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Tage- und Notizbücher
Im Warenkorb

Her Diaries and Notebooks

Edited by Anna von Planta
Published by Diogenes as Tage- und Notizbücher
Original Title: Her Diaries and Notebooks

As much as Patricia Highsmith wrote, there is one thing she always left out: herself. So it was a sensation when, after her death in 1995, 18 journals and 38 notebooks were found in her linen cupboard, written in without interruption since her college days.
A woman who travelled around half the world, lived at least two lives simultaneously and, from a cool half-distance, penned psychological novels about fundamental themes like love, alienation and murder.

»Every artist is in the business for his health«
Notebook, August 31st, 1966


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»It promises to be one of the literary highlights of 2021 — publication of the diaries of Patricia Highsmith, one of the most conflicted, fascinating novelists of the 20th century.«

Edward Helmore / The Guardian, London

»Phrased in a much more direct and forthcoming voice than the low, flat, compellingly psychotic murmur she tended to use for her fictions, Pat Highsmith’s astonishing candor in the witness stand of her personal notebooks, and heartbreaking self-exposures in the jury box of her diaries, are like nothing else in American confessional literature.«

Joan Schenkar

»Patricia Highsmith’s lacerating diaries and notebooks, however, will be seen as one of the great twentieth- century artistic self- portraits.«

Frances Wilson / New York Review of Books, New York

»A portrait of the writer as a young woman«

The New Yorker, New York

»Disclosures from a meticulously documented life [. . .] An admirably edited volume for scholars and voracious fans.«

Kirkus Review, New York

»A quarter century after the death of novelist Highsmith (1921–1995), fans are given a fascinating and unprecedented look into the ›playground for [her] imagination‹ [. . . ] Devotees and historians alike will linger over every morsel.«

Publishers Weekly, New York

»More than 50 years of the novelist’s diaries and notebooks have been assembled in this volume, painstakingly annotated for context by Highsmith’s longtime editor von Planta [. . . ] An exceptional effort [. . . ] Sure to be a resource for future scholars [. . . ] offering a frank and detailed account of a woman and writer coming of age.«

Asa Drake / Library Journal, New York

»With a presentient awareness of her audience, Highsmith's candid entries reflect a determined writer and an uneasy heart as they outline her work, reading, and social life.«

Asa Drake / Library Journal, New York

»But her writing owes everything to this attitude: of confronting the world armed with a steel needle.«

Claudia Voigt / Spiegel, Hamburg

»They [the records] testify to the recalcitrant, unrelenting spirit of this great American curmudgeon and gifted crime writer.«

Focus, Berlin

»Reading Patricia Highsmith's diary entries filled me with a joy that goes beyond the thrill of such a literary treasure being published for the first time after almost thirty years.«

Anuschka Roshani / Das Magazin zum Tages-Anzeiger, Zurich

»They offer intimate insights into a writer’s soul - and into her attempt to write a lesbian novel, which she published under a pseudonym in 1952.«

Welt am Sonntag, Berlin

»The Highsmith community has been eagerly awaiting this moment: The Diaries and Notebooks are finally being published.«

Linda Stift / Die Presse, Vienna

»In these diaries and notebooks, one gets to know unknown sides to the crime writer: the lyrical, ecstatic and aphoristic.«

Tobias Gohlis / Die Zeit, Hamburg

»Published for the very first time, this outstanding edition presents a curated selection of 1300 pages of Highsmith’s 18 diaries and 38 notebooks. A fascinating document of cultural history.«

Maike Albath / Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Berlin

»The whole book is excellent. Highsmith is pointed and dry about herself and everything else. But the early chapters are special. They comprise one of the most observant and ecstatic accounts I’ve read — and it’s a crowded field! — about being young and alive in New York City. [...] It’s been sharply edited by Anna von Planta, Highsmith’s longtime editor. The introductory material for each section is useful and concise. There’s no desire to hit ›skip intro.‹«

Dwight Garner / The New York Times, New York

»And what a journey she goes through, from 1941 until 1995, recreated in an elliptic, even cryptic tone.«

François Rivière / Le Figaro Littéraire, Paris

»We also have to welcome the editorial choice of mixing her diary entries, which chronicle her loves, her travels in Europe and South America, her ideas on religion or marriage, with those of the notebooks dedicated to her literary reflections.«

Macha Séry / Le Monde des Livres, Paris

»Here remain, however, a bit more than a thousand printed pages, covering the years 1941-1995, which allow us to approach her complex personality and to dig down into the source of inspiration for some of her books.«

Nathalie Crom / Télérama, Paris

»This volume is not only a revealing document of cultural history, but most of all the self-portrait of a glittering and contradictory writer.«

Maike Albath / Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich

»Highsmith’s German editor since 1984, Anna von Planta, and her team did this brilliantly.«

Jochen Schimmang / Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurt

»A milestone in the literary diary genre, and not just for the 20th century.«

Rainer Moritz / Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich

»Her Diaries and Notebooks show that the mental landscapes of Highsmith’s protagonists are indeed often inspired by her own psychological abyss.«

Uli Hufen / Deutschlandfunk, Cologne

»›The forest made only of ›nos‹ is resurrecting again.‹ she once wrote. Even just sentences like these make reading it worthwhile.«

Franziska Hirsbrunner / SRF2 Kultur, Zurich

»Yet despite the extremes of mood and tone, this volcano of a book, winnowed from more than 8,000 pages of notebooks and diaries left behind when Highsmith died in 1995, is in fact a model of compression.«

M.G. Lord / Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles

»One of the delights of the early diary entries is the unlikely spectacle of Highsmith as steward of a lot of glancing – Bridget Jones-type material (8 November 1943: Nice day. Wore moccasins to work with great success.)«

Emma Brockes / The Guardian, London

»A new book, Patricia Highsmith: Diaries and Notebooks, opens a window onto this extraordinary writer’s inner life and working methods.«

Ian Thomson / Evening Standard, London

»Furthermore, the magnificent result is, indeed, unpredictable. It’s impossible to guess what Highsmith will come out with next. There is a startling phrase on every page.«

Mark Sanderson / The Times, London

»Her great contribution to the mystery genre turns out to be nothing else than her diaries and journals. Even these pages conceal with one hand what they display with another: ›It is curious that in the most interesting periods of one’s life, one never writes one’s diary.‹«

Benjamin Kunkel / The New Republic, New York

»The translators have done an excellent job, matching the voice of the diaries with that of the notebooks.«

Natasha Cooper / The Times Literary Supplement, London

»As the Diaries and Notebooks reveal, Pat was also unpredictable, which makes you want to dive right back into her oeuvre again.«

Marianne Payot / L'Express, Paris

»A war chest beneath duvet covers.«

Didier Jacob / L'OBS, Paris

»A spellbinding read.«

Knut Cordsen / BR24, Munich

»Anybody who isn’t a fan yet should read one of the mentioned novels or The Cry of the Owl or This Sweet Sickness. But beware: This stuff is addictive.«

Thomas Bodmer / Die Weltwoche, Zurich

»A woman making her way through a male century.«

Joachim Leitner / Tiroler Tageszeitung, Innsbruck

»These secret diaries take us inside Patricia Highsmith's brilliant yet twisted mind.«

David Sexton / The Sunday Times, London

»Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks, out from Liveright and compiled by Highsmith's longtime editor Anna von Planta, provides stunning access to the mind of a notoriously secretive author.«

Keziah Weir / Vanity Fair, New York

»The author left 38 notebooks and 18 diaries, which the heroic Anna von Planta has decoded and cut into this vast, engrossing collection.«

Lucy Atkins / Sunday Times, London

»Although the originals of the diaries have been available to scholars for some years, and have already been mined by biographers, for the interested reader this volume of previously unpublished material breaks new ground, providing us with a chance of glimpsing at last the real Patricia Highsmith.«

Christopher Priest / The Spectator, London

»The truth about her is infinitely more interesting and complex, as can be seen in this selection from her 8,000 pages of diaries and notebooks, which she maintained from the age of 19 to the end of her life.«

Craig Brown / Daily Mail, London

»But nothing, as Schenkar suggested, in those volumes compares with the galvanic thrill of reading Highsmith’s raw first-person accounts, of following the writer as she tries to make sense of her self over the course of half a century.«

Melissa Anderson / Bookforum, New York

»Editor Anna von Planta has succeeded in this incredible feat, creating one of the most outststanding books of the year.«

Anton Thuswaldner / Salzburger Nachrichten, Salzburg

»An untiringly insightful, soul-nourishing book that narrates a long journey into solitude.«

Gregor Dotzauer / Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin

»The publishing event of the season [...]«

David Morán / ABC, Madrid

»The diaries are peppered with memorable phrases that give us an accurate x-ray of her [Highsmith’s] psychology.«

J. Ors / La Razón, Madrid

»In spite of her fame as a misanthropist, her diaries reveal a woman who ›dove head first into life and writing‹.«

Francesc Bombí-Vilaseca / La Vanguardia, Barcelona

»The thousand pages of Diaries and Notebooks 1941-1995 form a ›lacerating, pointed and heartrending‹ volume that contains Patricia Highsmith’s most intimate writing.«

El Mundo, Madrid

»This marvelous collection will appeal to Highsmith completists, as well as readers tentatively wading into the author’s deeper waters for the first time.«

Sarah Weinman / The New York Times, New York

»It promises to be one of the literary highlights of 2021 — publication of the diaries of Patricia Highsmith, one of the most conflicted, fascinating novelists of the 20th century.«

Edward Helmore / The Guardian, London

»Phrased in a much more direct and forthcoming voice than the low, flat, compellingly psychotic murmur she tended to use for her fictions, Pat Highsmith’s astonishing candor in the witness stand of her personal notebooks, and heartbreaking self-exposures in the jury box of her diaries, are like nothing else in American confessional literature.«

Joan Schenkar

»Patricia Highsmith’s lacerating diaries and notebooks, however, will be seen as one of the great twentieth- century artistic self- portraits.«

Frances Wilson / New York Review of Books, New York

»A portrait of the writer as a young woman«

The New Yorker, New York

»Disclosures from a meticulously documented life [. . .] An admirably edited volume for scholars and voracious fans.«

Kirkus Review, New York

»A quarter century after the death of novelist Highsmith (1921–1995), fans are given a fascinating and unprecedented look into the ›playground for [her] imagination‹ [. . . ] Devotees and historians alike will linger over every morsel.«

Publishers Weekly, New York

»More than 50 years of the novelist’s diaries and notebooks have been assembled in this volume, painstakingly annotated for context by Highsmith’s longtime editor von Planta [. . . ] An exceptional effort [. . . ] Sure to be a resource for future scholars [. . . ] offering a frank and detailed account of a woman and writer coming of age.«

Asa Drake / Library Journal, New York

»With a presentient awareness of her audience, Highsmith's candid entries reflect a determined writer and an uneasy heart as they outline her work, reading, and social life.«

Asa Drake / Library Journal, New York

»But her writing owes everything to this attitude: of confronting the world armed with a steel needle.«

Claudia Voigt / Spiegel, Hamburg

»They [the records] testify to the recalcitrant, unrelenting spirit of this great American curmudgeon and gifted crime writer.«

Focus, Berlin

»Reading Patricia Highsmith's diary entries filled me with a joy that goes beyond the thrill of such a literary treasure being published for the first time after almost thirty years.«

Anuschka Roshani / Das Magazin zum Tages-Anzeiger, Zurich

»They offer intimate insights into a writer’s soul - and into her attempt to write a lesbian novel, which she published under a pseudonym in 1952.«

Welt am Sonntag, Berlin

»The Highsmith community has been eagerly awaiting this moment: The Diaries and Notebooks are finally being published.«

Linda Stift / Die Presse, Vienna

»In these diaries and notebooks, one gets to know unknown sides to the crime writer: the lyrical, ecstatic and aphoristic.«

Tobias Gohlis / Die Zeit, Hamburg

»Published for the very first time, this outstanding edition presents a curated selection of 1300 pages of Highsmith’s 18 diaries and 38 notebooks. A fascinating document of cultural history.«

Maike Albath / Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Berlin

»The whole book is excellent. Highsmith is pointed and dry about herself and everything else. But the early chapters are special. They comprise one of the most observant and ecstatic accounts I’ve read — and it’s a crowded field! — about being young and alive in New York City. [...] It’s been sharply edited by Anna von Planta, Highsmith’s longtime editor. The introductory material for each section is useful and concise. There’s no desire to hit ›skip intro.‹«

Dwight Garner / The New York Times, New York

»And what a journey she goes through, from 1941 until 1995, recreated in an elliptic, even cryptic tone.«

François Rivière / Le Figaro Littéraire, Paris

»We also have to welcome the editorial choice of mixing her diary entries, which chronicle her loves, her travels in Europe and South America, her ideas on religion or marriage, with those of the notebooks dedicated to her literary reflections.«

Macha Séry / Le Monde des Livres, Paris

»Here remain, however, a bit more than a thousand printed pages, covering the years 1941-1995, which allow us to approach her complex personality and to dig down into the source of inspiration for some of her books.«

Nathalie Crom / Télérama, Paris

»This volume is not only a revealing document of cultural history, but most of all the self-portrait of a glittering and contradictory writer.«

Maike Albath / Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich

»Highsmith’s German editor since 1984, Anna von Planta, and her team did this brilliantly.«

Jochen Schimmang / Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurt

»A milestone in the literary diary genre, and not just for the 20th century.«

Rainer Moritz / Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich

»Her Diaries and Notebooks show that the mental landscapes of Highsmith’s protagonists are indeed often inspired by her own psychological abyss.«

Uli Hufen / Deutschlandfunk, Cologne

»›The forest made only of ›nos‹ is resurrecting again.‹ she once wrote. Even just sentences like these make reading it worthwhile.«

Franziska Hirsbrunner / SRF2 Kultur, Zurich

»Yet despite the extremes of mood and tone, this volcano of a book, winnowed from more than 8,000 pages of notebooks and diaries left behind when Highsmith died in 1995, is in fact a model of compression.«

M.G. Lord / Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles

»One of the delights of the early diary entries is the unlikely spectacle of Highsmith as steward of a lot of glancing – Bridget Jones-type material (8 November 1943: Nice day. Wore moccasins to work with great success.)«

Emma Brockes / The Guardian, London

»A new book, Patricia Highsmith: Diaries and Notebooks, opens a window onto this extraordinary writer’s inner life and working methods.«

Ian Thomson / Evening Standard, London

»Furthermore, the magnificent result is, indeed, unpredictable. It’s impossible to guess what Highsmith will come out with next. There is a startling phrase on every page.«

Mark Sanderson / The Times, London

»Her great contribution to the mystery genre turns out to be nothing else than her diaries and journals. Even these pages conceal with one hand what they display with another: ›It is curious that in the most interesting periods of one’s life, one never writes one’s diary.‹«

Benjamin Kunkel / The New Republic, New York

»The translators have done an excellent job, matching the voice of the diaries with that of the notebooks.«

Natasha Cooper / The Times Literary Supplement, London

»As the Diaries and Notebooks reveal, Pat was also unpredictable, which makes you want to dive right back into her oeuvre again.«

Marianne Payot / L'Express, Paris

»A war chest beneath duvet covers.«

Didier Jacob / L'OBS, Paris

»A spellbinding read.«

Knut Cordsen / BR24, Munich

»Anybody who isn’t a fan yet should read one of the mentioned novels or The Cry of the Owl or This Sweet Sickness. But beware: This stuff is addictive.«

Thomas Bodmer / Die Weltwoche, Zurich

»A woman making her way through a male century.«

Joachim Leitner / Tiroler Tageszeitung, Innsbruck

»These secret diaries take us inside Patricia Highsmith's brilliant yet twisted mind.«

David Sexton / The Sunday Times, London

»Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks, out from Liveright and compiled by Highsmith's longtime editor Anna von Planta, provides stunning access to the mind of a notoriously secretive author.«

Keziah Weir / Vanity Fair, New York

»The author left 38 notebooks and 18 diaries, which the heroic Anna von Planta has decoded and cut into this vast, engrossing collection.«

Lucy Atkins / Sunday Times, London

»Although the originals of the diaries have been available to scholars for some years, and have already been mined by biographers, for the interested reader this volume of previously unpublished material breaks new ground, providing us with a chance of glimpsing at last the real Patricia Highsmith.«

Christopher Priest / The Spectator, London

»The truth about her is infinitely more interesting and complex, as can be seen in this selection from her 8,000 pages of diaries and notebooks, which she maintained from the age of 19 to the end of her life.«

Craig Brown / Daily Mail, London

»But nothing, as Schenkar suggested, in those volumes compares with the galvanic thrill of reading Highsmith’s raw first-person accounts, of following the writer as she tries to make sense of her self over the course of half a century.«

Melissa Anderson / Bookforum, New York

»Editor Anna von Planta has succeeded in this incredible feat, creating one of the most outststanding books of the year.«

Anton Thuswaldner / Salzburger Nachrichten, Salzburg

»An untiringly insightful, soul-nourishing book that narrates a long journey into solitude.«

Gregor Dotzauer / Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin

»The publishing event of the season [...]«

David Morán / ABC, Madrid

»The diaries are peppered with memorable phrases that give us an accurate x-ray of her [Highsmith’s] psychology.«

J. Ors / La Razón, Madrid

»In spite of her fame as a misanthropist, her diaries reveal a woman who ›dove head first into life and writing‹.«

Francesc Bombí-Vilaseca / La Vanguardia, Barcelona

»The thousand pages of Diaries and Notebooks 1941-1995 form a ›lacerating, pointed and heartrending‹ volume that contains Patricia Highsmith’s most intimate writing.«

El Mundo, Madrid

»This marvelous collection will appeal to Highsmith completists, as well as readers tentatively wading into the author’s deeper waters for the first time.«

Sarah Weinman / The New York Times, New York
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