(SUMMARY) Detective literature was no longer the same after 1955, when the American Patricia Highsmith published “The Talented Ripley”, the first story about the sociopath Tom Ripley. Over the next decades, four other novels would make the character one of the icons of the genre, as representative of the 20th century as Sherlock Holmes was of Victorian England. Interpretations in cinema and television – including the first by Alain Delon, in 1960, then Dennis Hopper (1977), Matt Damon (1999), John Malkovich (2002) up to Andrew Scott (2024) on Netflix – have since helped to consolidate Ripley in the popular imagination.
Sociopathy.
so·ci·o·pa·ti·a
sf (feminine noun). Medicine, psychology. Mental illness in which the individual reveals antisocial behavior, associated with a lack of conscience, as well as a feeling of moral responsibility (“Michaelis Brazilian Dictionary of the Portuguese Language”).
Perhaps the most famous sociopath in the world of literature, Tom Ripley turned 70 at the end of November, and the ripliade – like all of the character’s five books, all written by the American Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) – is back in Brazilian bookstores in new editions from the publisher Intrínseca.
The first two titles, “O Talentoso Ripley” (1955) and “Ripley Subterrâneo” (1970), already appeared in the publisher’s recent catalog, but the other three were long out of print and reappear today in new translations.
These are “Ripley’s Game” (1974), “The Boy Who Followed Ripley” (1980) and “Ripley Under Water” (1991). The covers of the collection reflect the latest Swiss editions, with illustrations by Michel Casarramona.
If deduction is the main characteristic of Sherlock Holmes, just as disguise is that of Arsène Lupin, we can say that Tom Ripley’s modus operandi is downright lying.
It is with her that the American in his twenties makes his entry into the European jet set and it is with her that he becomes more and more entangled, distressing the reader, who begins to see no possible outcome for social ascension.
And while he’s an extremely cold-blooded killer who plans and executes murders at the drop of a hat, he’s also a sympathetic character that we root for.
It took Highsmith 15 years to return to Ripley after his debut in the 1950s, but he then revisited it periodically until his death.
In addition to the scam, the character has extended his scam to the screen, stage and even radio. In the cinema, he was interpreted by Alain Delon and filmed by Wim Wenders. More recently, she arrived with a bang in streaming, winning over new generations of fans with the Netflix dark series “Ripley”, released last year.
Sinister pact
Having died 30 years ago, Highsmith wrote 22 novels during her 45-year career, but it was the five novels with the sociopath that established her as a respected thriller writer.
Before Ripley, she had gained some fame as an author of psychological thrillers when her first novel, “Strangers on a Train” (1950), was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock.
In the story, two strangers meet on a train and plan a murder exchange, meaning one would kill the person the other wants to get rid of. The film was called “Sinister Pact” in Brazil, also used today in the book.
According to one of Highsmith’s biographers, Richard Bradford, it was Ripley who became “for her the equivalent of Conan Doyle’s Holmes, even Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the figure who defined her as a writer”.
But if Holmes and Lupine reflect the European world of the late 19th century, Ripley is a product of the 20th century. He doesn’t just fly; he kills. He doesn’t think twice: if someone gets between him and his goals, that person risks dying.
Despite the line of corpses he leaves behind, he is not a classic serial killer. Ripley does not kill out of malice and does not derive pleasure from murder. On the contrary, he imagines the discontent he would have if he committed it: the need to get rid of the body, to clean the place, to leave no trace, etc.
Sometimes Ripley feels remorse. Ask yourself if it was really necessary to have killed this or that guy. In the second book, for example, he pities the widow of one of his victims.
But Ripley has a simple goal: to become a member of the Mediterranean elite, a wealthy, carefree man who doesn’t work and lives off his earnings. A bon vivant whose great daily challenge is to choose what drink he will have each afternoon at sunset.
He wanted to be born with a silver spoon, but since that didn’t happen, he will conquer this space at the expense of others. And it’s not exactly money he craves, but the exclusivity that the rich have access to, the luxury, the feeling of being the object of others’ devotion.
What terrifies him most is being seen as a nouveau riche, a despised character, an object of laughter to those of his heritage.
The bad choices he makes at the start of his career – such as buying a dress that is too colorful, out of date in the eyes of the highborn around him – are corrected as his adventures progress and he rises in social class.
An unsolved mystery regarding the ripliade is the question of the passage of time. As in the theory of relativity, time appears elastic, expanding and contracting in counter-intuitive ways.
Suffice it to say that the five books take place over a maximum of 11 years of Tom Ripley’s life. The social and cultural references cited by Highsmith, however, span three decades.
The author does not specify the exact year of any of the stories. Letters signed by Ripley in the first book, for example, always appear incompletely dated, as in “Venice, June 3, 19XX.”
But we can safely place the first story in the 1950s. The publication of the book in 1955 adds the excitement of jazz and the fact that Ripley was traveling between the United States and Europe by ship – something still common in the 1950s, but less so in the 1960s, with the advent of commercial jet planes.
The second title takes place six years after the first, but events and objects from 1968 are evoked – such as the marriage of Jacqueline Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis or a poster for the film “Romeo and Juliet”, by Franco Zeffirelli -, in an obvious temporal impossibility.
The plot of the fifth volume takes place five years after that of the second. However, one character has a “CD collection”, which obviously could only have happened in the late 80s or early 90s (when the book was released). Another impossible temporal breakdown.
Speaking of cultural goods, the third work mentions the book “The Godfather”, by Mario Puzo, from 1969. And in the fourth, we hear the album “Transformer”, by Lou Reed, from 1972.
homoerotic relationship
The first book was the most adapted to audiovisual, so it is the one with the best-known story. It all begins in New York, where young Tom Ripley lives without prospects, committing mail fraud, forging signatures, sleeping in filthy hotels and getting kicked out of his acquaintances’ sofas.
His luck changes when a man follows him to the bars and turns out to be the envoy of a millionaire. The rich man wants to send Ripley to look for his son in Italy, since the boy does not seem to want to return to assume his responsibilities in the family business.
Ripley accepts and heads to Mongibello, a (fictional) village on the coast near Naples. There he meets Dickie Greenleaf and his friend Marge Sherwood, both in a good routine of sunbathing in the morning, sleeping in the afternoon and having drinks in the evening.
Ripley immediately dislikes Marge and feels close to Dickie, establishing a homoerotic relationship that will never be realized, or even verbalized. The dynamic of this trio cannot work – and it will not work.
We’re not going to continue from there because that would be a spoiler, but we can say that the best parts of Tom Ripley’s debut are the lies he will tell to the people around him and how he will improvise by creating more nonsense so that things don’t go off the rails.
The work was adapted for cinema in 1960 by French director René Clément and made Alain Delon a star. Highsmith said she was disappointed with the ending, which she called “moralistic.” Initially titled “Plein Soleil”, the film arrived in Brazil under the name “Le Soleil par witness”.
In 1999, Hollywood remade the book, published as “The Talented Ripley,” by Anthony Minghella, starring Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. The American version is not moralistic, quite the contrary. It has a different, and perhaps crueler, ending than the novel. Highsmith appears as a collaborator on the script for both versions.
Finally, still inspired by the initial book, there is the Netflix series “Ripley”, from 2024, filmed in black and white. Andrew Scott and Dakota Fanning’s performances as Ripley and Marge are unforgettable. This adaptation could finally be literal, with all the twists and turns of the original story, since it spans eight episodes of an hour on average.
Interestingly, the miniseries displays the date 1961 at the beginning, meaning it would take place a few years after the original. This detail has been attributed to the desire of the program’s creator, director and writer, Steven Zaillian, to adapt the story to his own childhood.
The later books are somewhat uneven and at least one has a distinctly strange story, like “The Boy Who Followed Ripley”, in which, dammit, a boy follows Ripley. And our liar gets attached to the boy, takes him traveling, etc.
“Ripley’s Game” is much better, so much so that it attracted the German Wim Wenders, who made the film “The American Friend” (1977), with Dennis Hopper (in the role of the sociopath) and Bruno Ganz.
Angered by the contempt he perceives in a British neighbor, Ripley ironically decides to offer him to an accomplice as a potential murderer. The cruel prank spirals out of control when Jonathan, mistakenly believing he is about to die and convinced his family needs the money, agrees to participate.
A second version, directed by Italian Liliana Cavani, features John Malkovich in the role of the killer. Abroad it is named after the book, but here it was “The Return of the Talented Ripley” (2002).
“Ripley Under Water” features an inventive game of cat and mouse, while “Ripley Underground” has some strange passages – Highsmith places his protagonist in a situation of multiple disguises, more in line with Holmes and Lupin. From the start, our hero poses as an eccentric painter, wearing makeup and a fake beard, to deceive the gallery’s customers.
It is also in this second work that we discover that Ripley is married to a French woman and lives in a beautiful country house in the countryside. This new condition will only change at the end of its known trajectory, in the fifth book. Apparently, Ripley and his beloved Héloïse lived happily ever after.
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