How far would you go?

I’ve finally read Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley. It is magnificent and appalling at the same time. Highsmith is remarkably faithful to the Matt Damon film from a few years ago, she left out the minor subplot involving the pregnant Italian who kills herself over Dickie, a lot of Philip Seymour Hoffman, pretty much the entire Cate Blanchett character and all that stuff at the opera, but those bits add nothing to the story & are so cleverly excised, it’s as if they were never there.

Tom Ripley is by turns, charming manipulator, and pathological David Brent. He strives for control, but has an impulsive opportunism that can easily see him burdened with an inconvenient corpse. How Tom copes with the roller-coaster vicissitudes of his life makes for very high drama. The ease and speed at which murder seems a viable solution to his problems is disconcerting, the moment comes when you realise this guy's not just a recklessly brazen and self absorbed con man, he's an A Grade Homicidal Lunatic, and it’s a bit of a shock, even to Ripley at times. Still, toward the end, on a voyage to Greece, mid promenade with an elderly matron, Ripley idly fantasises about tossing the old lady overboard. Just for the fun of it, presumably. The thought is just thrown in, between the idle chatter about the minutiae of the day. Tom Ripley is an awesome piece of work.

I've seen Ripley's Game, with John Malkovitch essaying an older, more confident, controlling and reptilian Ripley than Damon, I expect that Tom Ripley's development from a seat-of-his-pants kind of opportunist, to Machiavellian psychopath, will be explained as the books progress. For now I will read them all. And I have to admit, I see Damon in my mind’s eye. He did a pretty good job.

I’ve read that the very best filmed version is a French movie starring Alain Delon, the name of which escapes me. I will seek it out.

I borrowed the book from a friend that I was cat-sitting for. He had two cats until recently, a cheeky mongrel with abyssinian in him, and a refined Russian Blue. The abyssinian is sadly no more, and so I consented to look after their place on a weekend they were away & keep the apparently grieving Taser company. They have a lovely view of the Miramar peninsular from their house, a Wega espresso machine, a stocked wine cellar, broadband and all the satellite TV channels you could wish for. It was hard work.

Taser wound happily around me while my friends remained, they were sure she'd be comforted by my presence. After they left, I scarcely saw the beast until the moment they came back. I was tolerated at best.

My friend tells me that Russian Blues were bred so as not to shed blood, they do not make good hunters. So I caused some excitement when I txted to say that vomit & small white feathers adorned the lounge in the morning. In hindsight, I think she probably gorged on biscuits, gagged a furball & scragged a down pillow.

At some stage, and a little oddly I thought, the vet who officiated at the euthenasia of the abyssinian dropped by with some home grown tomatoes for my friends. She was pretty hot, and her tomatoes were delicious, I hoped she might pop back later with even more produce. I suppose I could have fabricated some ailment with the cat, but that would have entailed finding and catching it, and honestly, that thought only just occurred to me.

When I left the cat to her own devices & her prodigal owners, I made a heroic & much further than expected walk into town, for a blood test of all things. The nurse made small talk, and asked me what I did in the weekend, and so I told her... the upshot is she's going to call me when she & her husband go overseas in a short while & I will look after her aging dog.

Heh. I hope they have broadband & satellite TV. Standards have been set.