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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, President Trump has never been more unpopular and the midterms are now less than six months away.
So the intensity of opposition that's waiting for a lot of these Republican candidates in a general election is very, very high.
The politics of a wartime economy this week on the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, writer Douglas Stewart, like the main character in his Booker Prize-winning novel called Shuggy Bane, Stewart grew up in Glasgow, working class, queer, and with a mother addicted to alcohol. His first career was designing for Calvin Klein and Banana Republic, from outerwear to underwear.
Sometimes when I'm in an audience now and I sort of look out and I feel a little bit nervous, I have a joke to myself. I think, how many people in this audience have worn the underwear that you designed?
Stuart has a new novel. Later, Richard Gad, creator and star of Baby Reindeer. His new series, Half Man, is about two boys who become brothers when their mothers fall in love. They spend the next 30 years trying to survive each other. And David Bianculli reviews the latest adaptation of Lord of the Flies. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross.
You may have read my guest's books. You may have worn the clothes he designed. Douglas Stewart's first novel, Shuggy Bane, won the Booker Prize, which is one of the world's top literary awards. Much of it was written when Stewart was working in the fashion industry, designing clothes for popular brands like Calvin Klein and Banana Republic.
Stuart wouldn't have predicted any of this from what his life was like growing up in a working-class neighborhood in Glasgow, Scotland in the 80s. He was raised by a single mother who was addicted to alcohol. Things weren't much better at school where he was relentlessly bullied. When he came to understand that he was gay, he didn't know anyone else who was.
The novel Shuggie Bain tells a story very similar to Stuart's own childhood— Stewart has described his second novel, Young Mungo, as a story about the dangers of first love between two young working-class men in Glasgow, and about masculinity, conformity, and falling in love.
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Chapter 2: What themes does Douglas Stuart explore in his new novel 'John of John'?
The son is known as Cal. Cal has just graduated textile school in Glasgow and reluctantly returns home when his father insists he needs Cal's help to take care of Cal's sick grandmother. Cal is gay and keeps it a secret from everyone, including his father. But as we learn early in the story, the father, who is the deacon of his church, is also secretly gay.
Father and son are keeping the same secret from each other. Douglas Stewart, welcome to Fresh Air and congratulations on your new book. Can you describe how you landed on the premise that both the father and son are gay and they're not only keeping it a secret from everyone else, they're keeping it a secret from each other?
Yes. I mean, I am a Scotsman who grew up in Glasgow, but I had never been to the Outer Hebrides before. You know, they're quite far from the mainland and it takes some effort to get there. But in 2019, when I was thinking about writing a new novel, I decided I was going to go to the Archipelago of Islands and just explore it and see if a story emerged.
And I realized that every little settlement I went to, that when I was talking to someone, I would sit at a kitchen table and have tea and pancakes or whatever they baked for me. It was, you know, all the islanders were very hospitable. But I was hearing about their settlement and the people in the village. And there was always a bachelor or some spinsters who had never married.
And for quite a conservative Christian place, that seemed a little unusual. And I asked everybody, you know, well, why did so-and-so not marry? Why didn't they ever sort of take a partner? And the answer was often, well, they missed their moment was what was said. And I came to learn that in rural places, you know, the window to find someone to love could be quite short, quite narrow.
And that just really sparked my imagination. And I said just very casually one day, well, and of course, some of them might be gay and that makes it harder to find love. And the woman I said it to said sort of reared back and said, oh, no, no, no, that's that's not so that's not possible.
And of course, I just knew historically that some of them must have been maybe not the people we were talking about, but some of these people that had never found love. And that was really the moment that the novel came to life. I had gone thinking it was about the return of a prodigal son. And then I realized it wasn't about that at all. It was about the people he had left behind.
What does being gay mean to the father, who's a weaver, who's never left the island and doesn't even want to leave? He's the deacon of his church and often quotes the Bible compared to the son who left the island for art school and returns reluctantly to the island when his father calls him back.
Yeah, I think they're definitely men of a different generation, although tradition is very strong in the setting of the novel. And for John, because he is very close to scripture, he is part of a church that believes in a very traditional conservative viewpoint, any sex. Outside of one man, one woman inside of a marriage is absolutely taboo.
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Chapter 3: How did Douglas Stuart's upbringing influence his writing?
We didn't have any books at home. We didn't have access to them. It wasn't quite such an unusual thing because I think if I looked at the boys I grew up around, many of them also weren't reading either. But, you know, children also need a huge amount of peace in their lives in order to read, you know, both peace inside themselves and peace at home. And also at school, to be honest.
And I didn't have any of that because I was dealing with a single mother who was suffering with addiction. And then at school, I was being bullied for being gay. But two things happened when I was 16. The first thing that happened was my mother died very suddenly one morning. Her addiction finally got the better of her. And when I left for school in the morning, she was fine.
When I came home at lunchtime, she was dead. And also at 16, school becomes...
optional for Scottish children you can leave if you want to and so my year of about 300 kids went down to only 12 kids and I found myself one of only 12 kids remaining in my year who were going to finish high school who were then going to go on to college hopefully and I found myself in an English class where I was the only student
It was just me and two English teachers, Mr. Arthur and Mr. Archibald. And suddenly they had eight hours a week with a student who was trying to pay attention, who was trying to understand how to read, not just get through the exams, but trying to learn how to digest books and how to take in all their meaning. And I tell you this because I suddenly realized at 16, 17, I would love to be a writer.
I would love to study English literature. And that just wasn't going to be possible for me. I was a working class boy that grew up in a neighborhood of great deprivation. And I think my teachers, rather than turning me away from English, turned me towards something that I could make a living at.
That's an amazing story about being like one student with two teachers and just talking about, you know, just the three of you talking about literature. I could see how you could fall in love with books that way. But how did that lead to textiles?
Well, you know, it was wonderful to be around people who had this passion for a thing and they invested that passion in you. But they saw that I couldn't go on to compete and study English literature at a university level. They, you know, I would have to be competing with children that would ultimately go to Oxford and Cambridge.
And, you know, they had spent their whole lives, their whole, all their youth around books. And I just didn't have that. And so instead, they guided me towards textiles without me really knowing what textiles was.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of the relationship between the two Johns in 'John of John'?
And it's just the most remarkable thing. But Cal returns from... art school, as you say, and his father has always been a weaver. And so he's almost gone to textile college, couldn't find work, and finds himself back working for his father anyway.
If you're just joining us, we're listening to my conversation with Booker Prize-winning writer Douglas Stewart. His new novel is called John of John. We'll hear more after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
Chapter 5: What are the major themes in Richard Gadd's new series 'Half Man'?
You grew up keeping a lot of secrets. I mean, I think you didn't want everybody to know that your mother was alcoholic, what life was like at home, how confusing and sometimes dangerous it could be.
Chapter 6: How does Richard Gadd's 'Half Man' address toxic masculinity?
You had to keep a secret that you were gay. And she kept secrets from you, even like hiding the alcohol, hiding half-used bottles of beer and alcohol. What would you do if you found those partially used bottles and cans?
I mean, I think my whole childhood was about secrets on all sorts of levels. But, you know, my mother's drinking was a difficult thing to manage. I was sort of thrust into a caregiving role about the age of four when I realized that my mother wouldn't always be able to take care of me and I had to look after her. And when you would find sort of...
I learned sometimes that the best thing to do was to dispose of it or to get rid of it. But sometimes if you did that, it just caused more trouble. And so you had to almost just let her get on with it. And so it very much depended on where I could judge where she was emotionally and what would come from those actions. But yeah, sort of addiction was a central part of my childhood. Yeah.
And I mean, this is the point where I should say my mother was a wonderful woman and she was a wonderful mother. She was incredibly kind, incredibly generous. And I often say that addiction killed my mother, but I don't think as I age that that is true. I think what killed my mother was, first of all, poverty.
And then the second thing was, is she was a woman who had made a very traditional bargain that said, you don't need an education if you leave school and you should marry the first man that you that you fall in love with and you should have children and you will build a life together. She eventually married my father.
And when the sort of the country went into 25 percent unemployment under Margaret Thatcher and when my father left her. You know, she found herself in a very desperate place. And so it was that sort of, you know, that upbringing and then also the poverty that we found ourselves in that led to the addiction. And that's really the thing that killed her.
So you lived in the fashion – you worked in the fashion world for about 10 years. 20 years, sorry. 20 years. Oh, longer than I thought. So I think it was when you were in textile school that various companies and industries came to the school to scout for talent. And I think that's how the Calvin Klein Company found you.
That's right, yeah. I was just wrapping up my education and I thought I was going to go into the mill system. I thought I was going to go into a very traditional employment and make cloth and make textiles. And I had done this really wonderful thing where I had spent a summer with the last remaining shakers on earth up in Sabbath Day Lake, Maine.
And I had access to all their archives and their clothes. This is 1998. And I based my degree show, my graduate show on it. And at fashion school, all students sort of, they're very outre. You know, they use lots of color and pattern and feathers. And if they can sequin a thing, they sequin it.
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Chapter 7: What personal experiences shaped Richard Gadd's storytelling?
And I had created this collection that was incredibly somber, very respectful of the shakers. It was quite monastic. It was very simple. And I watched all these companies come through my college and start to hire graduates. They would go to Prada. They would go to Gucci. And I thought, oh, I'm never going to get a job because I'm maybe a little too melancholy.
And suddenly the Calvin Klein team came through and they said, this is minimalism. I remember it's the end of the 90s. And they said, would you like to come to New York? And I had no family home. I had nothing to go back to Scotland for. And so I said, yeah. And I've been here now almost 30 years.
You said that you liked fashion. And I assume this means like designing fashion that's both revealing and or concealing. Can you talk about that a little?
Yeah, I think, you know, starting in my childhood, I realised that clothes are always deeply psychological and we're always projecting something, who we want to be and at the same time maybe concealing who we are or what's really going on in our lives.
I've written actually in the past about my character seeing someone at university or in college who is wearing very shabby clothes, things they've bought in a second-hand store or, you know, old tweeds or old wax jackets. And as a working-class kid, My character says, you know, it's a dream altogether to be able to wear clothes that look like you don't care.
Because, you know, in the working class, you're always sort of projecting an aura, I think. And so clothes I've always found to be deeply psychological. And when I start writing a character, I think about what don't they like about themselves? What are they trying to hide? What is ill-fitting? Because my own relationship with clothing has always been emotional.
It's not just get dressed in the morning and go out. It's It's always about what am I trying to project.
What do you consider to be one of the things that you designed when you were working with Calvin Klein that most speaks to either how you see masculinity or how you see yourself or what you think a garment should do?
Actually the thing I'm most proud of comes after Calvin Klein. I actually was one of the heads of menswear design at Banana Republic for 15 years.
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