My research show John D. Loudermilk wrote the song “Indian Reservation” originally…and guess what else he wrote? “Tobacco Road” !! His mom was a missionary to the Cherokee in Nashville, where Loudermilk grew up.

I’d have to check but I am pretty sure it was used in xthe late 1960s.

From the opening post: “Tom Ripley’s wants, on the other hand, are infinite. He rarely feels a moment of pleasure; when he does, he longs for more.”

This reminds me far more of Don himself than of Bob Benson. Don was the one who said that once you get happiness, what you want is more happiness (I think he said it to the Dow Chemical people). Don is the one who has the infinite wants and needs. Bob seems to me to be, not Don 2.0, but Don light. He isn’t as accomplished as a con man as Don; his needs seem to be simpler and more easily satisfied; he does seem to take pleasure in things: his job at SC&P, his ability to help Joan, his slowly growing success. Bob seems more naive, more trusting than Don ever was. Bob seems hungrier for personal connections than Don ever was (if you are using sex to create your personal connections, as Don does, your definition of intimacy is very limited). Don is driven, to a real extent, by the need for power. I don’t sense that in Bob. Bob is much more interested in peers than in servants; Don wants minyans.

Maybe it’s that Bob simply isn’t as alpha male as Don; maybe his upbringing wasn’t as bereft of affection. I can’t guess what’s in Matt’s and the writers’ minds.

But Bob seems to me the kinder, gentler Don, and Don seems much more Ripley-esque.

The one in the Ripliad who really fascinates me isn’t Ripley himself: it’s the woman who created him. Patricia Highsmith got inside the mind of a sociopath as well as, if not better than, anyone else I’ve read (Shakespeare included).

And no wonder: she was a misanthrope herself. An obsessive self-chronicler, a fairly quick lover-to-hater, a stalker of the objects of her obsessions (The Price of Salt was inspired by a customer at the store she worked in; she followed the woman and spied on her, but they never met), she shared many of the attributes she gave to her more unpleasant characters.

She was also an androgyne before the word really existed, a public gay woman at a time when being open about that was both unusual and illegal, a world traveler, and a very, very hard worker. I know Highsmith wasn’t a nice person, but there’s no doubt that the world’s a better place for the work she left behind.