I I I like his orchestration.

Presenter23:50

Part of the second movement of the Mahler Sixth Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Carija. One of your short stories is about a couple of people on a desert island.

Presenter24:00

What happens to them? What's it about?

Patricia Highsmith24:02

Oh, that's about the professor of uh zoology and he wants to discover a new

Patricia Highsmith24:07

Species, and he's heard about a giant snail or snails.

Patricia Highsmith24:12

So he investigates the island on his own.

Patricia Highsmith24:15

And indeed he finds the snails, they're about fifteen feet high to the top of the shell, and he's eventually killed by them.

Patricia Highsmith24:21

They slowly pursue him until they get him.

Presenter24:23

You got a thing about snails anyway, haven't you? I mean, you kept them as pets.

Patricia Highsmith24:28

You're a snake.

Presenter24:28

You're a snail watcher.

Patricia Highsmith24:30

Um, I used to be, not so much lately, but uh yes I for years I kept them, yes.

Presenter24:35

Hmm.

Presenter24:37

Well, I'm sure there'd be snails or or something of the sort to provide

Presenter24:40

Social life on your island or interest.

Presenter24:44

Could you look after yourself on a desert island?

Patricia Highsmith24:47

Well, I don't know how if there if there's really no water there, for instance.

Presenter24:51

There'd be water, there's everything you need.

Patricia Highsmith24:51

Uh

Patricia Highsmith24:53

Just

Presenter24:53

to sustain existence, providing you have the aptitude, the application, and whatever.

Patricia Highsmith24:58

Oh, I suppose I could, yes.

Presenter24:59

You have a a large garden to your house in France. So that means that you're a cultivator.

Patricia Highsmith25:06

Yes, I don't spend a lot of time. I would have to spend an hour a day just to keep it tidy, really. But uh I do plant uh American corn, for instance. I get the seeds from America. And uh I always have a few tomato plants. And there are Fresse de Bois always around the edges.

Presenter25:25

Would you try to escape?

Patricia Highsmith25:26

Oh, surely.

Presenter25:27

He would, if if there seemed any chance, if means became possible.

Patricia Highsmith25:31

Yes, because I I'm not that um much inclined to solitude.

Presenter25:36

Right. Record number seven week part two.

Patricia Highsmith25:38

The number seven is the Iberia suite of uh it's and etudes, matter of fact.

Patricia Highsmith25:44

That's called her Cahiers by Albanes.

Patricia Highsmith25:48

played by Michel Bloch. And I think this is very refreshing, very poetic.

Presenter26:53

Rondenio from Iberia by Albany Michel Bloch.

Presenter26:59

Which brings us to your last disc. Just one more.

Patricia Highsmith27:02

This is the Lullaby of Birdland, the George Shearing version, with the composer George Shearing on the piano, and a little uh backing, as they say.

Presenter27:45

George Shearing, Lullaby of Birdland. If you could take just one disc out of the eight, which would it be?

Patricia Highsmith27:51

I would take the Rachmaninoff second piano concerto.

Presenter27:55

and you're allowed to take one luxury with you.

Patricia Highsmith27:58

Writing Materials

Presenter27:59

For the next novel or whatever. Anything. And you're allowed one book, apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already on the island.

Patricia Highsmith28:08

I would choose um Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

Presenter28:12

Melbuild, Moby Dick, and thank you Patricia Highsmith for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Patricia Highsmith28:17

Thank you very much.

Presenter28:19

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 228:28

You've been listening to a download from the Desert Islandists archive.

Speaker 228:32

For more downloads, please visit the Radio4 website.