The Author

REMEMBER:
When I write I lie, even elements of truth are embellished, exaggerated and made perfect.
Never trust an author when they talk about their own work. They like confusion.
I write this for two reasons:

1) I like to lie, about rubbish. Stuff that effects no one. An example of one of my many lies:

One of my fellow students mothers has really really long finger nails always painted bright colours. It was the days before everyone had a computer or Mobile so I'm sure she hadn't realised the impracticality of growing them that long. Apart from maybe trying to turn the pages of a book, if she ever tried to read. She often helped on school trips, I remember clearly once in the changing rooms while we where getting changed for swimming. We all heard a sound that sounded like something getting caught on material. One of these bright red nails flew across the room and landed under a bench on the otherside. Thus proving to the world that they where not real.

What ACTUALLY HAPPENED.:
I just saw a fingernail under the bench, the next day I saw her with one short nail and made the rest up.
I told my mother this story, she approached her and I got found out, however no one ever believed those nails where real ever again.

2) I'm sick to death of people relating stuff back to the authors past. I feel sorry for many of the authors that I have studied where there past is looked into more than what they have produced. Lies have to have some truth in them otherwise no one will believe them.

So what if Conrad lived in the Congo's and was part of colonisation his "Heart of Darkness" is not a documentary of what it is really like, its a story with metaphors and similes and amazing imagery yes I admit that there is something to be learnt from the story. But its not: Is Marlow Conrad? The questions that should be asked: What was moving about the story? What have YOU learnt?
There is never a definite universal answer to a text especially one like "Heart of Darkness"
Although I have to say it happens to female writers more than men such as Woolf and Plath.

Basically before I went on a tangent what I'm trying to say is:

Truth is not the story, truth helps tell the story.

I say truth as in elements of truth, for example: authors' experiences, recognisable places or people that are so often found in literature.