I don’t think I’ve ever read a book before that made me want to shower after reading in quite the way that Strangers on a Train, by Patricia Highsmith, did. Everything about this book is designed to make one feel, somehow, stained in the way that protagonist Guy Haines is after he meets Charles Anthony Bruno. The catharsis at the end of the novel arrives with a sense of soap and hot water.
As the title implies, our two main characters meet on a train. Guy Haines is an unhappy architect. Charles Anthony Bruno is a disturbed young man who has little to do other than dream up different ways of murdering his detested father. But before we get to the moment when Guy and Charles meet, Highsmith sets the scene by opening with:
The train tore along with an angry, irregular rhythm. It was having to stop at smaller and more frequent stations, where it would wait impatiently for a moment, then attack the prairie again. But progress was imperceptible. The prairie only undulated, like a vast, pink-tan blanket being casually shaken. The faster the train went, the more bouyant and taunting the undulations. (1)1
I read this as a statement about inevitability, about the futility of struggling against the world. Humans might try to change things but, in the overall scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter. This, paired with Highsmith’s descriptions of clutter and garbage and dust created a strong sense of unshakeable discomfort.
The sense of physical discomfort is quickly joined by psychological discomfort when Charles barges into Guy’s acquaintance. Charles insists on having dinner with Guy almost as soon as they meet. Then, after dinner, Charles makes Guy (and us) even more uncomfortable by introducing his plan. Charles hates his father and has wanted to get rid of him for a long time. Because Guy confided about his unfaithful, pregnant wife, Charles believes that Guy might similarly want to get rid of her. If Charles kills the wife and Guy kills the father and they can both avoid leaving any evidence, they could have unbreakable alibis that would make sure that they could never get caught for the crimes. Guy, as any rational person would, dismisses this as drunken rambling from a weirdo. Charles, however, is serious.
Readers who watched the 1951 Hitchcock film Strangers on a Train may be surprised at how much the movie diverges from the original Highsmith. Because this was the first Highsmith I’d ever read, I was surprised at how much Guy’s character constantly turns away from doing the right thing at almost every opportunity. On the one hand, I can definitely understand the way that someone’s character and moral compass can buckle in the face of shame and blackmail. On the other, Guy’s cowardice makes it hard to sympathize with him very much.
Even if I wasn’t aware of the 1951 movie, I think I still would have “seen” Strangers on a Train in my mind’s eye in black and white. The text is highly cinematic. So many scenes are written movement by movement and in such high relief that the words just leap off the page and straight into your synapses. Even if we don’t always (or ever, really) sympathize with Guy’s choices, we are right there as he squirms like a worm on a hook at Bruno’s badgering. This might be Highsmith’s first published work but I can see the hand of a master in every sentence.
Strangers on a Train might be the first book I’ve ever recommended because it will make readers’ skin crawl with secondhand discomfort before. I realize that I’m not making the sensation sound very appealing. How could I? What I mean to say is that this book is the most palpable expression of wrestling with, first, ethical dilemmas and, second, attempting to deal with the manipulations of an unpredictable monster that I’ve ever read. It was so powerful that I’m more than a little leery of reading The Talented Mr. Ripley, perhaps Highsmith’s most famous classic, because I still feel like I’m recovering from reading Strangers on a Train.
- From the 2000 reprint edition by W.W. Norton & Co. ↩︎