Logan mountstuart biography
Any Human Heart
STRUCTURED AS MEMOIRS
This is presented as a compilation of journals kept by Logan Mountstuart from shortly before he left school in the 1920s until just before his death aged 85. Consequently, they describe things as they were at the time, with candour and an absence of hindsight. It also means there are gaps and changes of style. The pretence is carried further by the presence of footnotes (including "corrections" and even a reference to Boyd's own biography of an artist), an index and other later editorial notes, including Logan's introduction, in which he explains, "We keep a journal to entrap the collection of selves that forms us". I think it is the different voices of Logan at different times in his life that make the book work so well: often he is not very likeable, but he has a certain charm, and his triumphs are balanced by tragedy.
It is not a continuous narrative, but rather, broken down into journals covering significant periods in his life: school (establishing his key friendships with Peter Scabius and Ben Leeping); Oxford university; London as a writer and journalist (marriage, then a coup de foudre); naval intelligence in WW2; return to a changed London; NY (art dealer); Africa (teaching); London (including links with the Baader Meinhof gang) and finally, retirement in France.
The framework of the book lends teenage anxieties more poignancy, e.g. "as ever, my predominant emotion is one of disappointment... could this be the pattern of my life ahead? Every ambition thwarted, every dream stillborn?". At other times, Logan as an old man does insert a retrospective analysis, e.g. "I often wonder if those early sexual experiences with Tess and Anna warped me irrevocably" - a plausible attempt to justify some of his subsequent behaviour.
FAMOUS FRIEN
Any Human Heart
2002 novel by William Boyd, a British writer
For the 2010 adaptation for television, see Any Human Heart (TV series).
Any Human Heart: The Intimate Journals of Logan Mountstuart is a 2002 novel by William Boyd, a British writer. It is written as a lifelong series of journals kept by the fictional character Mountstuart, a writer whose life (1906–1991) spanned the defining episodes of the 20th century, crossed several continents and included a convoluted sequence of relationships and literary endeavours. Boyd uses the diary form to explore how public events impinge on individual consciousness, so that Mountstuart's journal alludes almost casually to the war, the death of a prime minister, or the abdication of the king. Boyd plays ironically on the theme of literary celebrity, introducing his protagonist to several real writers who are included as characters.
The journal style of the novel, with its gaps, false starts and contradictions, reinforces the theme of the changing self in the novel. Many plot points simply fade away. The novel received mixed reviews from critics on publication, but has sold well. A television adaptation was made with the screenplay written by Boyd, first broadcast in 2010.
Composition
Mountstuart appeared in Boyd's short story "Hôtel des Voyageurs" written in the early 1990s and published in London Magazine and his 1995 collection The Destiny of Nathalie 'X'. The story was inspired by the journals written by writer and critic Cyril Connolly in the 1920s. It was written in journal form and was, like Connolly's journals self obsessed, lyrical and hedonistic. As a schoolboy, Boyd was obsessed with Connolly, avidly reading his reviews in The Sunday Times, and later read his entire published œuvre and found his flawed personality 'deeply beguiling'.
In 1998 Boyd had written the hoax biography of an invented artist, Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960, in which Mountstuart reappeared. Boyd A good reviewer is not supposed to give the game away early, but I can’t help but gush: If you haven’t seen Any Human Heart when it aired on PBS, you will have an opportunity to watch the episodes online the Monday after its initial showing, from Feb 14 to March 22, and two more weeks to catch the last two episodes on screen (February 20 & February 27). Some critics have dismissed this mini-series as another Forrest Gump story, wherein the fictional hero moves through the 20th century and rubs shoulders with famous people. I can assure you that this is the only trait that these two movies have in common, for one is filmed from the perspective of magic realism and the other is a gritty view of a man’s life and his failures and successes. I began to watch the first episode of Any Human Heart when I had the time to view the DVD from start to end. I was glad that I had five free hours, for I could not stop watching it. The opening credits had a similar feel to the opening of Mad Men, which clued me in that this mini-series would not offer a one-note plot (I have not read William Boyd’s book, but intend to), and that cigarettes would be used as a prop. I was right. We meet Logan Mountstuart almost immediately in all of his personifications (in misty watercolor memories) – from childhood, Conor Nealon as Logan Mountstuart, youth to young man, Sam Claflin as Logan Mounstuart, young man to mature man, Matthew MacFadyen as Logan, mature man to an old man reminiscing about his life. Jim Broadbent as an old Logan “I’m all these different people,” he thinks as the camera pans to a misty scene of a river bank. “Which life is truly mine?” The three Logans on the river bank Logan rummages through the detritus of his life, burning memories (much as Cassandra Austen burned her sister Jane’s letters) and looking over his journals. “Your past never leaves you,” he says ea .