Stuart A Life Backwards

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At long last, the sarnies arrive, drippling marge and ketchup, the top slice of bread moulded into the shape of Stuart’s palm. Stuart Clive Shorter — the first time I saw him, in 1998, he was pressed in a doorway next to the discount picture-framing shop, round the corner from Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge. He had an oddly twisted way of sitting on his square of cardboard, as if his limbs were half made of rubber.

The book, which was shortlisted for a Whitbread Award, is a combination of biography and memoir. "It's about [Stuart's] life," explains Masters. "How he got to be in that state, how he managed to survive and how he managed to pull himself out a bit. Soon they are inseparable. Alexander comes up with a brilliant plan. "But why?" croaks Stuart. "Why would you want to write the story of my life?""To make loads of MONEY!" replies Alexander, tactfully.A moment later, Stuart is at the desk himself. He has remembered an important engagement with an Internet-savvy friend, and now has his diary out of its home-made plastic wallet and pressed against the table.

Right at the bottom of this abnormal heap are the people such as Stuart, the 'chaotic' homeless. The chaotic ('kai-yo-ic', as Stuart calls them, drawing out the syllables around his tongue like chewing gum) are beyond repair. When Stuart was first discovered, Kaspar Hauser-like, crouched on the lowest subterranean floor of a multi-storey car park, the regular homeless wanted nothing to do with him. They called him 'Knife Man Dan' and 'that mad bastard on Level D'. This was an interesting and insightful read, but one which left me with a lot of mixed feelings. Initially, I was reminded of Lolita, as both books are about humanising someone who has done unforgiveable things. But Humbert Humbert is a fictional character, whereas the eponymous Stuart is not, and I can't help feeling that this biography sometimes becomes a little exploitative. How much did Alexander Masters really care about his subject, truly? His prose frequently seems to patronise Stuart, and given his precedent for exposing the homelessness crisis in Cambridge not for ethical reasons, but because he hoped a newspaper would buy the story, it feels as though there's a cynical steak running through the book. At what point does a social expose tip over into poverty porn? Stephen Mangan, of Green Wing fame, mutes his normal madcappery as young Inspector Bird. Mica Paris, meanwhile, does a tuneful but pointless turn as an American jazz singer - though seeing as Mica's now a What Not to Wear presenter, you keep expecting her to sidle up to Marple and inform her that tweed really doesn't go with those shoes. But you are not an assassin trying to frazzle the president with anthrax bombs," I point out. You are an ex-homeless, ex-junkie psychopath, I do not add. Stuart pushes open the second reinforced door into his corridor, turns off the blasting intercom that honks like a foghorn whenever a visitor presses his front bell, and bumps into his kitchen to sniff the milk. ‘Tea or coffee, Alexander?’

Credits

Janet Suzman, David Calvitto and Theatre Ad Infinitum among our Edinburgh awards nomineese". The Stage . Retrieved 16 August 2013. A television dramatisation with the same name, starring Tom Hardy as Shorter and Benedict Cumberbatch as Masters was co-produced by the BBC and HBO in 2007. Tom Hardy was nominated for a 2008 BAFTA for his portrayal of Stuart Shorter. [2] Additionally, Laurence Hobbs was cast in the role of Smithy. [3]

Stuart, che pur di scappare dal fratello, scongiura la mamma di portarlo ai servizi sociali e di affidarlo a qualcuno. Che quando può ricevere aiuto scappa e finisce in strada. Questo libro mi serviva proprio. E dire che l'ho scelto per il pozzo letterario di gennaio solamente perché il film che è stato prodotto dopo l'uscita di Stuart ha come attore Benedict Cumberbatch. Hilarious and clear-eyed, the author’s superbly drawn portrait of Stuart is an unforgettable literary evocation and a small masterpiece of moral empathy and imagination."— Publishers Weekly, starred review Alexander Masters, a Cambridge-dwelling academic type with a large pink fan on his wall first encounters Stuart Shorter, beggar extraordinaire, in 1998 in a doorway near Sidney Sussex College. 'He had an oddly twisted way of sitting on his square of cardboard as if his limbs were half made of rubber... his mouth was a sluice.'But there is a tragedy in the book. It was Dido Davies who had slid into the skip and brought out the diaries. She and Masters were long-time friends. Many years earlier, as a newly elected English fellow, she had crawled through the window of Masters’ Cambridge college and said hello. Her career was unusual. Under the name “Rachel Swift” she published two sex manuals, and, pursuing her interest in zoology, she travelled widely in Asia, occasionally giving lectures on rats and serpents. While Masters was working on this book, she had been writing a biography of Thomas More. They helped each other and she became his “writing collaborator”, giving his books direction. But in 2007, she was diagnosed with cancer, which was the cause of her death in 2013. Three years later, A Life Discarded was published and dedicated to Dido Davies. Something changes between them: Alexander stops treating his subject like a subject, and starts treating him like a person - in time, a friend. Together they amble through town and country; Alexander like a gangly librarian embracing life for the first time, Stuart bimbling beside him like an orphaned penguin - albeit one that might knife you if you looked at him funny.