The Tremor of Forgery

Sometime after Patricia Highsmith's death in 1995, my local bookstore moved her books from the "Mystery & Thriller" section to the more general "Fiction" section, a final irony for a writer who had been largely ignored in the U.S. (except perhaps by mystery readers). Why this was so is not clear at all. Did Hitchcock's filming of her 1950 "Strangers on a Train" fatally pigeonhole her as a mystery writer? Or did the expatriate nature of her life, living abroad in England, France and finally Switzerland for so many years, allow us to lose sight of her as a great American writer? For make no mistake about it, Highsmith was a great American writer, as evidenced by perhaps her most serious and ironic work, "The Tremor of Forgery" (1969)."Tremor" begins with novelist Howard Ingham's arrival in Tunisia, where he expects to spend a few weeks writing a screenplay with the film's director, who will be joining him shortly. The director never does arrive, leaving Ingham to begin working on a new novel while immersing himself in Tunisia, where everything in his life gets turned upside down. His new novel is "about a man with a double life, a man unaware of the amorality of the way he lived." Is this a description that fits Ingham as well? "In his book, he had no intention of justifying his hero." Could this be true of Highsmith too?Within a few pages, Highsmith introduces the kind of exotica found in the great expatriate novels: Cafe de Paris, Herald-Tribune, Pernod, jasmine. And by the end of the second chapter she has also introduced the novel's themes: identity, loneliness, male bonding, and cultural relativism. The latter figures prominently as Ingham begins to change, unable to make the decision to return home after realizing the film will never be made. Already in chapter 4 he is "irked" when he hears some "Germans" speaking "very American American." And soon the African sun makes difficult "the sheer effort of imagining New York's unwritten conventions."The backdrop for this novel is the June 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. While not a factor in the plot, this war, which coincides with the first couple weeks of Ingham's stay in Tunisia, provides a historical context for the reader. This is definitely not the world of Lawrence of Arabia. Nor is it really the world of Paul Bowles' "The Sheltering Sky" (1949). Rather, the world of "Tremor" is a precursor to our own troubled times. Which is not to say the novel could have been written yesterday. Some aspects of the novel make it almost a period piece. For even though the '60s can seem like only yesterday, those years were more like the previous century than like subsequent decades in many ways: international communication could be slow and unreliable, there were no cell phones, faxes, Internet, e-mail or credit cards. And in "Tremor" the characters still wear cufflinks.Highsmith is not a humorous or witty writer, nor is she much of a stylist. However, there are many things to like about her writing. Two o

"The Tremor of Forgery" is a superb novel, but it may not be for everybody. If you are in the mood for suspense and clarity, then you probably won't enjoy this book. If you prefer something more subtle, psychological, and mood-oriented then I recommend it."The Tremor of Forgery" is sort of a mystery. It lacks the action and denouement of typical mysteries but definitely contains its share of questions and intrigue. In this case, though the mystery doesn't revolve around questions of guilt (who done it) but around character, environment, and identity.Howard Ingram is an American writer who has been hired to go to Tunisia and write a screenplay. A number of mysterious events destroy his project but he decides to stay on and write a novel. His life in Tunisia essentially revolves around two people of opposite mindsets. Ingram's middle-aged neighbor, Adams is the quintessential naive, optimist and ideologue. He constantly speaks of "our way of life" (which earns him the nickname "OWL") and broadcasts pro-American propaganda to the Soviet Union. Despite living in Tunisia with apparent ease, Adams firmly retains his American identity. Jensen, on the other hand, is a Danish Artist and a homosexual who dislikes Tunisia, but in many ways appears to have gone native. He lives in an Arab section of town with simple clothes and few possessions. Jensen occasionally hires boys for sex, but his only real love appears to be his friendship with Ingram and his affection for his dog.In the course of preventing a burglary in his bungalow, Ingram kills--or thinks he's killed--an Arab thief. The corpse (if in fact it is a corpse) disappears and Ingram is left to cope with the question of his crime. When Adams deduces what has occurred he pressures Ingram to come to terms with his conscience. Jensen, by contrasts, suggests that Ingram forget about the incident and points out that killing a thief is probably a common occurrence in Tunisia.Soon Ingram must ask himself who he is and who he has become. Does Ingram retain an inherent set of Western values regardless of where he is, or does he adopt the morality of his environment? While questioning his identity, Ingram must also decide whether or not to marry his girl friend. And in an odd twist, Ingram's crisis parallels that of the hero in his novel.For many readers the frustrating part of this novel is that nothing is ever resolved. At the end of the novel, Ingram does not comes to terms with his morality or identity, he never passes judgement on Jensen or Adams, and he enters into a relationship that promises trouble. We never learn the fate of the thief or whether Ingram even killed him. In today's shallow television culture, we often crave a definite ending in a story, but the beauty of this novel is that it provides the opposite. The people, places, and morality in this novel are defined to an extent but never completely. This creates a richer and more realistic story.Highsmith

The two negative reviewers below demonstrate why a lot of Highsmith's admirers don't like her being described as a mystery/thriller writer, a description which often does her a disservice by pigeonholing her too narrowly and misdirecting reader's expectations. This book has few suspense mechanics in the usual manner, but I was gripped anyway; the queasy suspense is like an ominous murmur underneath an ordinary conversation, and you have to listen hard for it. The suspense is generated by the question "Will he do the right thing?", and also, as usual in Highsmith, by the reader's guilty identification with a morally compromised character. And I always find her spare, cool prose a pleasure to read (I like to compare it to the edge of a scalpel, even though those are not a pleasure). This may not be the best Highsmith book to start out with, since it's minimalist even by her standards (try "Cry of the Owl," maybe, since it has a tight thriller storyline). But I have to agree that out of the several of her works I've read so far, this is the best at conveying her theme of quiet evil existing within the mundane. (The five Mr. Ripley books come close.)

Graham Greene once said that "The Tremor of Forgery" was his favorite book of Patricia Highsmith. After reading it I couldn't but agree with him. "Tremor" is a travel book, but also "character in crisis" book in the best Highsmith way. The depth of the situations, emotions and sutile mistery, make the reader plunge into despair when the last page folds and the story ends.