The writer and his lies: how an author creates a legend

Le Regard Libre N° 75 - Ivan Garcia

Their names are William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and others. They are great writers, published, read, dedicated and interviewed. The legends they have left us are grandiose, but beneath so many fine features, shouldn't we also be looking for traces of the work they did and the lives they lived? In her new essay, Julia Kerninon compares writers' accounts of their careers with their biographies, to show the extent to which legends have taken precedence over reality. A rebalancing of the scales.

In Walter Salles' film On the Road, a sequence shows the main character, Sal Paradise, frantically typing away on his typewriter. This scene, which is also found in Jack Kerouac's novel of the same name, condenses all the clichés that are traditionally used to describe the "French".