“Easy Living”: From The Price of Salt (78) to Carol (EP)

Abstract

This chapter adopts a musical structure in order to riff on the representation of desire and sexuality in Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt and Todd Haynes’s adaptation, Carol (2015). While the A side of the first ‘record’ glosses Billie Holiday’s recordings of “Easy Living”, the B side delineates Highsmith’s recourse to “Easy Living” in her novel. The second, ‘extended playing’ record (EP) charts, via a series of four ‘cuts’, the progression of Therese and Carol’s affair in Carol. The coda reflects on Anthony Minghella’s recourse to the classical European music in his 1999 adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley and the import of this source music in order to point up Haynes’s use of popular American music in the conclusion to Carol.