The Paperback Show Podcast

Patricia Highsmith is having a surge of popularity due to the recent TV series “Ripley’ (adapting her novel, “T he Incredible Mr. Ripley”. It is much deserved as her work is unique and unsettling. Most of her major novels (she wrote 22 of them) were written in the 1950s and 1960s and reflect the temper of those times. However, she used her own life, much like a method actor uses memories of their life events, to create characters that are remarkable and troubling. In the podcast, Hal Bodner and I address her troubled life, her views and background as a gay woman and her writing style/themes. We discuss HIghsmith’s masterwork novel, The Incredible Mr. Ripley, a strange crime story told from the point of view of the criminal. Or is he? The short biography was sourced from the excellent bio, “Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith" by Andrew Wilson.  Her life was one of sex, alcohol and writing, writing, writing. She also drew, painted, designed and constructed furniture, c...

Ian Ballantine  was a young graduate student in 1939. He wrote a thesis on the economics of the paperback industry in the late 1930s that brought him to the attention of several paperback publishers. He opened the American branch of Penguin Books (a UK company) in 1939. Ian was primarily responsible for re-selling Penguins in the United States. However, World War 2 cut off his shipments from the UK, so he began to publish paperbacks himself. One change he made was to add illustrated covers to his paperbacks which were primarily sold through magazine distributors and needed an eye-catching cover to compete. But when Penguin founder Anthony Lane visited the U.S. Penguin offices after the war, he was appalled at these new illustrated covers. He demanded that the paperbacks be simply text and be color-coded like the British Penguins. Ian Ballantine refused and left the company. Ian started his own company with his wife Betty Ballantine and secured funding from a major hardback publi...