The mémorancier Francis Carco or the art of novelizing one’s memories

Francis Carco’s “memorialist” writing, considered unreliable by historians, has been neglected by critics up to now, even though it represents a considerable share of his output and played a key role in his career, establishing him as the master of a genre adjacent to the memoir: “literary memories.” Carco took advantage of the public’s infatuation after the Great War with this type of narrative that idealized the lives of writers and artists of the Belle Époque by using the resources of fiction without restrictions.