#31: Who's scarier: Tom Ripley or Andy Cohen?

Death By Consumption

12/3/24 - 12/9/24

Does anyone have any gift ideas? I'm struggling to think of or purchase anything this year, and with only two weeks left until Christmas, I should be buying gifts for people, but instead I'm spending my precious time looking at photos of the CEO shooter.

Without these regular weekly emails, I honestly don't know if I would be sure what day it is. I spent most of last week in LA for work, I returned to New York on Sunday night, and today I'm turning right back around and heading to the airport to go to London for a wedding. I feel simultaneously extremely glam and a little like a cow being herded through a series of chutes and pens.

Traveling in 2024 means spending a lot of time crammed into a seat without functioning in-flight entertainment or wifi, so this week I tore through the entire Ripley book series, something I've been wanting to do for years. Other than that I watched almost nothing except for trying (and failing) to stay up-to-date with the four(!) Housewives series airing right now. So this week it's all about the worlds of my favorite gay psychopaths: Tom Ripley and Andy Cohen.

The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith (1955) — paperback

I had already read this a few years ago, but I loved reading it again to kick off the full-series read. This book just feels luxurious, and (spoiler alert) none of the sequels come close to matching it. It's truly a masterpiece, one so good that it can sustain a masterpiece of a film adaptation and a masterpiece of a Netflix series adaptation (the only good new TV show of 2024 btw). No one has the range of The Talented Mr. Ripley! This is simply one of the best books ever written.

Beyond Ripley's much-speculated-about... well, let's call it curiosity, my favorite throughline of the series is the way we get to see Tom's method for lying, the way he has to convince himself of the lie before he can convince anyone else of it. Like when he's preparing to speak to detectives, and, knowing part of his story involves finding his house messy, Tom messes up his house before cleaning it up again, all to get into character: “The point of the messy house was that the messiness substantiated merely for his own benefit the story he was going to tell, and that therefore he had to believe himself.” Look, I'm not saying Tom Ripley and I are the same, but this does sound suspiciously like my method for passing in high school, when I carried around a photo of Natalie Portman in my wallet to convince myself — and therefore others — I was straight. We've all been there, and I guess some of us come out and live a normal happy life, while others bash someone to death with an ashtray. To each their own!

Ripley Under Ground, by Patricia Highsmith (1970) — paperback

The story in the second novel is much more complicated, which suffers a bit in comparison to the simplicity of the first, but I suppose that’s the nature of a sequel. Especially if you don’t want Ripley to just become a fully cold-blooded serial killer murdering for fun, you need to contrive the circumstances under which he’d feel like he has to kill again. But once the murder happens, you’re back in the familiar game of following Tom as he frantically tries to cover his tracks. Unfortunately there’s waaaay less psychosexual drama, and significantly fewer gay undertones. Tom’s even married to a woman, seemingly somewhat happily! (BOOOOOOO.) Men still catch his eye from time to time, but not in the deeply infatuated way he did with Dickie. The strangest thing is that the events of this book are what ricochet through the rest of the series, rather than the events of the first book, which results in the feeling that The Talented Mr. Ripley is forever sealed off from the rest. It sits as its own perfect thing, while the sequels are mostly a separate world, and, honestly, I’m okay with that!

Ripley’s Game, by Patricia Highsmith (1974) — paperback

Okay so Patricia Highsmith invented Breaking Bad? I enjoyed this evolution of Tom Ripley, who is now so bored in his life that, just for fun, he tries to see if he can push a man with cancer to commit murder in order to earn an inheritance for his wife and kid.

"Jonathan Trevanny, the innocent-looking, positively square Trevanny, had succumbed to the temptation of money (what else?), and committed a successful murder! Tom had once succumbed himself, in the case of Dickie Greenleaf. Could it be that Trevanny was one of us? But us to Tom was only Tom Ripley.”

In fact, almost half the book is spent from Trevanny’s perspective, not Tom’s. It’s a little jarring at first, this shift from Tom’s inner narrative to someone else’s, but then it becomes fascinating, and almost more suspenseful in its own way than the original book — after all, we always know Tom is going to murder whoever he wants to murder. But when Trevanny is standing there with a gun, in front of his potential victim, deciding between killing a man or chickening out, you really have no clue what he’s going to do, or what's going to happen after he does it, and that felt genuinely thrilling. This was my favorite of the sequels.

The Boy Who Followed Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith (1980) — paperback

Tom Ripley sure loves inviting handsome young men into his bed… I’m sure there’s nothing to that! His wife is the ultimate fag hag, who truly doesn’t give a shit how many handsome men are sleeping in her husband's bed. Tom is literally like "hey, I'm going to let this 16 year old boy sleep in my bed, cool?" and she's like "What's for dinner?" France is a wild place!

This book, honestly, is a bit of a fever dream. Tom Ripley seemingly falls in love with a teenage boy, who he takes to West Berlin, goes to multiple gay clubs with him, and then Ripley gets in drag and chases a man down the street in heels. The 80s really spared no one, huh?

Ripley Under Water, by Patricia Highsmith (1991) — paperback

I can't believe she started writing these books before my parents were even born and finished it after I learned how to read. Maybe we should stop giving George R. R. Martin so much grief!

The most shocking part of the Ripley series is that he stays happily married throughout it all. His wife is like:

The series could only really have ended one of two ways, and I think I’m mostly happy she chose to end it the way she did, though it felt a little less like a finale than I would have liked. It's very strange to me that, other than a random cousin of Dickie Greenleaf coming to stay with him for a chapter or two in the second novel, all of the drama in Tom's life comes from events that happen after the big, famous first book. The moral of the series is: stop when you're ahead! You can kill two guys if you want, but if you kill a third, then the problems start.

Ultimately, it was an enjoyable series, even if it never reaches the extremely high highs of the first book. But he's an undeniably charming and fantastic character, one of the best ever created, and he never loses his strange je ne sais quoi. Tom Ripley is the only person in the world who will take a break from hiding a corpse to draw a quick sketch of a friend he thinks is handsome, and I just think that's beautiful.

Welcome to Danny's Real Housewives Corner!

Let's check in on all our gals, shall we?

The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City season 5 — on Bravo

We are witnessing something special with these women. Each cast member seems to come from a different alien species, and I'm just grateful their spaceships dropped them all off in the same city. Watching Mary Cosby and Angie K. turn into top-tier Housewives is a shock and a pleasure — how is Mary, an alleged cult leader married to her grandfather, making me emotional over her relationship with her son?! Each new episode feels like a special little treat you get to unwrap. May the ladies of RHOSLC dominate the galaxy and reign supreme for a thousand generations.

The Real Housewives of Orange County season 18 — on Bravo

No one has suffered more for our entertainment than Shannon Beador. This woman has been on the verge for a decade, and unfortunately the more the show pushes her to the brink, the more I scream with laughter. I know some people are sick of her, but I can't imagine a world without her on my screen, trembling with disgust at the slightest offense while trying to secretly order a Belvedere soda. I would say my biggest shock of the season, however, was finally, finally deciding to like Emily. All right, fine, you win: I accept and sometimes even enjoy her on the show! (Never going to like Gina, though.)

The Real Housewives of Potomac season 9 — on Bravo

Somehow, all four of these shows are back in fine form at the same time, and no show makes me happier to see thriving again than RHOP. When these women are at their best, they can match old school RHONY as the funniest Housewives, so it's a thrill to see them casting aside the darkness of the previous season and just having fun again. (And by "fun" I mean laughing at Karen's DUI and whatever the hell is going on with Mia's multiple relationships.) Stacey is a great addition — a certified weirdo in a sexless relationship with a gay man is a never-fail recipe for a great Housewife — but Keiarna's addition to the cast is giving "we were scared she'd sue us over last season." She isn't much of a presence, however, so it's not bothering me too much, and she's at least not a bleak Eeyore sucking up the energy in every scene like Robyn was.

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season 14 — on Bravo

I never know how to feel about RHOBH anymore, and I think that's largely due to Kyle Richards. Her sheer presence is comforting to me in some persistent, instinctual way — seeing her face feels like coming home, like the first glimpse you get of Manhattan out the airplane window. But then you land and your cab is immediately stuck in traffic, and you're like... oh wait, this place can be really difficult and annoying. Just admit you're bi, Kyle, it's okay! Regardless, this is Dorit's season, and I couldn't be happier about it. The Princess of Buca di Beppo is finally back! I've missed her. I've missed them all, actually!