Hey, it's John Chase. And Mari Uehara. From Wirecutter, the product recommendation service from the New York Times. Mari, it is gift giving time. What's like something fun that my dad is going to enjoy? We have these custom Funko Pops on our gifts for dads list. You can custom make a little bobblehead toy in the likeness of your dad. This is so hysterical. I had never seen these before. They're amazing. For all of Wirecutter's gift ideas and recommendations, head to nytimes.com.
Holiday Guide. I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and this is the Book Review Podcast. This week, M.J. Franklin is back to host the Book Review Book Club and up for discussion, The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. A great American crime novel, it has been adapted for the screen several times, including into a film starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Cate Blanchett. That film celebrates its 25th anniversary.
I'll see you next time. Hello, and welcome back to another Book Club episode of the Book Review Podcast. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm an editor here at the New York Times Book Review, and this month's Book Club, we're talking about the talented Mr. Ripley. We chose this book for our July book club because I was thinking about summer reading and I'm always torn between two mindsets when I choose something for the summer.
On the one hand, in the summer, I'm going to use my leisure time to kind of catch up on a classic that I've been meaning to dive into and just haven't had the chance yet. And on the... other hand, I'm like, I don't want to do any beautiful reading. It's vacation. It's the summer. I want to dive into something fun and propulsive and just enjoy. The talented Mr. Ripley accomplishes both.
It's a classic, but also it's this tense, high-octane thriller that a lot of readers, I think, would call unputdownable. I know I would. Spoiler alert of how I'm feeling about this book. So I thought it was perfect for a summer book club. Joining me to discuss this novel are not two, but three remarkable guests and colleagues. I'm going to go around the house. First, we have Tina Jordan, deputy editor of the New York Times Book Review.
Hi, Tina. Hi, MJ. Thank you for joining us. Oh, my pleasure. Readers can't see this, but you have with you a beautiful old copy of Ripley. It's gray, and can you tell us more about it? It's part of a beautiful boxed set that probably came out a quarter century or more ago of all the Ripley books. And when you see the volumes in the box...
There's like a design on the back of the spine. I love this. I am so jealous. I have a new paperback, but that is a stunning addition. Also with us is our thriller columnist, Sarah Lyle. Hi, Sarah. Hi. Sarah, in addition to writing our thriller column and being our thriller's expert, you're also a writer-at-large here, and you're leaving for Paris tomorrow to cover the Olympics, correct? Yes, I am. So, one, I wanted to say thank you for squeezing us in before you go, and then...
Two, this feels really fitting because like one of Tom's great dreams is to travel to Paris with Dickie. So I like to say you're getting into character. I'm looking for a colleague maybe or someone I can just push gently into the sand. And also with us is Sadie Stein, a fellow editor here at The Book Review. Hi, Sadie. Hello.
Sadie, you're one of those readers who I feel like reads so widely and so voraciously nonfiction, literary fiction, genre fiction, and we'll get into this later, but based on your response when I asked you to join this book club, you're a big Ripley fan, correct?
I am, yeah. Okay, so great. So that's what I say. We have a stacked powerhouse lineup of experts to dive into this book. But before we do, I have two programming notes and then a synopsis, and then I'm going to stop monologuing, I promise. The programming notes. One. Just a heads up, there will be spoilers in this discussion. So if you don't want spoilers, go read the book and then come back. If you don't care about spoilers, stay with us. But there will be spoilers. Programming note number two.
This discussion will be primarily about the first book in the Ripley series. We may touch on some of the later books, and we will touch on the film and TV adaptations as well, but the anchor for this book club discussion... is the first book but that's to echo out that general spoiler alert there may be some spoiler alerts about some of the series and all that good stuff and now without further ado my synopsis and then i'll be quiet for a little while i promise
The Talented Mr. Ripley is Patricia Heisman's classic 1955 psychological thriller about a young scammer named Tom Ripley. When the novel opens, he is a petty fraudster in New York, bouncing from place to place, and then he runs into Herbert Greenleaf. Herbert is the rich father of the socialite Dickey Greenleaf.
Dickie has absconded to Italy and is refusing to return, even as his mother grapples with leukemia. Tom and Dickie met years ago, so Herbert, believing the two men are closer than they actually are, offers to pay Tom a handsome fee to go to Italy and convince Dickie to come home. Talk about a dream job. Go to Italy. Spend time. Come back with my socialite son.
Tom goes to Italy, but rather than bring Dickie back, he tells Dickie about his father's wish, and then the two of them decide to use the money for basically an extended summer holiday. Meanwhile, Dickie has also struck up this friendship pseudo-romance with a young American writer named Marge, who Tom does not get along with. And all the while, Tom's jealousy of Dickie and his lavish life grows and grows culminating in him murdering Dickie.
stepping into his shoes literally and living Dickie's life. The rest of the novel then is about Tom trying to be Dickie while also keeping the police office trail. Sadie, Tina, Sarah, did I miss anything? Anything you'd add to that synopsis? No, that was great. There's one other murder there, but we're not going to tell you who gets murdered. Bum, bum, bum. The thriller, the suspense already starts.
So with that, I kind of just want to open up to the table and just do a general temperature check. What are your thoughts about the book? Love it, hate it, feel ambivalent about it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I'm going to start with you, Sarah. What are your thoughts about The Talented Mr. Ripley? I love this book. I read this a long time ago. I don't really remember when. And as I went back to it, I was struck.
by the contrast between how I feel now and how I felt then. I think then I was much more interested in the plot, which is potboilery and... crazy and you don't really expect it and it feels sort of like an adventure story. You can read it that way. I was much more struck in this instance by Highsmith's artistry.
in presenting us with this character who does such unsavory things, and yet who we root for. She gets so deeply inside his head that we follow along with what he's doing without a lot of extraneous... sort of explanations for it or, you know, efforts to really, really psychoanalyze him the way we might in a book, the way some writers would.
introduce this sort of character. And I was really struck by her restraint and how carefully this book unfolds. Next, I want to go over to you, Sadie. What are your general top-level thoughts about this book? I too hadn't read it since... Probably college. So it was so fun to come back. And it's just as enjoyable as I remembered. But I think I appreciate the different facets to the book now. Interesting. For one thing.
Couldn't get over just how incredibly affordable everything was. And that aside, just... how he could get away with this lifestyle undetected, the absence of technology. Because when I would have first read this, we were in a much less... digital age. So now the fact that you could sustain this for months and years even. I would read a copy of this book with Marge set now having a version of Find My Friends. Like that's the end of the book. Exactly. Basically the entire plot hinges on.
not having face recognition. This time around, I was really interested to read the allusions to Henry James's 1903 novel, The Ambassadors, because I had, in the time since... read that she deliberately modeled at least a setup on that. And in fact, she mentions it a couple of times. There's a point at which Mr. Greenleaf has told Tom to look it up in their...
drunken marathon session. And Tom kind of makes a half-hearted effort to find it on the Cunard Liners library. But then, because he's traveling first class, he's not allowed to check out a book. But it's not... very similar, but the premise of the James novel is indeed that kind of socially precarious, you could say social climber is given a commission to go to Europe and collect.
kind of a young scion, and bring him back to work in the family business. And then he's beguiled by Europe and becomes a total esthete. The difference is he's a very moral character. Is that book just as propulsive as The Talented Mr. Ripley? Give or take a few hundred pages of Henry Jim. Very fair. Very fair. What about you, Tina? What are your top level thoughts about this book?
level thoughts about this book are actually much like Sarah's I think I too hadn't read it in decades and my takeaway and the thing I always said to people was what she does such a good job doing is getting you to like this sociopath psychopath sociopath i always get confused anyway and so reading it this time i was actually paying attention to how she plants
the seeds and how she does that. And it was fascinating. What are your thoughts about how does she do it? Like, what were you picking up on? What were you observing? I mean, she makes him likable in all these tiny little ways, right? Like... He's so lovely to Dickie Greenleaf's ailing mother. He's in Brooks Brothers before he leaves to go on the trip, and the Greenleafs have told him, we'd like you to put on our account.
X, Y, and Z for Dickie. And he sees something he really likes and would be really easy for him to put it on their account. But no, he pays with his own money. And so there's just like this accumulation of details.
where he is doing the right thing or the nice thing. I was so struck by that as well, that he does understand what morality is. He does have a sense of right and wrong, and he tries to adhere to some level of rightness. And then... it starts to go awry, and when it goes awry, I think you guys would probably agree, you don't really know if it's been inside him all along that he would go in this direction, and you kind of start thinking it...
has been. You start thinking that all the stuff you've seen before was really just a put-on character, but his real character is the one without morality who wants just what he wants, and all of this other stuff has been a way to get it. Totally agree. I think that it's all put on like he knows these niceties and he is doing these things because he has a motive. It's like almost like a survival technique or.
tool to put all this on oh yeah he has no innate understanding he has no moral compass so like putting on someone else's suit or passport coloring his hair he tries to guess in every instance what a normal person would do. But at the same time, that kind of contradicts, though, what you were saying, Tina, is that, like, it would be very easy for him to put on the Greenleaf's bill, like, this shirt that he wants. No one would notice. So, like, that...
In the same way that these bad actions are coming from somewhere, these good actions are. And also I was struck by his original forgery in New York before he set sail. He's not actually cashing the checks. He's forging people's checks. He gets them to write checks and he doesn't.
cash them. And he does it really just because he thinks it's kind of fun. He enjoys the deception, but he's not defrauding them. So I'm going to morph my question a little bit and throw it out to the table, which is like, what did you make? of tom tina you mentioned that you were rooting for him even as he was kind of doing this these bad things the book makes you root for a sociopath what did you think sadie and sarah did you root for him did you like him did you dislike him i
don't like him and I kept wanting him against my knowledge of the plot. I kept wanting him to get caught. Largely because I had forgotten just how vicious he is towards Marge and his true disgust and loathing towards her, not to mention the cruelty he later exhibits towards both Dickie's parents. And Marge and how much sick pleasure he takes in twisting the knife. Actually, that was one thing that I got caught up on too, which is so.
I had never read this book before and I greatly loved it. I found it so, for me, this book was divided into two. I think you, Sarah, Athena, you might've mentioned this. The first time you read it, you were thinking about the... plot and the propulsive aspects of this this book and then the second time you're thinking about tom as a character for me
I was also thinking about that, but just in one reading, and for me, the dividing line was the death of Dickie. For the first half, I'm just like interested in watching Tom kind of like out of his league, but trying very hard. And in some ways he has this power because... he's scamming everybody and no one knows that so that's a type of power but in the other he like he gets sick all the time and when he
first Lance, he doesn't have the right shoes and all of this stuff is happening. So he's kind of, kind of out of his league and you're just watching him try to fit in. And I found myself pulled into that character study and then he kills Dickie. And then for me, that's when it switched. And I was like, okay, Thomas.
Crazy and cruel. And now I just want to see like, is he going to get caught and how? And then those were when the pages kept turning. But that cruelty is specifically to March. What you were saying, Sadie, is what stood out to me. There are instances where he is writing these.
kind of horrible letters to Marge as Dickie, knowing it's going to hurt Marge. And then he'll see Marge later. And he's like, I enjoyed looking at her face as she was kind of grappling with all of this stuff. But here's what's interesting about that. Marge isn't really, doesn't end the book, you know, full of... tragic sorrow she's sort of like this was a weird thing I thought I loved him he turned out to be kind of a jerk and now he maybe he's killed himself but she's you know he's mostly
mean about her off stage he doesn't tell her all the awful things he's thinking about her and one of the things that's interesting about his attitude toward her is that he doesn't like people who were sort of Boring, unattractive, badly dressed. At some point, he talks about, I think, her bovine-like figure. So his thoughts are really cruel, but it's all...
part of the same thing where he likes luxury, he likes beauty, he likes a certain level of conversation, and she doesn't provide any of those things. So I actually, I don't think he was that overtly cruel to her the way Sadie does. Just when he, I don't want to give away too much, but when he gives her a reason to believe that she could have caused Dickie suicide, which is a situation of his own manufacture. Plus, we're taking his word for it.
that she's kind of unfazed by this. He dismisses her from the jump as, as you say, kind of bovine and... unsensitive and not an esthe in the way that he and Dickie are. And also, you can't help wondering if he doesn't just despise her as a romantic rival and has projected so much onto her or that he finds women.
Well, he does find women unappealing. Because he talks about her bra and how it repulses him. What about you, Tina? What do you make of the marge of it all? I agree that he's not attracted to women. There's a really compelling scene where this is so, where he sees the two of them kissing through a window. I don't know if you remember this scene.
he's so taken aback like he's like that does not look like a first kiss and he's horrified he's more horrified at dickie than at marge though like marge is sort of he's written marge off already so I want to jump right in. What do we make of like the queerness of Tom? Which I know like a lot of people read him as queer. Patricia Highsmith said he wasn't for a long time.
Correct? Well, presumably it's because she was hiding her own sexuality at that point. And the undercurrent is... clearly there and one of the things he's so upset by is that marge accuses him of being queer and it's clear to the reader you know maybe with our sensibility now that
He was because, you know, at one point, remember, he's looking at those hot guys on the beach, the acrobats, and he just likes men better than women in general. And honestly, it's not a spoiler to say in the later books, he's married. But there's just absolutely no spark between him and his wife. And then there's that part where Marge writes. She thinks she's writing to Dickie and she says, I don't know if he's gay or not, but.
If he's nothing in some ways that I find weirder than anything else, because what is he getting out of any of this? For me, the queerness, I started, so I'd never read this before and I knew about the conversation about his queerness. For me, the queerness started in the very first chapter with Herbert Greenleaf. They meet at this bar and he's like, being followed and Tom is like,
Is this the police or is this someone trying to cruise? And I kind of hope it's someone trying to cruise because I don't want to be arrested and I can deal with someone like a man cruising me. And then he meets Herbert.
Herbert puts on the request to go get Dickie and then they spend the rest of the night together and there's like a blackout and he like wakes up and like he's like getting into a cab from Herbert's house. And for me, it reminded me of the like secret queer scene of The Great Gatsby. remember this where.
is at the party nick is at the party with um like tom and everyone on long island and they get kicked out and tom goes back with like an artist that was at the party and they get into an elevator and the elevator man says please stop pulling on the
lover and then there's a blackout and then nick is looking at the man in bed and then there's another blackout and he wakes up in a train station like this like veiled sexual encounter like happens in that book and the tone of the scene with herbert here reminded me of that.
Well, it's interesting that you bring up Gatsby because in some ways Tom is a sort of Gatsby-esque character, isn't he? He's someone who wants to reinvent himself. He's someone who thinks you can start over with a clean slate is what he says. And the notion in his case of an American... leaving America and reinventing himself as a rich, worldly American abroad is, you know, a theme we've seen in literature for ages and ages. And I do think there's a parallel with Gatsby there.
interesting. So there really is so much to dig into here, and we will dig into more, but first, I think we should take a quick break. What does beauty have to do with sports or advanced technology or the economy? I am Isabella Rossellini. And in each episode of This is Not a Beauty podcast, I uncover stories that explain beauty's fascinating and often hidden role in modern life. Listen to... This is not a beauty podcast now on your favorite podcast platform. Brought to you by L'Oreal Group.
Hi, it's Melissa Clark from New York Times Cooking, and I'm in the kitchen with some of our team. I want to know what everyone's making for Thanksgiving this year from our recipes. Nikita Richardson, what are you going to make? I'm making potatoes. The cheesy Hasselback potato gratin featuring layers upon layers. of thinly cut potatoes, a five-star recipe, which is very easy, but it's a real showstopper. Genevieve Koh, what about you?
absolutely going to make miso gravy smothered green beans. You cook the green beans in the gravy that has this deep savory umami flavor from just a little bit of miso. Sounds fantastic. Von Vreeland, give us your take. I've tried every single one of Genevieve's pies for this year, and let me tell you, that caramel apple pie, it's so delicious. It's like a candy bar. I had a bite. It's got this shortbread-like crust, so you don't have to roll out pie dough. So, no turkey?
Well, I think I'm going to do a turkey. Probably your dry brine, Dwayne, Melissa. Keep it simple. Yeah, that's the best. Well, there you have it, folks. No matter what kind of Thanksgiving you're cooking, you can find the recipes you need at NYTCooking.com slash Thanksgiving. And we're back. This is the Book Review Podcast. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm joined by Sarah Lyle, Tina Jordan, and Sadie Stein, and we're discussing The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith.
Before we jump back into our conversation, though, I want to read some reader comments. Mark Siegel from Atlanta writes, The Talented Mr. Ripley is technically a crime novel since its main character commits crimes. But to me, it is a literary novel that explores the nature of character itself. Highsmith wisely offers no explanations.
A line from Wallace Demons may come closest to capturing Ripley. He is, quote, the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. That is terrifying, and that is what makes this book so great. Because this is a book club, I saw that a reader flagged a counterpoint to this, so I wanted to read that too. Mike from Pittsburgh writes, To the contrary, Highsmith tells us plenty. She plants clues for the curious reader.
Highsmith allows us to appreciate behavioral sources for Tom's alienation. Another reader, Bill Gates, not that Bill Gates, the spelling is different, but if you are that Bill Gates, hi Bill Gates, Bill Gates writes, The thrills are so captivating and literary that thoughts of ethics go out the window, or should I say, out the boat. You know it's fiction and you go along for the wild ride. And then Florence McCambridge from Toronto writes,
As someone reading this book for the first time, what I find interesting is how Patricia Highsmith has made me care about Ripley and what happens to him. She shares a quote about Ripley crying about becoming himself and then she continues on. I felt bad for him. He's living the life of his dreams as someone else and the thought he will now have to go back to being himself seeing the world as himself that thought makes him cry. Truly an incredible moment in the book for me.
I'm in awe of Patricia Highsmith. So those are some reader comments, but now let's pick up our conversation. What are you still thinking about in terms of Ripley? Can we get back to the notion of whether we care if he gets caught or not? I thought that was so interesting. I was so anxious, even though I knew from reading it before what was going to happen, that this time the police were going to nab him. Other thing that...
we all would know about that was similar, which is Psycho. Because, of course, in Psycho, it opens with someone stealing money and then you worry on her behalf that she will be caught by the authorities. And I think it's so interesting the way these... you know, Hitchcock in that case, in this case, Highsmith, can make us care about that. And I think it's this seeing it from the person's perspective. And then I was thinking about the Hitchcock movie Rope.
which is from the perspective of the investigator who wants to catch these killers, you know, make them confess. you know, prove that they committed this murder. And in that movie, you're tense and nervous that he won't be able to pull it off. So it's a really interesting authorial technique. Wish I knew how to do it.
And, you know, grim green referred to her as a poet of apprehension rather than jump scares. And that's really true. She just builds dread and the tension just ratchets up and up and up. But isn't it interesting that when you compare this to other books or movies about people being like hunted by the police, in this case...
Your own dread as a reader isn't always matched at all by Tom himself. He actually enjoys the cat and mouse with the police. He actually is bored when he thinks nobody's on his tail. And that's a really interesting element of him. that I hadn't picked up the first time either. I thought I remembered from reading the book all those years ago and from seeing the movies that his decision to kill Dickie is just like spur of the moment. They're out in the boat.
But of course, that's not right. As I was reading the book this time, I'm like, oh, he thinks about it on the train. And there are long scenes of him being like, I could do this. But now my question is how? It's so meditative. Yeah. I mean, one thing that I found really interesting was I sort of remembered his being a better strategist than he is because it's sort of funny the times in which he does plan and for how long he plans because his...
His schemes aren't going to work out long term without a tremendous amount of luck, which he tends to have. But it's. Part of what stressed me out reading it is that you don't trust him to make good or smart or logical decisions necessarily. They are logical to him. I think he's good on the spur of the moment decisions. He's great at improvising, as we know.
But I also think he's making so many like sentimental decisions. He like wants to carry Dickie's rings with them, even though he knows that they could theoretically be evidence. No, he wants to be Dickie. He has become Dickie. That's why he's carrying the rings, right? Yeah, that imbues him with Dickiness.
But then even when he's like, I can't wear them and I could get caught. So I'm going to sell them into the suitcase. For me, it felt like there was like, he wanted to, in addition to be Dickie, like wanted to have some type of memorabilia to, to. Well, he liked Dickie's stuff. Dickie had beautiful clothes. Dickie had these nice pieces of jewelry. He had good furniture.
And he feels that having these possessions is what he deserves himself. And that's part of what he wants when he turns into Dickie. You're bringing up that thing of keepsakes reminded me of one of several things I wanted to ask you guys about. Because she kind of makes a point of saying it's in this box with other things that he loved that he carried with him. And do we think those are souvenirs? I mean, on the one hand, there's the implication.
that these are his first murders. But do we think that's true? Or what are all these other objects? I think it's true. I mean, if this were a real horror book, it would be teeth of other people he killed, right? But I think this is the first taste of murder for... So what do you think the other things are? What do you think they signify? Because she makes a point of sort of phrasing it in her oblique way, such that one, or at least I paused and reread and thought I was supposed to mark it.
Hmm. I don't know. Maybe one of his nice forged letters to the IRS that he was so proud of. What's so interesting is he's so good at shape-shifting. I love the scenes where he dyes his hair a little bit. He speaks Italian. worse as Tom than he would as Dickie. And he knows exactly how they would use the subjunctive or not use it, what vocabulary they would have. He practices the signature over and over again. And so he... does want to be Dickie, but actually I think he quite likes the...
shifting around from persona to persona. And it's so fascinating when after being Dickie for a while, he realizes he has to go back to being Tom because Dickie's accused of Tom's murder and his people all over the city. who think when they come up to his room, they're either going to see Dickie or Tom. He has to remember who they're talking to. And he's always saying, oh, he just left five minutes ago. And if you go to that restaurant, and I think he loves that so much.
I think more than anything, he doesn't want to be Tom. And I have this quote that I wrote down. Patricia Highsmith writes, he felt sad. He was not afraid, but he felt that identifying himself as Thomas Phelps Ripley was going to be one of the saddest things he'd ever done in his life. For me, I did think that Tom was very cruel, but...
These are the moments that I started really rooting for him and yearning for him because I feel like so many of us have felt that feeling of like not wanting to be ourselves. That is not to say that we should kill our friends and then impersonate them. But like there is this like pathos to Tom and what he's doing.
and what's animating him that I felt was so relatable. Plus, it seems kind of easy. Like, if you have the chutzpah, you can... kind of get away with quite a bit and so much of it depends on his just having the gall and and even the cops keeping like he'd have to have been really like out of control self-confident to have kept forging checks
It depends on people just not being able to get into the head of someone this sociopathic. And part of what's interesting about him and Dickie is that, yeah, he's great at putting on the mannerisms and the costumes and stuff, but yet he can't. actually put himself in a headspace where he could conceivably care for Marge, for instance, or because he has no real sense of, I think, of emotional attachment himself. So he can only kind of put together...
His idea of what it would be and a very surface idea and his own limitations in a way make it hard. He's essentially very lonely and he writes about that a lot. And then he doesn't mind being alone so much because he loves beauty so much. I was also struck by in the middle. of all this stuff when you and I had we murdered someone and were on the run would just be at home
filled with anxiety. He's like, oh, look how beautiful that building is. And the art in this city is so wonderful. I'm going to spend the day looking at these old churches. Pretty cool customer. There's one way you can interpret that. Like, he's this dreamer, right? Like, he can't help but be overwhelmed by beauty. On the other hand, it's like, oh, he's so detached and so sociopathic that, like, for him, this murder means so little. How do you interpret that?
I think he's an esthete. I think that's all he cares about. And he's... And he's missing some kind of emotional chip that everyone else has, but he's not a sadist. Like, I don't think he enjoys torturing people. It's all for his own, you know, ends, which is to be a rich guy. in europe with a lot of money he's a little bit of a sadist towards march no i don't think he's torturing her and
actually. I think he toys with her in his own head and enjoys that, but I don't think he enjoys watching her suffer. See, you and I disagree there. I think you have a lot more sympathy for him than I do. On this reading, certainly for me. Do we all think that his aunt Dottie who raised him is responsible for the way he is now? I think that she's probably responsible for his dramatic response about being called queer.
Because every time someone does that, he has to kill them, basically. And the background is that Tom's parents died when he was a kid and he lived with... this aunt Dottie who was really horrible to him and cruel to him and called him names and... said he was a sissy, I think is the quote. And that his father was. And that his father was. And there seems to be a lot of internalized trauma that Tom has not unpacked yet.
But maybe if we were to meet her, she'd say, well, I always knew because he loved to torture animals. Oh, and unpacking. Remember, she says he loves packing. repacking the suitcases and he'll do it over several days. Both because he loves the beautiful things and because maybe he likes packing things away. Interesting.
I felt the way about him the way sometimes when you think about people who are really, really good at embezzling or they do, you know, huge pyramid schemes or whatever. Like if he spent any of his effort. doing this for good or whatever. He could earn a lot of money. He's just smart enough to make a good living, you know, a legitimate way. They can catch me if you can.
Yeah, like, but he's spending all of his energy and it's a lot, it takes a lot of energy to impersonate essentially two people at the same time, allude a whole bunch of friends of those people and the cops at the same time and get away with it. And that's, you know, I just wonder about these people who he really never wants to go straight. And he never will. And he doesn't. He doesn't. And in fact, in the subsequent books, again, without giving anything away, like.
impersonation is a big part of how he makes his living. Yeah, I actually have a question about that, which is without giving everything away, for readers who have read... The first book in the series, what should they know? What should they be anticipating about what comes later on in the books? Well, he hasn't learned any lessons.
Well, he's learned that he can get away with it. And it's really fun. And that the way to stave off what he hates most of all, which is boredom and drabness, is to continue to live on the edge. He really likes that little space between. everything's okay and things are going to really turn bad on a dime. Since we were talking about the books down the line, I want to pivot a little bit and ask.
Have you seen the TV movie adaptations? I'm curious your thoughts about how this type of character translates to screen. Which order you think that we should read or watch? I just want to pivot to adaptations. I'm going to start with you, Tina. Have you seen either of the adaptations? There have been more than two, I think, but I...
I've seen them all. It's Netflix, right? The most recent one. I thought it was fabulous. I thought it was the best one yet. The really interesting thing about it is that like all... great adaptations, it makes you think about the book in different ways. And I don't think it spoils the book. I think you could actually do them in either order.
had so much fun going back to the book now after having seen the Netflix series and picking up on all these tiny little things. Like what? Like what did the series kind of bring out? I think the series brought out how his character is just not, I mean, I hate to go back to this, but he's not a completely evil person, right? There's so much ambivalence in him. Interesting. I haven't seen the series yet and I'm very curious. I just haven't because of time.
I can't remember the actor's name. He's perfect for the part. Andrew Scott. So I feel like that's the question you need here is you need to find the perfect actor to play this very complicated person. And you're saying you think. Andrew Scott was great at it. He was great at it. He's not too good looking. Key.
But he also has a really sort of sinuous charm, doesn't he? I don't know if you saw him in the Sherlock TV series. I didn't. He plays Moriarty, and he plays him like a psychopath, like a really... brilliant psychopath. He's one of the scariest characters I've ever seen in a TV show. And, of course, Andrew Scott also played the hot priest in Fleabag. We all love him. Yes, and he's so charming. Yeah, and he's so charming, and he's a little shape-shifty as well. Yeah, no, totally.
pick up all that ambiguity in the same thing. All that chameleon-like stuff, completely. So then, Sarah... Have you seen the series? No, but I'm excited. I was sort of, I started to see that it was in black and white and that kind of put me off. Don't let that put you off. It put me off too, because my first thought was of all the things that should be filmed in color, you know.
Europe, Italy, the 50s. In the summer, in the warmth. And the Mengele film is really beautiful, whatever you think about it. Like, the colors are so vivid, and they shot it, I think, in Positano, and it really, you know. And that's the one with Matt Damon playing Ripley Wright. Yeah, and Jude Law. And Jude Law plays Dickie. Yeah, so let's dive into that movie. Oh, first, Sadie, have you seen the series? I have, and I liked it a lot.
I thought it corrected some of the, I mean, the movie, it's hard because it's shorthand and obviously they have to skip over a lot. But I was struck when I rewatched the film from the 90s, some of the casting is really good. I think we can all agree that Jude Law is pretty perfect in that part. I found it strange that they made him really explicitly straight in the movie to the point where they inserted a B-plot of his having... implicitly like impregnated a local girl.
I have not seen the movie either. I feel like I've seen parts of the movie, but not... But removing a kind of important piece of ambiguity besides everything else. What I will say is that the first adaptation, I think, which was in French, starred Alain Delon. And speaking of casting it too handsome, he's supposed to be able to move through like all of Europe's capitals without being noticed. And it was a land of law.
It's like, not possible. Not possible. What about you, Sarah, Tina? Have you seen the movie? And what are your thoughts about the film adaptation? My memory is seeing sort of half the movie. I thought Matt Damon was a really miscast Ripley. He's not.
He's not nasty enough. You know, he doesn't, he didn't, and he, I think it was, he was in his late 20s. He'd maybe just come off of Saving Private Ryan or something. He couldn't get over the sort of wholesomeness I associate with him in this character. I was thinking. who I would want I think maybe maybe Ryan Gosling would be good because he can play sort of you know he can tone down his appeal he can play a little bit nasty. He played a psychopath years ago in a movie with Sandra Bullock.
which, if you'll remember, also started a romance between the two of them, even though she's way older than him, so we approve of him even more. But I think he'd be good, because you need someone here who can also charm. And I don't think Matt Damon is charming enough in that way to play that role. Also, correct me, I might be misremembering, but wasn't Gwyneth? Yeah, she emerged. And that's also...
So wrong. Ridiculous. That's even worse than Matt Damon is. Wait, why? Because she's too beautiful and charming and she looks so good. You can't look down on her at all. She was like, everybody should have wanted to marry her, even if you were gay. Oh, her costumes are fabulous, too. They have her in all these peasant blouses. It's just, it's really good. It's like that meme that goes around when someone is cast in a history.
historical film. And it's like, that face is the face of someone who has seen an iPhone. It sounds like, yeah, Gwyneth Poucho just like is the face of someone who has never been an underdog. Right. She's not solid, dependable, Marge. She doesn't have a gourd-like figure. That's what he says at one point. I think he once also calls it hers an ample derriere. Yeah, it's not nice. Is this what you meant when you called Patricia Highsmith a poet?
Some people do feel that she had a lot of internalized misogyny in all her work. One question we've been kind of circling is, do we feel that Ripley is relatable? Do we care about Ripley, et cetera, et cetera? And I wanted to read a...
reader comment, and then ask a question. So the reader is Laura R. from Columbia, South Carolina, and she writes, From Mr. Ripley's initial experience with acquaintances and the subsequent tears on the boat leaving for Europe, I couldn't pull away from the developing character. Mr. Ripley's young life with his aunt informed so much with just a brief mention and almost no detail. Just enough. Just enough to make me have some feelings for him.
His insecurities became even a bit relatable. So I guess my question is, we are talking about how he does these bad things, he commits murder, but then also he's relatable. And curious, would you call him an anti-hero? Does that fit? Well, if you take it to mean somebody who's the protagonist of the book, who's not a heroic figure, and you sort of get inside his head and find him interesting, yes, he's a great anti-hero, I think.
What are you, Sadie? Yeah, I'd say he's kind of the definition of a good one. He holds your attention throughout. You care tremendously about his POV. But morally, you don't approve. It's that kind of divide between emotion and intellect, which works for me and those characters. I mean, morally, you don't approve unless you do, right? I mean...
There are times where I don't know. If not approve, though, like at least forgive. Right. Forgive or understand. I think overlook would be better for me. Yeah. OK, fine. I'm not condoning murder, to be clear. It is really interesting. I was just remembering before he kills Dickie, he says something like he didn't know. He realizes he wants to kill him, but he could have hit him, kissed him or thrown him overboard. And then, of course, we know what happens.
I mean, equal options, apparently. Kissing and murder. But Dickie gets really tiresome. I would have killed him too, right? Yeah, he does get really tiresome. He's annoying. Wait, let's talk more about this. Why is Dickie tiresome? You didn't think so? He's so petulant. He's not very smart.
You know, he's indolent. And actually, it's kind of weird that Tom wants to be him so much. He doesn't really want to, he doesn't want to inhabit his intellect. He wants his ease in the world and he wants his stuff. Trappings. Yeah. And he wants to be rich and not have to work for it. I mean, don't we all. For me, I also, I was like primed to hate.
Dickie. And then Tom sees his paintings and realizes that he can't paint. And that was enough of an underdog. I was like, oh, now we pity Dickie. No, it's pathetic. I'm sorry. He also is totally untalented. Remember, Marge is a terrible writer. She's like, you know, I'm just going to spend half an hour writing today. And I think Tom thinks, you know, doesn't it require a little more effort, you know, in between sunbathing? They're total dilettantes. Although it does seem like the...
their money goes pretty far. The money thing. Let's just talk about how cheap Italy was in the 1950s. Okay. So Dickie has bought the house. Yeah. Yeah. Bought it. It's in what's clearly Positano. So, you know, not bad. And then when Tom starts. Living it up and buying clothes and going to Gucci. I mean, it sounds, the stuff does sound good. And doesn't Dickie's dad give him, what is it, $300? I think $500. $500? He doesn't give him very much.
money and it lasts a really long time. Can you imagine it being like $500? I am free and set for the summer. What a dream. Well, I feel like we could talk about this book all day. But before we go, are there any last things you want to say about The Talented Mr. Ripley? Yeah, I wanted to know what you guys all... But his talents are. Actually, I have a quote for this. I have a quote for this. I always have little quotes as backup and I didn't get to read this. His talent.
Number one, his memory. I feel like you mentioned that there's so much luck that goes into how Tom evades the police. And drunk most of the time. Just in the way in the 50s, they're all just like 10 martinis in. He's like, I just had a couple of pernos and some gin and tonics. But he is so excellent.
at remembering, okay, this is the story I told, and here's what I told this person, and here's where they were at the time, and here's when I said it, and that means that person was, like, I think his memory is his great. talent um he also lists off a few talents he says he can I don't remember that. He's a forger. He's an impersonator. He can inhabit anybody's, you know, accent, way of talking, way of writing. But out of... Chameleon.
Out of all of that, what would you say is his big talent to echo Sadie's question? There's a line in one of the Saki short stories. It's something like... romance on short notice was her specialty. And I think that's true of him. I think his ability to improvise in a split second where it could go either way is extraordinary.
And also eyes on the prize. Like he just wants this thing and he's going to get it. He's just going to get it. What about you, Sadie? I deliberately didn't come to a conclusion, but I guess for me, it's his ability to believe his own. and fully inhabit them seems so key to his success. And even when he is committing that one murder and to make it plausible, to set it in his own mind, he...
has a fake cocktail party, which he then cleans up just so all those details will be right. But by the time he tells the lies, he believes in them. And that seems... A remarkable skill. I have fake cocktail parties all the time. Sadie, that was the quote that I had. The quote is just, his stories were good because he imagined them intensely. So intensely he came to believe them. Yeah, I think that's it. So here's to believing in yourself.
Let's go to the fake cocktail party. Well, on that note, I think that's all the time that we have. But Tina, Sarah, Sadie, I just want to say a huge thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining this conversation. This was so much fun. so much fun thank you thanks for having us
And readers, I want to say thank you to you for writing in and sharing your thoughts about this novel. Please keep up the conversation. We have an article page on the New York Times right now. It's titled Book Club. Read the Talented Mr. Ripley with the book review.
that is where we announced that this was going to be this month's book club pick it's also where readers are already talking about the book so you can join the conversation there and also before we go I wanted to reveal our August book club selection In August, we will be reading My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. We just did this huge 21st century books project. You've heard Tina talking about it a few weeks ago on the podcast about it.
My Brilliant Friend was voted the best book of the 21st century so far. So we thought, perfect for a book club. We're going to be discussing that on August 23rd here on the podcast. And in the meantime, happy reading. That was MJ Franklin, Tina Jordan, Sadie Stein, and Sarah Lyle in conversation about The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review. Thank you for listening.