mikers wrote: I just finished Highsmith's Talented Mr.
Ripley. In the layman-judging- sanity category, I didn't see
Ripley as crazy.
********** Ripley resolves problems by killing people.
Culturally, this is an insane decision to make. That he gets
away with it story after story shows him to be very
intelligent, very insecure, totally amoral, remarkably gifted
as both a mathametician and a psychologist, and lucky to a
point where you'd want to figure out his horoscope. Alot of
the success of these Ripley stories goes to the unique talent
to believably handle the absurd, unique to Ms. Highsmith's
novels. Because Ripley has high intelligence you can miss the
fact that he's completely insane. Like Harris's Hannibal
Lecheter and real life murders Gary Heidnick, H.H. Holmes,
and the self-styled Zodiak killer, many psychotics are by no
means deprived of intelligence. In Red Dragon, Lechter
challenges detective, Will Graham, stating that because he
was able to capture Lechter, Graham perhaps thinks he's
smarter than Lechter. Graham demurs. He knows he's not
smarter than Lechter. Lechter was simply at a disadvantage.
What disadvantage was that? Lechter asks. "You're insane,"
Graham tells him candidly. Its an important point to
remember. There are very few circumstances in western society
when killing an adversary is a sane decision. If you eat
parts of your victims corpse, or live off the proceeds of his
trust fund after forging his will, most arguments for sanity
fly out the window.
Patrick King
--- Michael Robison <
miker_zspider@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dave Zeltserman wrote:
>
> I guess you could argue Lou Ford and Nick Corey
are
> complex--although describing them as
deeply
> psychotic
> would be more accurate.
>
> *************
> I haven't read Pop. 1280, but I've been
feeling
> another Jim Thompson coming on. Lou is certainly
a
> wild and crazy guy, isn't he?
>
> I just finished Highsmith's Talented Mr. Ripley.
In
> the layman-judging-sanity category, I didn't
see
> Ripley as crazy. The closest I saw to crazy was
a
> couple minor bouts of panic.
>
> miker
>
>
>
>
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