Seeing a homeless man on the street, you may feel sad for his miserable life, but how do you know that he once did not have a happy childhood? Maybe it's just that his happy childhood ended a little early, and when most of his peers were still enjoying the love of their parents, he had already embarked on society and tasted the hardships of life, the cold and warm of society. There are many such people, and Stewart is one of them.
In the biographical work of British biographer and screenwriter Alexander Masters, "Stewart's Rewind Life" (published by @People's Literature Press), the author recounts a short 33-year scarred and infinitely vivid life called Stuart Schott. This novel biographical literary work made Alexander ascend to the literary world in one fell swoop and officially began the road of literary creation.
Unlike the usual style of writing in biographical works, Alexander took a flashback approach, starting with describing Stewart's current life. Looking all the way back to his childhood, this is the metaphor of "rewinding life", like playing a documentary backwards, in the process of recalling, not only understanding the evolution of life, but also pursuing the root cause of evolution.
For Stewart, this form of creation that traces back to the roots and asks the roots is more meaningful. Because the successful experience of successful people may be similar, and unfortunate lives basically have their own misfortunes, especially the causes of misfortune are various and strange, and some even can't bear to look at it directly and can't look back. Stutt is the latter.
After the author decided to write a biography of Stewart, he began to gradually enter his life, understanding his temperament characteristics, his living habits, his social relations, and analyzing the reasons for his multiple identities as a thief, hostage taker, mental patient and vagabond. This understanding ranges from face-to-face interviews to hands-on experiences of Stewart's real life.
It can be said that it is this spirit of risking oneself for the sake of writing that invisibly improves the quality of this book, and the fresh material is always much more interesting than the hard handling. Stewart's revision of his biography from time to time also ensures the accuracy of the facts and the authenticity of personal feelings.
In this biography co-authored by the author and the protagonist of the book, we clearly see the image of a wanderer on the fringes of society and the social situation behind this wanderer. Stewart's current situation is both maddening and deplorable. From his active participation in the rescue activities, it can be seen that Stewart is not a fierce and evil person, he has a piece of goodness in his heart. And his childhood state also illustrates this point.
As a child, "Stewart was a happy little boy. What a carefree little thing. "He likes to fiddle with things, he likes to swim, he likes to draw, he likes arithmetic, he loves to make friends." He was a thin but lively child, very happy with the whole world and with himself. ”
No one can imagine that such a child who is full of love for life will go further and further on the road of life, until he falls into the quagmire of theft, robbery and drug use. He almost understood his own life and ruined his own life.
The end of this innocent childhood originated from a physical education accident. Stewart accidentally fell while climbing the rope, and the school had learned that he had a disability before, and the accident caused the school to transfer him directly to the school for children with disabilities.
When he first arrived at the school for children with disabilities, Stewart's performance was still remarkable, which can be confirmed by the evaluation of him by the school teachers at that time. But the change in the course of life happened again, this time not by anyone else, but by his brother and the family's male nanny, caused by sexual assault.
Unable to accept this emotional, physical, and life-threatening injury, Stewart urges his mother to send him to a caring home. From this, it can be seen that he has hope for the Care Home, although the end result is backfire. But, "At that time, did you know which of these people in the Care Family could get out of trouble, recover from the beginning, and which could not?" The one who stabbed his wife with a knife, when you met him, did he look like the kind of person he became later? ”
The so-called caring home did not bring him the emotional care he needed, but instead contributed to his wandering again, and he has been out of control ever since. And the school life of this period also made him learn to use violence, "violence, fear of violence and madness, these can scare people, people have some respect for you." 」 ”
Violence frightens the other person and gives himself temporary security. Sexual assault loses a sense of security and is lost in violence.
And the blind, fanatical worship of violence came from his father. "Rex is the one who leaves the toxin wherever he goes, and after decades of walking, the residual poison is still inexhaustible." His father was his idol and had a deep influence on him, and it wasn't until he saw his father beat a woman in front of him that he went crazy.
But Stuart, who questioned his father's image, fell into another confusion: "But what right do I have to condemn him?" What he did. I've done it all, and it's worse than he did. ”
Running away from home is because of sexual assault; advocating violence is believing that the other person's fear is enough to protect oneself; taking drugs is trying to dissolve irrepressible pain. "I'm slowly losing my original good me and slowly mixing with another bad me."
Why did stewart, who was going astray, change his mind in the year of his establishment and almost start a new life? Although he has a violent father, but he also has a mother who works hard and cares for him selflessly, why did the great maternal love not melt the ice in his heart and stop him from going farther and farther on the road of crime? And why has the social assistance system hidden behind Stewart failed to make greater efforts and achieve better results in caring for the homeless group? These questions are all asked by the author, and they also need to be considered by the reader.
Alexander's biography of the Wanderer leads us into a special group that is almost impossible to walk into. "They're like a bunch of school kids, and what binds them together is geographic proximity, a humble and frustrated mentality of status, and a set of tit-for-tat rules."
They have their own joys and sorrows, their own joys and sorrows. You can despise their attitude towards life, but you can't arbitrarily deny their life. It is not easy to be born as a human being, and the seemingly free wanderer seems to have nothing but "psychological escape". What kind of life is this, and how does this life grow up with injuries? "Stewart's Rewind Life" takes you to experience a different life. #书评人 #