Flanagan

Je poursuis la lecture de Richard Flanagan, First Person, qui est un livre assez extraordinaire. C'est bien l'histoire d'un ghost writer, qui doit écrire l'autobiographie d'un escroc Siegfried Heidl vivant en Australie, et qui a volé les banques australiennes à hauteur de 700 millions de dollars. L'auteur nous raconte comment ce personnage sinistre et cynique entre en lui, le dévorant petit à petit, à travers la multiplication de ses mensonges. Le thème de ce livre rejoint celui de Javier Cercas, L'imposteur, dont j'ai déjà parlé dans ce blog.

« He contradicted his own lies with fresh lies, and then he contradicted his contradictions. It was as if he couldn’t exist except in the tumult of self-denial. The necessarily incomplete nature of Heidl’s stories, rather than denying their supposed truth, instead confirmed it. I am not saying Heidl consciously made sure his slow-drip stories never quite matched, and were often entirely opposed. But as an instinctive ruse it was more than effective. For the challenge to reconcile such outrageous lies lay not with him, but with you, the listener » (p. 122 de l'exemplaire Kindle que je suis en train de lire)