I frequently warn classes never to trust what writers of imaginative literature tell us about themselves and their intentions. After all, making things up is what they do. Having said that, some are more obviously worthy of some degree of trust than others. It would be interesting to draw up a sort of league table.
At the bottom I would not hesitate to put Ernest Hemingway, and rereading A Moveable Feast, his sort of memoir of his time in Paris in the 1920s, is reminding me why. There's not a line in the book that doesn't sound suspiciously attitudinising. And it's all brilliant. The best thing by far Hem did in his considerable dotage, and I don't believe a word.
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