“Being a writer is like being an individual proprietor or a taxi driver: you don’t like the way I do things, get out of my shop.” – Peter Carey
Limonov – a truth stranger than fiction
This week, I finished a fantastic book “Limonov” by Emmanuel Carrère, one of my favourite French writers, who specializes in writing non-fiction novels, true stories that he relates with all the codes & dynamics of a novel, whilst often immiscing himself into the story. He becomes a participant in story as he chronicles the act of researching the actual book, and its impact on his life. It’s a wry Gallic hybrid of New Journalism and Charlie Kaufman, and it always works superbly. I say always even though this is only the third book of his that I’ve read, and he’s been very prolific so I have some way to go before I complete that journey.
One of his talents may just reside in the fact that he actually picks great stories to write about, those that are so outlandish that they might, just might, be true. The corollary here is why does the novel even need to exist when reality constantly egests truly weird events? Or in the words of Lord Byron, who actually coined the phrase in his poem Don Juan (1823):
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