ABSTRACT
If Kit Moresby poses the possibility of evading patriarchal and nationalistic modes right after the end of World War II, Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Tremor of Forgery continues to explore this same possibility 20 years later from a male perspective. Patricia Highsmith’s 1969 novel The Tremor of Forgery narrates the story of Howard Ingham who travels to Tunisia in order to write a screenplay with his friend John Castlewood. The imperial nostalgia apparent in The Sheltering Sky has morphed into a thriving tourist industry, and the European and American characters in this novel engage with Arab characters mainly within that framework. The Tremor of Forgery investigates the ethical dimension of the Self in the interaction with others in the historical context of sexual liberation and political paranoia. Like the tremor in Dennison’s hands when he commits the forgery betrays his fear, this novel exposes the constructed quality of national and sexual myths.
