The Crime Lady: Essential Highsmith; NYRB Letters; and More

Dear TCL Readers:

The last couple of months have been eventful professionally, to say the least. Let’s get right to it:

Scoundrel came out in paperback in February, and I figured the response would be akin to the vast majority of paperback releases, which is to say, fairly muted. My own attention is pretty laser focused on the next anthology (pre-order Evidence of Things Seen!) and the next book. What I certainly did not expect was to receive a 4,000-word consideration in the New York Review of Books by the incarcerated writer John J. Lennon that was less about the book itself and more about a general complaint about the true crime genre, and in the process, pleading for greater sympathy for Edgar Smith than for his victims.

I won’t litigate that here, because I don’t have to: if there is one place where writing a letter to the editor is encouraged, even expected, it’s the NYRB. You can read that letter here as part of a remarkable discussion (with Lennon’s own response), or read it in full below:

To the Editors:

I appreciated John J. Lennon’s essay. Lennon’s insight, as an incarcerated individual, into criminal justice matters and the prison system is valuable and necessary. He also shares my own long-standing concerns about the true crime genre, that it too often veers into exploitation and prioritizes entertainment over the treatment of systemic issues.

Which is why I was puzzled at his characterization of Scoundrel as “traditional true crime that exploits true innocence” and his conclusion that it “will make people rethink the subset of true crime stories…that center on claims of wrongful convictions.” Lennon places a heavy burden on the shoulders of Edgar Smith, an anomalous figure whose supposed literary talent garnered attention and advocacy from famous friends like William F. Buckley, and whose persuasive manipulations caused significant harm to the women and girls in his orbit, above all Victoria Zielinski, the fifteen-year-old girl Smith murdered in 1957, and Lisa Ozbun, the woman he nearly murdered in 1976.

Lennon expresses overt dismay that Scoundrel did not properly consider Edgar Smith’s humanity, especially during his long incarceration in the last decades of his life. But Lennon does not take into account the many instances in which Smith’s humanity was prioritized, championed, and celebrated, and that the root of his inevitable (and tragic) recidivism was his rage toward and hatred of women, never adequately dealt with both inside and outside of prison. Smith’s humanity, in all its ugly glory, was accurately depicted.

The criminal justice system has unquestionably tilted toward punishment and retribution, and must be ameliorated to shift the balance toward rehabilitation and reintegration into society. A book of narrative nonfiction, one most concerned with the machinations of belief, a pattern of violence against women and girls, and whose voices get to matter most, cannot, and should not, solve these problems.

Sarah Weinman
New York City

Needless to say, instigating an intellectual brouhaha in the pages of the New York Review of Books wasn’t on any of my bingo cards, but 2023 continues to be a weird one!

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I’ve mentioned that my Crime & Mystery column at the New York Times is now on a monthly schedule — March’s column, in print this weekend, is up now — which frees me up to pursue some other projects. One of them was an essay on Patricia Highsmith as part of the Books section’s “Essentials” feature. Somehow, I’d never written at length about Highsmith, despite reading her for most of my adult life and of course, including her 1954 novel The Blunderer in Women Crime Writers and her first published short story, “The Heroine”, in Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives.

So what is it about Highsmith that keeps us reading? Here’s my answer: “Her concepts are daring, her portrayals of men in the throes of personality disorder and psychopathic leanings are equally repulsive and propulsive, and there is enough sublimated autobiography in her work that searching out the facts of her life reveals all manner of infuriating contradictions….Because she could never hold on to happiness, Highsmith subsumed it in her work, always her best and most lasting love.”

Obviously it’s been wonderful to hear from readers about their own favorites, and it makes me want to take a closer work at her 1960s work, particularly The Tremor of Forgery, which will be included in the Library of America’s 2-volume 1960s set of crime novels, out in September and edited by Geoffrey O’Brien.

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Lastly, when Erin Somers (whom I worked with at Publishers Marketplace and who is a fantastic writer and comic mind) reached out to solicit a piece for the debut issue of her new magazine Still Alive!, I immediately thought of Bob Newhart, whose comedy records and TV shows were a staple of my childhood. I’m so happy with the resulting essay, which was really a way to write about my late father — also an accountant with big dreams, though his didn’t turn out the way Newhart’s did — and my Grand Unified Theory of comedy:

So much of comedy is about timing, and waiting the precise amount of time between words and phrases before going on to the next one. Hitting a beat and then pulling back on the next, messing around with the rhythm when it suits. The finest comic routines are like the best jazz solos, full of improvisational delight because the changes are deeply grounded. You know what's coming, and yet it's a surprise nonetheless, and the only reaction is to laugh hard, and then even more so.

You can read the essay here, and also please subscribe to the magazine, whose next issue will be entirely music-focused. I cannot wait.

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Next newsletter will be all about Evidence of Things Seen. I’m excited for how things are shaping up publicity-wise, and that the amazing Cordelia Calvert, just hired as Ecco’s director of publicity, will be handling press stuff for the anthology going forward (All kudos in the world to Sonya Cheuse, who was essentially a one-person PR band for all Ecco authors over the last few months.) There will be a small tour beginning July 11, with more dates being added imminently. So if your bookstore or festival would love to host me and local anthology contributors, please be in touch with Cordelia.

And in the meantime, back to burying my head in deadlines.

Until then, I remain,

The Crime Lady