The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Our Way of Life

The affluent feeling of Mediterranean sexual tension is Highsmith’s trademark. Who will end up with whom is a sort of background radiation in her books. Her characters are always 1950’s Americans but they could easily be mistaken for the 1930’s English of Agatha Christie - with more libido and less confidence. The Tremor of Forgery is no exception.

In this story, though, she plays an interesting dialectic between two Americans in Tunisia - one a coastal liberal, the other a right-winger from the heartland. The first, Ingham, lives his smug, petty life as if the rest of the world would eventually catch up to the standard set by America, and meanwhile could be enjoyably exploited. The latter, Adams, is afraid the world just might catch up to America, and in the process inflict great harm on “our way of life.”

The context of the action is the Six Day War between Israel and Egypt, which also happens to be the point of highest intensity of the American War in VietNam. Highsmith uses this context to provoke a judgment on her characters. The ‘conservative’ Adams is, of course, in favour of the country’s ever increasing engagement in VietNam and predicts inevitable victory in light of vastly superior technology. The Arab-Israeli conflict he is less sanguine about, primarily because he doesn’t like Semites - Arabs or Jews. His theory of the world is that America is being persecuted and must defend itself from these and other inferiors.

But Highsmith’s real target is the liberal Ingham who has no theory of the world whatsoever, except that he’s doing fine. His concerns are trivial, as are his emotional attachments. He is repulsed by Adams’s views but doesn’t contradict him for reasons of politesse. He’s writing a novel (with the same title as Highsmith’s) in which the main character is a rationalised version of himself, a conman who feels no guilt about his massive embezzlement. He has no tremor whatsoever as he forges cheques from his employer. His self-delusion is complete.

By the time The Tremor of Forgery was published in 1969, Highsmith’s references to casual sex and homosexuality had become passé. American society had moved on from its overwhelming Puritanism of the 1950’s. Nevertheless she could read that society very well. What she saw then is the birth of what we have now grown to maturity in American politics - a religiously grounded, xenophobic, violent, faction describing themselves as anti-communist; and a self-absorbed, commercially successful, apparently sophisticated and worldly faction with no social conscience whatsoever. I think she foresaw the development clearly..

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