People Who Knock on the Door
Patricia Highsmith
Language: English
Pages: 231
ISBN: 0393322432
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
"Highsmith's novels are peerlessly disturbing...bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night."—The New Yorker
With the savage humor of Evelyn Waugh and the macabre sensibility of Edgar Allan Poe, Patricia Highsmith brought a distinct twentieth-century acuteness to her prolific body of fiction. In her more than twenty novels, psychopaths lie in wait amid the milieu of the mundane, in the neighbor clipping the hedges or the spouse asleep next to you at night. Now, Norton continues the revival of this noir genius with another of her lost masterpieces: a later work from 1983, People Who Knock on the Door, is a tale about blind faith and the slippery notion of justice that lies beneath the peculiarly American veneer of righteousness. This novel, out of print for years, again attests to Highsmith's reputation as "the poet of apprehension" (Graham Greene).
De Vulgari Eloquentia (Cambridge Medieval Classics)
Back in No Time: The Brion Gysin Reader
“Look at the progress here!” His grandmother was on her knees in the study, cutting lengths of white wallpaper with the aid of a yardstick. “All measured and ready to go.—How were your grades?” Arthur told her, capping his list with the A-plus. “Isn’t that marvelous! Never heard of an A-plus.—Are you the teacher’s pet?” Arthur laughed, blushing again. “Yes, maybe.” “You be sure and write to Columbia today, as you said you would.” “Yep.” “Your mother and I are
the few who knew him and who did not seem to have heard of Irene Langley’s connection with his father. One day in early September, just before Arthur was to head east in his car, his mother said: “I saw Irene pushing a baby carriage this morning on Main Street. I must say, it was that fat sister who caught my eye. I thought it was a tent swaying from side to side in the breeze!” His mother paused to laugh. “Then I blinked and I recognized Louise in a wide blue dress, ambling along
Don’t say anything else about it. Just let it—die down.” “Your father tried to phone the Brewsters this noon.” “Oh, my gosh! They’re not home, so he can stop wasting his energy.” “Would you like me to bring you a plate of something?” “No, Mom. No, thanks.” As soon as she was gone, Arthur gasped. He clenched his fists and swung his arms a couple of times, then went quietly into the bathroom, which was the next room, and washed his face in cold water. He thought to get out
Arthur took her hand and was careful not to squeeze it as they climbed the slope toward the beginning of the dark edge. The air was warmer than the last time, heavier with summer; the stars were all out, though Arthur couldn’t see a moon. He felt shaky with a sense of possible failure ahead, failure in every direction. That was just as possible as success, wasn’t it? He gulped and asked, “Diane’s a relative?” “No, just an old friend of Mom’s. She lives in the same town as my grandma in
to get. Maggie had decided to major in sociology as soon as she could at Radcliffe, though her father wanted her to take only liberal arts courses in the first two years. “I don’t mean the social worker house calls kind of thing,” Maggie said. “I mean finding out why things already exist—conditions and problems. I see the world so differently since those days in the hospital. Funny. Everything’s suddenly real, not like a backdrop or a lot of scenery.” Arthur listened, also aware of
