Alias will James

Throughout the Jazz Age and the Great Depression, an American writer, Will James, had a profound impact on the imagination of a whole generation through his drawings and stories depicting daily life in the Far West. In fact, Will James, horse breaker, artist, novelist, legendary vagabond and consummate incarnation of the American fantasy, was really a totally manufactured personality invented by Ernest Dufault, born on June 6, 1892 in St. Nazaire D’Àcton, Province of Québec. In an internalized version of the Western, Will James destroyed Enerst Dufault, his creator. Only by chance did his American biographer discover posthumously that he was from Québec. How could his identity have remained concealed until 1986? Even Dufault’s seven nephews, the children of his brother Auguste of Ottawa, did not spread the news. The main thing that Ernest Dufault has left us, however, is a legend such as no other Québec writer has succeeded in crating. Dufault lived a myth, invented the “real” cowboy and gave the Far West an aura of authenticity that could only derive from a fabrication.