I’ve been getting into reading more biographies, and for the most part, it’s been great, but there’s always a lingering thought in my head asking: how much of this is real? I remember large phases of my life, and I get that a biographer would interview people around them/take countless hours trying to remember the past, but how can you remember so many things in such great detail?
I had the same thought reading Simone de Beauvoir’s La Cérémonie des Adieux, which basically goes over the last years of Jean-Paul Sartre in sometimes excruciating details. Like “Monday, March 27th, 1995, he had a meeting with this guy and spent two hours writing this article. We had an argument with this person regarding this very profound philosophical subject.” or “Summer of 96 we went to this place on holidays, stayed at this lovely hotel, and had this lunch at this restaurant where we were reading this magazine” level of detail, and I was in awe.