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Chapter 1: What is Douglas Stuart's latest novel, John of John, about?
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Keitetääs kahvit. Mikä ihana lause. Saa hengähtää ja unohtaa hetkeksi huolet ja hommat. Siinä mieli virkistyy ja sydän kevenee. Ja kuulee maukkaimmat jutut. Tai saa vain hetken olla ja nauttia. Arkea ikä kaikki. Ja se on hyvä niin. Eloveena.
Chapter 2: How does John-Calum Macleod's character evolve in the story?
Täyttä eloa.
Hello and welcome to the programme where an author tells us about their new novel and reveals three other works that inspired its creation. Today I'm thrilled to be in the midst of the tented village and literary hubbub of the Hay Festival to talk to a writer who announced his arrival into the world of fiction with the small feat of simply winning the Booker Prize with his debut novel.
That novel was Shuggie Bain, and the author was Glasgow-born Douglas Stewart. His second novel, Young Mungo, an instant bestseller, was also set in the city of his childhood. But now, with his latest work, John of John, Douglas looks further afield, to the edge lands of Scotland's outer Hebrides, and a religious community surviving on the margins. Douglas Stewart, welcome to Take Four Books.
Thank you very much. It's good to be here. Douglas, you're here to talk about your new novel, John of John, and the three works that influenced it. And today you've picked a coming of age and coming out novel set in 1980s New York, a Pulitzer Prize winning story of fathers and sons, and a Booker shortlisted tale exploring the push and pull of life in rural Ireland.
But before we get to all of those, Douglas, let's start with John of John. Your novel begins in the 1990s with John Callum MacLeod, known as Cal, a not-so-prodigal son returning from university to his home on the outer Hebridean island of Harris. First of all, tell us about Cal, because it's fair to say that he's not exactly delighted to be on his way back, is he?
That's right. Yeah, see, Cal has just graduated from textile college and he is sort of entered into Scotland at a time where the textile industry is having a really tough time. So he spent the summer in Edinburgh couch surfing and borrowing off of his friends and cleaning the toilets in the local pub.
And he calls home to the Isle of Harris twice a week to talk to his father and his grandmother and mostly to worship with his father, who is a presenter in the local church up there. And one day he calls home to his dad and his dad says the line, your grandmother's feet are as purple as calf liver. It's time for you to come home. She's unwell.
And so his father calls Cal back to the small croft in Harris to take care of his granny there. And, of course, it's at that time in every young person's life where they feel like they've just left home, they're about to become their own self, and you're called back with this great sense of duty.
And I don't think it's spoiling anything to say that almost as soon as Cal gets home to the island, he realises things are not quite what they were made out to be.
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Chapter 3: What are the connections between John of John and The Lost Language of Cranes?
And the crofts there are quite far apart. You know, there is a sense of being by yourself when you're when you're on the east coast there. Cal, the settlement that I have imagined, which is entirely, the island is real, but the settlement is entirely fictional, has only 26 people in it. And like many rural places, there's not a lot of young people.
Cal is one of only, he says in the book, three people under the age of 40. And everyone else is aging and sort of getting by. But his father is the presenter in the local church. He is the deacon there. The church is the center of the small community. And his father, John, is also a sheep farmer. He is a weaver. He is a sometime electrician.
He will do anything he can to sort of to help the family survive. But the real issue is, is that John has been living not with his mother, but with his mother-in-law, Ella. And Ella is a Glaswegian transplant. Although she's been on the islands for 50 years, she is still referred to in quiet tones as the newly arrived.
And and so it's been quite a tense thing for a man to be living with his mother in law. And so Cal has come home to this family. And, you know, in every sort of triangle, there is a push and pull and a sense of drama there.
One thing to point out for those who've never been to the Outer Hebrides is that the Isle of Harris isn't exactly an island, is it? In that it's entirely joined to the Isle of Lewis. Although, I suppose in a geological sense, it is a bit like a discrete island. Certainly, you know, a completely opposing landscape to Lewis. And those oppositions lend themselves well to literature, don't they?
They do. One of the things that I had loved most when I was talking about the sort of the anorthosite is I was told by my friends that live there locally that some of the only places that can be claimed to be found is on the east coast of Harris and then also on the surface of the moon. And they have a very famous hill there that was once mined for semi-precious stones for red garnets.
And in the novel, I write that the earth and the moon were once joined as lovers. And when they shared their final kiss and the moon ascended to the heavens, she cried and the red garnets are her tears falling back to earth. And as a novelist, I love the romance of that. But but yes, Harris is a very hilly, very there's one very dominating mountain.
And it's very different to Lewis, which is conjoined to which feels like a roller rolling meadows with the with the beautiful my hair and, you know, the soft sandy beaches. But I like the what I think of as the hardness of Harris.
And before we delve deeper into John of John Douglas, I have to ask about your own journey to the Outer Hebrides. You went there to research a novel just before your first book, Shuggie Bain, was actually published. Before you knew that the huge success that was coming your way, what was it that drew you to the islands in the first place?
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Chapter 4: How does Gilead influence the themes in John of John?
And it was strange that I found myself living in New York and still didn't know much of my homeland. And before Shuggie was about to publish, I had all the anxiety of a debut novel. It's what's going to happen, what's going to come. And I knew that I had to start some new work. I'd been drawn to the islands because I am a textile student. I went to college to study textiles.
And I had always loved Harris Tweed, which is made on Harrison Lewis. And I was very anxious, you know, and I was wondering what would happen with Shuggie. And so I turned to my husband one day and I said, I think I want to go to the Outer Hebrides. And he is an American. He has no idea where the Outer Hebrides were. And he says, you should absolutely go to the Outer Hebrides.
Get away from me with your anxiety. And I said, I'm going to go for 12 weeks. And he says, are you sure that's long enough? And so and so I went only knowing four people. I was connected to about four people on the islands. I started at the very... I was looking for a sense of my own nation, and I was looking for a story.
But if I didn't come away with a novel or a short story, then at least I would have learned something about my country that I hadn't known. And I started on the southern island of Vattersea because I was searching for place. And all the islands have a very different personality and culture and history. And I moved, I just rented rooms or rented little houses and I moved up the archipelago.
I would speak to anybody who would speak to me and people were so, so generous with their time. And oftentimes, I mean, you might not like this, but I would knock on a door and I say, can I talk to you about lambing? And the person who opened the door would say to me, you're not from the BBC, are you? And I said, no, I'm not from the BBC. And they say, oh, well, come in, come in.
and so i don't know what you've done with your reputation up there but um it's not me it's not you it's not you it isn't but anyway i yeah so i traveled up and and you know i went through bara and the us and i loved the place but i just didn't feel like the novel was going to be set there and then i arrived in harris spectacular harris where fascinating things converge you know there's the gallic language there is the weaving which i love
There is a crofting way of life, which is always under threat. And then there is the very sort of devout form of Presbyterianism. And I was on that lonely landscape on the East Coast and feeling very insignificant. And it was just a really moving experience.
So as I understand it, that the story of John of John emerged out of you talking to these locals, hearing all these stories in particular about people who never married, bachelors and spinsters throughout all the communities.
That's right. Yeah. You know, all my novels are character driven. I love people and I love getting to meet people. And when I went from settlement to settlement, I would ask about people and their neighbors and their lives. And when I heard about the older people who hadn't married, I sort of inquired why.
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Chapter 5: What role does the setting of the Isle of Harris play in the novel?
And often there was a very practical reason that perhaps someone had to care for their parents as they aged. Or often it was said that farmers and crofters didn't want to be bothered with the opposite sex, which was funny. But there was this one sort of standard answer I got often, and it was, well, they missed their window for love. Mm-hmm.
And as a novelist, that just really sparked my mind that in rural places, it's, you know, you might not meet the person you're going to spend your life with. And I began to think, you know, well, it's if heterosexual people have a difficult time with that, it must be even doubly difficult for people who might be gay.
And I was at one lady's kitchen table one day and I said, well, it's very possible some of these people that never married are gay. And the woman sort of pulled back a little bit, said, oh, no, no, no, that's that's not possible. And I thought in that moment, just that very honest, genuine response, there was a type of erasure. And that was where the novel came from.
I was just imagining what it might be to be a crofter and to be gay and and to be searching for love.
And so you take that spark and we know from the very beginning of the novel that Cal is gay. And is returning home to a community where that can never be expressed. But we also learn very early on in the novel, and it's no spoiler, I think, to say this, that his father, John, is gay too. But they're both keeping their sexuality secret from each other and from almost everyone else around them.
I think that's right. I think we assume that people always, whatever they are, can come out and be themselves. And sometimes you cannot do that. There is nowhere to come out to, you know, and what would it do? And it's a very devout community. You know, in the novel, the characters are very gentle, community-based characters. interdependent with their neighbors.
But they believe a very strict path to God, as free Presbyterianism is. And they believe that the word of scripture is the word of God and it is never wrong. And at the heart of that is that love and sex is between one man and one woman, between man and wife.
And so there is no, you know, John as the father doesn't even think of himself as gay because gay is a social designation as much as anything else. It's about community. And he is just a man who has been in love his whole life with another man. He is just John as an individual. So there is no way to express their sexuality. As a novelist, it was an exercise in dramatic tension.
How can I have father and son who love each other so deeply, who spend every waking hour either working together or at worship or eating together, and yet they cannot say the thing that's on their heart?
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Chapter 6: How does the theme of familial duty manifest in John of John?
I think men... all over the world, but definitely in working-class Scotland, have a tough time expressing all of their feelings or all of their thoughts. And so these men are incredibly lonely, which is why the grandmother's a very necessary character, because she will say whatever's on her mind.
And amid this sort of very strict Presbyterian religious community on the Isle of Harris where they even chain up the children's swings and the playgrounds so they can't be used on a Sunday, there is a connection to a completely different world, isn't there? The world of fashion, which you yourself worked in in New York for many years. Explain to us what that connection is.
Yes. Well, for me myself, I studied textiles. I went to the Scottish College of Textiles, as Cal does in the book, and then actually to the Royal College of Art and found myself in New York almost by accident when I was offered a job there and thinking I was going for a few years and then have spent 26 years there. But from New York, I have always loved Harris tweed weaving.
Harris tweed weaving is manufactured in the same method that it was centuries before. It's one weaver, one loom. The looms are all man-powered. They're often situated behind the house of the crofter or the weaver. And the cloth and everything about the cloth comes from the land. So all the colors are inspired by nature around them. The cloth is so beautiful. It's so unique.
But, you know, as the world modernized through the Industrial Revolution and even textiles in general went to these big screaming factories and then the factories went to Italy and then to the Far East, Harris Tweed really held on.
And it's in place to give the weavers, the men and women, a way to make an income, but also to keep people on the land, you know, so that they didn't have to migrate to cities or go to places of industry. And I think, you know, I think that's such a wonderful thing. It's, you know, especially in today's world to still have something in Britain that is made by hand and that is so unique.
I couldn't help but be fascinated by it. But also as a novelist, I think it's quite a lonely way to live, you know, to be one weaver, one loom in a shed behind your home in a place that already is quite quiet. And so for me, it had endless dramatic possibilities.
And possibly never see where it goes to.
Well, that's it. You also might never see where it goes to. And yeah, but it just it was such a romantic idea for me.
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Chapter 7: What insights does Douglas Stuart share about masculinity in his writing?
Matkalla elämyksiin. Museokortti.
returned home. He crossed to the yarn shelves. It was his favourite place in the whole world. The shelves were full of hundreds of yarns, all the romantic colours of Scotland, bracken and grouse, gorse and heather, rain and moss, the chafed red of a drunkard's face and pure bilious whitey.
Amongst these were punkish hot pinks and acid yellows, violent tones that made people recoil until they saw the finished cloth and saw how skilfully John could mix sour greens with wheats and nightshades until it was a field of spring bluebells. It was a treasure box. Cal had loved playing with these cones when he was younger.
He would take a colour and wrap it around his finger until each finger was a multicoloured worm of mad stripes. John had taken time with them then, unwrapping the hues, re-wrapping them to show harmony or contrast, or how a Macdonald funeral tartan should look opposed to a MacLeod hunting. "'If it's right,' John had said, "'then you should be able to feel something.'
"'His father had wrapped Cal's little fingers in lapis, violets and cornflower blues. "'He added a light, overripe peach tone, and then, to ground it all, "'a mossy brown with flecks of coppery sienna. "'That was the day we took your mother to Calanish, do you remember? "'That was what the stones and the sky and her good coat had looked like.'
John unspooled a single strand of vermilion and wrapped it amongst the other colours. You took a nosebleed. You could never stop picking it yourself.
That was Douglas Stewart reading from his new novel, John of John. Now we're at the point in the programme, Douglas, where we turn to the three works that you've picked as influences on John of John. And first, we have a book from 1986 by the American novelist, short story writer and creative writing teacher, David Leavitt.
Tell us what the novel is, Douglas, and how it connects us back to John of John.
Yeah, the novel is called The Lost Language of Cranes, and I actually came to it much later than 1986, but I chose this because of how it explores a father and son relationship. Both the father and son are gay and yet cannot come out to one another.
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Chapter 8: What future projects does Douglas Stuart envision after John of John?
You know, it's islands within islands within islands once again. That's right. That's right, yeah.
And I think, you know, we all have a very lonely experience no matter who we are and, you know, and where we are. And part of being a writer is trying to connect humanity in that way and to sort of dispel the things that we cannot talk about.
And, you know, one of the things that was most wonderful about Shuggie Bain is when a reader comes to me and says, you know, I lived that very similar life and I've never been able to talk to anyone about it and it's affected me very profoundly. I kept it even secret from the people I grew up around and So that idea of islands within islands has been throughout all my work.
And to be really broad, you know, a housing scheme in the east end of Glasgow is an island because, you know, you can be feel very sort of contained and trapped by the socioeconomic forces. Certainly a mining village and the village that Shuggie grows up in that I did in the central belt of Scotland.
because it's at the end of a two-mile road and, you know, you need a real intent and purpose to leave it, is also a village. And so, yeah, islands, whether they're emotional or geographical, have always been my fascination.
And in the preface to a more recent reissue of The Lost Language of Cranes, David Leavitt said that rereading the book, he was appalled by the naive clumsiness that marks much of the prose, but that the main characters struck him as being as alive now as when he first invented them decades ago. I mean, it can be tough to go back and reread your work, can't it? I will never do that.
Really? That's how tough it is, yeah. Why not? Oh, well, I think a writer's always confronted with the things they wish they'd done. When I spoke about my past in fashion, you're always continuously improving. And I think a book is finished when it's finished. And because you cannot go back, you know, I would often I love what Zadie Smith says.
She says the best time to edit a book is 20 minutes before you go on stage, because when you open your book that you finished maybe two years before and you read it again, you think, oh, wow, I would really rewrite a lot of this. And I think that's very true. You know, it's an artefact of the past and mostly of a past you.
Let's come on now to your next pick of influences, Douglas. And this is the Pulitzer Prize winning second novel from 2004 by the revered American author and essayist Marilynne Robinson called Gilead. It takes the form of a letter from a 76-year-old reverend living in the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa in 1956 to his seven-year-old son. Gilead is a book...
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