One day you wake up and realize, that the confidant wasn't that one, who was thought to be this. But who was he really??
In what reality?
E. Carrère sees in the ‘adversary’, the ‘true’ Story about the mythomaniac Jean Claude-Romand, the problem of a gap between social roles, that you play, the persona and public mask, and the self, who sits alone on the toilet at night.
1993 Jean-Claude Romand became a six-time murderer. He had his wife, his two children and parents, probably also killed his father-in-law. Romand had pretended for eighteen years, he is a doctor and researcher at the World Health Organization in Geneva. The whole thing was in danger of being exposed, when Romand had no more money. Family members and even a friend had entrusted him with all their assets for years, Romand had put it into accounts in his name in Geneva and used it to finance his standard of living in a diplomatic area of Geneva. Romand said later in court, the love and care for his family was genuine. (It can be concluded from this, that there is a schizoid gap between the private self and the public/professional self.) Is fascinating: In retrospect, Jean-Claude Romand was unable to say more about many events, whether they were true or he had invented them. For example, had he injured his hand himself shortly before the first semester exam or had he actually fallen?? Then a stupid little coincidence would have shifted the threshold between true and fictional in Romand's life in favor of a fatal lie. the fact is, After skipping the first semester exam, Jean-Claude Romand took sick leave for every subsequent semester exam and was still able to make himself credible, that he was there for each of the exams and passed them. During the exam period, Jean-Claude Romand barricaded himself in his parents' house under the pretext? of illness. He seemed unavailable to anyone. Then he showed up again for the next semester, where he was perceived as a helpful student who performed well. An inconspicuous young man, always in the background, followers, liked by everyone, not desired. So he passed the medical exam, even surprised by it, not to have been discovered and convicted of lying. (he would have wished that?). Romand married into a wealthy family and surrounded himself with a group of friends (Doctors, academics). His modesty and discretion now made him popular. However, no one had ever seen him in his office at the WHO. Roman hung out in parking lots with his car for hours, drove into the forests of the Jura or studied medical books or travel books in various libraries. Business trips, which he never took up, required a study of the countries, arteriosclerosis, his research area, required further training. Roman also invented a cancer, although in a chronic form. ('For him, admitting to lymphatic cancer instead of cheating amounted to categorizing a reality that was too specific, that were understandable to others.’)
Why didn't even his wife notice anything?? And also: where is the transition to the notorious lie? You can, as Jean-Claude Romand later put it, to suddenly begin to lie chronically because of a single stupid lie and over time find satisfaction in this, find enjoyment? A professional status is a kind of constitution, that grows into the person, so that even those closest to you don't want to suspect anything for eighteen years, not fathom, want to know, who is behind it; defoliated?! The Romand environment seems to have been status-blind. Their passivity makes their acquaintances and relatives, to a certain extent, part of his imagined reality. By killing the next ones at the end, he tries to break away from his made-up biography. The courage, He doesn't have to kill himself. Still, he feels finally “free”, as he later tells the court. Frei? From the character Jean-Claude Romand?
Is there a black flare in the biographical development of Jean-Claude Romand?? Can you find something in the darkness of the subconscious, from which something can be derived? The mother was sick (probably depression?), the father (a kind of forester master), Catholic, an authority in the area and always concerned about control and consideration. Carrère writes about the Romands: ‘What a Romand said, was taken at face value. The Romands were strict. Lying was not allowed. At the same time, you weren't allowed to say everything.’
That doesn't sound good at all. That sounds, as if there was neither real good nor real evil in the lives of the Romands, as if the child were cut off from all free development and equipped for it, to deserve to be paralyzed.
No, nothing can be found.
To the novel. I find out: a factual novel (in this case true crime) holds on to what happened, is factual. Fiction, on the other hand, is an invented reality. And? Carrère, who only actually met Jean Claude Romand once, has rewritten the story based on the facts. These facts recount the highlights of the events leading up to the murder and subsequent arrest. Carrère doesn't know anything more either. Amazing, you only see everything as if from the outside! Interesting, however, that Carrère is keeping quiet, in which his own fascination for the mythomaniacal and murderer is based on lies. That being said, he didn't know, how he should approach the murderer. Whether he is even allowed to do it. Maybe he wasn't being completely honest with himself on this point? From that moment on, when the Romand case became public in the newspapers, Carrère was obsessed with it, to write a novel about it. He couldn't do it for seven years. And first, when he buried the project, it worked. This is how Romand could, who was attested to have pathological narcissism, be happy about it, that the character Romand, about the cruel truth, which already seemed more like a soap thanks to the media, was supplemented by a new fiction, in which another person, dealt with Romand's crime in the imagination.
The tightrope walk between fiction and truth in a novel is somehow similar to the thread of life. One can come to the conclusion retroactively, a life is a matter of chance, right or wrong times, Place of birth, parental status, etc., Wahl u. i.e. external circumstances. As if it could have just happened differently; your own biography, I mean.
Unfortunately, I am one too (kleiner) Impostor. I do not think so, that I'm hurting someone. But I think, I also lived a kind of duality between the secret and the real. I was secretly living a secret dream. My secretly imagined reality was supposed to bring me closer to the truth. I wanted to be alive under all circumstances, but as soon as I set foot outside the door, there was this environment. It often surrounded me like a paralysis. So I must be physically frozen. So I returned to the imagined reality and built myself a nest in it, because it made me feel alive- —–
and I'm no longer at home in my imagination!!!!!!! Have no choice. Without meaning or idea, That's how I feel about the word “authenticity”.
One day you wake up and realize, that you are the stranger, who has to be the closest to himself. And if you don't like that; what do you do then??
(from an interview with E. Carrère )