Stuart - A Life Backwards av Alexander Masters

Homelessness - it's not about not having a home. It's about something being seriously fucking wrong.

Stuart Shorter säger till Alexander Masters som arbetar med boken om honom: den blir för tråkig. Stuart vill ha en bästsäljare, som det Tom Clancy skriver.

'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 - A Life Backwards handlar om Stuart Shorter, en självgod, våldsam trasselsudd. En hemlös som tagit ett hörn i ett parkeringshus, som suttit i alla fängelser, tar heroin, är arg, saknar tidsbegrepp. Dom vanliga hemlösa vill inte ha något att göra med 'Knife Man Dan', 'that mad bastard on level D'.

Stuart säger att en livsavgörande händelse är när han är 10-12 år och upptäcker våld. Stuart, som har muskeldystrofi, rör sig dåligt, spaghetti legs, bendy boy, får tyst på sina mobbare genom att ge största killen en dansk skalle.

Six months later Stuart realised he was no longer in control of his mind.
On the afternoon he discovered violence and head-butted Bobby, Stuart released or created (he can never decide which) an aspect of personality that for a period he toyed with at arm's length, like one of those fictional friends that imaginative children have. But then it grew too strong for him and became himself.

Boken handlar också om hur Alexander Masters kämpar med materialet. En vanlig medelklass-medelålders, som aldrig skrivit en bok. Under perioder av Stuart Shorters liv övertas person av torra händelser, incidenter. Mycket är glömt, mycket handlar om tråkiga långsamma dagar på heroin, på gatan, på kåken. Stuart finns ibland knappt. Och ibland är det bara yap yap yap. Alexander Masters undrar också ibland om det är rätt att ge Stuart så mycket tid, en hel bok. Han trasslar, sitter i ett arbetsrum fyllt av text som handlar om fängelsemat, lim-sniffande, joyriding, ram-raiding, självmord och så vidare och tänker vad i helvete.

Det är Stuart som ger Masters förslaget att berätta historien baklänges. A Life Backwards, krydda upp dramat lite Clancy-likt, hur blev det som det blev med Stuart Shorter.

Stuart Shorter var 33 när han blev överkörd av 11.15 London till King's Lynn-tåget. Boken hade inte hunnit bli färdig.

Första kapitlet (pdf)

Some minutes was long, other minutes was short
Utdrag

__________________
Alexander Masters

Stuart - A Life Backwards. 2005. Fourth Estate. ISBN 0-00-720036-6

"My memory is atrocious, but Stuart's was deliberately atrocious," Masters explains. "I think he chose to forget things and then found he did forget them, just as he chose to be violent and finally became violent.
Intervju med Alexander Masters

I feel so strongly about this strange, funny, sad book that I hardly know where to begin.
Stuart's succession
Rachel Cooke is unexpectedly bowled over by Alexander Masters's beautiful, important portrait of an itinerant, Stuart: A Life Backwards
Recension Observer

The backwards life of Stuart av Tony Gould
Artikel i TLS

Miss Universum

Nu kan du ge bort dom andra böckerna. Miss Universums bok har kommit.


__________________
Miss Universum
Samlade texter och bilder 1997-2005 av Catti Brandelius. 2005. Ordfront förlag: ISBN 91-7324-949-1

Miss Universums hemsida
Miss Universums boks hemsida

Paradise av A.L. Kennedy

Hannah försöker förstå var hon är och var hon börjar och slutar. Paradise börjar som om Hannah dåsat till och fått en knuff. Desorienterad, törstig, mitt emellan fortfarande full och bakis från helvetet.

8.42.
But I don't know which one - night or morning. Either way, from what I can already see, I would rather not be involved in all this far beyond 8.43.

Vartefter Hannah får liv mannen med tunt lockigt hår, mitt betalkort, min nyckel blir hon mer och mer nöjd, över duschen, närheten till toan, över att hon har återställare, en flaska med hörn som inte rullar iväg och 700 ml - så mycket rymligare än en pint. I do love liquids.

One of the many pleasures of forgetting is, as we all of us know, remembering. You trot from room to room and can't imagine where you left your keys the night before: without them, you're locked in your house. Under the bed, in the knife drawer, behind the Scotch, behind your shoes, in the pockets of every garment that has pockets, the pedal bin, the compost bin, the bread bin: you have panicked into every likely nook. You sit on your bed, despairing, unsure of who has your spares and if they still like you and then - your hand gently brushes that lovely clump of metal, that heavy, little spider of keys to everything. They've been lounging on the duvet the whole morning, just winking whenever you've passed. But you have them at last and you are happy, much happier than you would have been if you'd picked them up without confusion from their customary place.
This morning it's very clear that I've misplaced at least a day, so you can imagine that I'm pretty much delighted.

Utdrag
__________________
A.L. Kennedy
Paradise. 2005. Jonathan Cape, London. ISBN 9780224062589


A remarkably eloquent tale of alcoholism makes chronic drinking understandable to those who don't. Recension i Salon
Only a real alcoholic could testify to how accurately "Paradise" depicts the affliction, but it does make chronic drinking more understandable to those of us who aren't. Having dried out, Hannah finds "my fresh and sober life unrolls about me, revealing a nice, clean, lunar emptiness." For her, alcohol makes so many things -- sex, memory, the company of other people -- not just bearable but possible.

The road to oblivion. Ali Smith is spellbound by Paradise, AL Kennedy's story of heavy drinking - told from a woman's perspective. Recension i Guardian

Message in a Bottle av NEIL GORDON Recension i New York Times
Hannah's devious alcoholic ways co-exist with a level of saccharine innocence that makes it difficult entirely to believe in her. She consistently justifies her horridness with a kind of philosophizing that leaves the reader trapped in her own crippling self-justification

Where I'm likely to find it av Haruki Murakami

"Hmm," the girl said. "Have you been looking for a long time?"

"For a long time. Since before you were born."

"Is that right?" she said, staring at her palm for a while. "How 'bout I help you find it?"

"I'd really like that," I said.

"So I should look for something, I don't know what it is but it might be a door or an umbrella or a doughnut or an elephant?"

"Exactly," I said. "But when you see it you'll know that's it."



WHERE I'M LIKELY TO FIND IT
novell av HARUKI MURAKAMI