James Dean is a meteor, myth, actor of three movies (Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden, Giant), a young man with an angelic face, behind which also seems to be a part of a demon. It is known that he was nearsighted, that he lost his mother early, that he was close to a crime, that he loved both women and men. What made him a symbol of a generation? Philippe Besson decided to capture his personality, get closer to him, almost touch him. James Dean. Living fast is therefore an impressionistic portrait, which is to separate truth from falsehood, but myth has its own rules. The author plays various characters from the actor’s immediate environment and the biggest star of the time, to talk about him

Its a non-fiction written as a imagine create by the author. If this doesn’t throw you off, then keep reading and maybe read this book. It’s important to say that at the time of writing this book is only avaible in Polish and French.

What had annoyed me personally reading this book was that the author claims that this book is non-fiction but in the end it is the opposite. He creates stories about what people who know him thought about James Dean. There are also some chapters written from James Dean’s perspective which is another read flag why you shouldn’t read this book.

Some fans of James Dean may find this book rude or inappropriate. But that’s the world we live in.

This book would have been better if the author had  cut out the chapters written from James Dean’s perspective. What I mean by that is that chapters written from perspective of people who were around James Dean is fine for the most part.

The writing style is boring and out of place for a topic like this, because we don’t know what James Dean felt like in important moments in his life because we haven’t meet him and we didn’t talk to him. So we can’t write a non fiction book as a fiction book.

Overall this book is short, text itself is pretty big and you can literally read it in one sitting and pretty much you can read this book in one shitting.

I give this book 1 / 5