Loading summary
Transcript52 lines
- [00:01]
Mia Sorrenti
Insurance isn't one size fits all, and shopping for it shouldn't feel like squeezing into something that just doesn't fit. That's why drivers have enjoyed Progressive's Name your price tool for years. With the Name your price tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they show you options that fit your budget enough. Hunting for discounts, trying to calculate rates and tinkering with coverages. Maybe you're picking out your very first policy, or maybe you're just looking for something that works better for you and your family. Either way, they make it simple to see your options. No guesswork, no surprises. Ready to see how easy and fun shopping for car insurance can be? Visit progressive.com and give the Name your price tool a try. Take the stress out of shopping and find coverage that fits your life on your terms. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates Price and coverage match Limited by state law
- [00:54]
Jack Edwards
Study and play Come together on a
- [00:57]
Douglas Stuart
Windows 11 PC and for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds.
- [01:04]
Jack Edwards
Get the unreal college deal everything you
- [01:06]
Douglas Stuart
need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more@windows.com studentoffer while supplies last ends
- [01:20]
Jack Edwards
June 30th terms at aka mscollegepc welcome
- [01:24]
Mia Sorrenti
to intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. Today's episode is part one of our recent live event with Booker Prize winning novelist Douglas Stuart, known for his searing portrayals of working class and queer identity in novels Shouldie Bain and young mungo. On May 20, Stewart joined us at Union Chapel to discuss the themes of his new novel John of John. In John of John, Stewart returns to the themes of family, masculinity and sexuality. It is the story of John Callum MacLeod. He returns to his childhood home on the Isle of Harris out of money and with little to show for his art school education. He sinks back into his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood. His father John, a sheep farmer, weaver and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son in law for decades. Let's join our host Jack Edwards now live at Union Chapel.
- [02:21]
Jack Edwards
Hello everyone and welcome to this very special Intelligence Squared event. My name is Jack Edwards. I am thrilled to be sharing this experience with you today here in the gorgeous Union Chapel. This venue will make a lot of sense when you read the book, but I thought maybe we could start with just a show of hands. How many people in the room have read Chuggie Bain? Okay, you've done your homework. What about Young Mungo? Okay, this is a great start. We're going to be talking today about Douglas new book, John of John. But first, I am delighted to introduce you to one of my absolute heroes, Douglas Stewart.
- [03:04]
Douglas Stuart
How are you? Yeah, I'm good. I'm so pleased to be in London. Thank you for coming out tonight.
- [03:11]
Jack Edwards
Now I'm going to talk about you like you're not here for a second and just talk about how wonderful you are. So you just.
- [03:16]
Douglas Stuart
I love that.
- [03:17]
Jack Edwards
Mind your own business over there in case you've been living under an actual rock. Douglas was born and raised in Glasgow, and after graduating from the Royal College of Art, he moved to New York, where he began a career in fashion design. His first novel, Shuggie Bain, won the Booker Prize and both debut novel of the year and overall book of the Year at the British Book Awards. It was also shortlisted for the US National Book Award for Fiction, among many other accolades. His second novel, Young Mungo, was a number one Sunday Times bestseller and his short stories have appeared in the New Yorker. His new novel is John of John, which has already received wide acclaim, including by myself. I absolutely adore this book and it has been selected for Oprah's Book Club. So he is also one of the nicest people in publishing. Another round of applause for Douglas Stewart. All right, Douglas, this is your third book now, and I wanted to ask you what feels different this time around?
- [04:16]
Douglas Stuart
Oh, I mean, I'm not publishing into a pandemic, which should be the very first thing. I mean, when I published Shuggie Bain, my first novel, it came out and about a week afterwards, the world shut down and so all the bookstores closed and even, you know, winning the Booker. I did it on my couch at home. I didn't have shoes on, and then the computer went dark and it felt like it had happened to someone else. The book was out in the UK for about 14 months before I saw my first copy of it. And so the whole thing just happened to somebody else. So just to be in a room with actual people feels so different.
- [04:51]
Jack Edwards
I know. Hantavirus gave us, like a little scare just to make us feel extra grateful to be here together, but nothing to worry about. What are you carrying with you going into writing this novel that you've taken from Shuggie and Young Mungo?
- [05:06]
Douglas Stuart
Well, the strange thing about the book is I started it in 2019. And so I actually started it before I published Shuggie Bain and anybody. You know this, but you might not know this, but it takes about 18 months from when a book's accepted till it meets its readers in the world. And that's a really anxious time for a writer, especially a debut novelist, because you don't know what to expect. And so I was driving my husband up the literal wall sort of every morning, like, what's going to happen? What's going to happen? For almost 18 months. And he says, you've got to start something new and you've got to get back to writing. And I had grown up in poverty in Glasgow, Jack. I'd never seen much of my own country, and yet then I found myself in New York. And every American I met would say, have you been to Skye? Have you been to Ullapool? And I would always say, no, I've never seen it. I've never seen it. And so I decided one day, literally one day, that I was going to go to the outer Hebrides for 12 weeks. And I said to my husband, I don't know if there's a story or a novel there, but I'll discover my own country a bit more. And he just looked at me without even knowing what Outer Hebrides were. You should definitely go. He was just like, 12 weeks sounds great. And I went. I knew he was. Honestly, it's a very loving marriage most of the time, but sometimes I'm a lot. And so I went. I knew three people on the islands, and I went. And the book just sort of started to come together.
- [06:29]
Jack Edwards
Yeah. So for the uninitiated, I wonder if you could give us a kind of elevator pitch summary of what John of John entails in your own words.
- [06:37]
Douglas Stuart
That's always a really hard question, because for me, it's, you know, it's so much work and so many lives, but I suppose it set on the Isle of Harris, up off the northwest coast of Scotland, in the year 1996. 1997. And our main character, or who we think is our main character, is John Callum MacLeod. He. He's 22. He's just graduated from textile college. He's bumming around Edinburgh. You know, the Scottish textile industry at the time was suffering a little bit, and it was hard to find work in textiles. He is originally from Harris, and every Wednesday and every Sunday he calls home to the island from a phone box and he talks to his dad, who's a sheep farmer, who's a weaver, but who, most importantly is the precentor in the local Presbyterian church. And on one of these calls, his father says to him, you know, your grandmother's feet are as purple as calf liver. And they're so honest about colour because they're both sort of weavers, that Cal knows this is very bad. The grandmother is the father's mother in law, so he's been stuck in a house with his mother in law for many decades. And he says it's Cal's responsibility to come home and take care of her. Cal returns to Harris. He thinks he was never coming home. He is back in amongst all these broken relationships and unfinished business. And what we think is the story of a prodigal son returning is actually the story about the people he had left behind. He's just really the catalyst to kick the whole thing off. But I think it's about the search for love, the search for self, about family and belonging, about a changing way of life and about the people of the island.
- [08:14]
Jack Edwards
Yeah. We start this novel with a departure from the mainland, not only for Cal, the main character, but also for you as a writer. We're used to seeing you on the mainland of Scotland. So Cal packs four years of his life into a backpack and a bin bag. And for Cal, this is a homecoming, a return to the island of Harris. But for many of us as your readers, it's an introduction to a new setting as well. So when you were on the island, where did you do your writing? Were you immersed in nature as you wrote, or did you wait until you were home and you could write on your laptop? How did that writing process look for you?
- [08:50]
Douglas Stuart
Yeah, I did a lot of it in the first 12 weeks. You know, I'd never been to the islands. And for anyone who doesn't know it, I took the sailing from Oban in March and I went to an island called Barra, and it's about a five hour sailing. I had a wee rental car and when I left it was daylight and when I arrived it was pitch black. And I didn't know the house that I had rented. I couldn't quite find it. And so it's a loop of an island and so I drove around it twice and eventually I find the house. But as I pull in, my headlights hit this just flock of sheep who have settled down for the night and they're on the road and so I negotiate with them and I nudge amongst them and I'm almost at the house and when I get out of the car, I'm sort of bullied by this huge Ram. Instantly, this big thing. And the Texel rams are about the size of small ponies. And, you know, it sort of comes up to me. And so I take my bag and I go into the house. And I'm too scared to go back out to the car in the dark, so I have no food my first night there. And when I wake in the morning, I look out and the ram is still there, but it's lying on the steps to the little cottage I'd rented. And I think, fuck. And I was so unprepared for, like, rural life. And so I'm watching it, and then about after an hour, I was like, this is stupid. You've got to go out. And so I open the door. The ram doesn't move. I sort of tow it. It doesn't move. I think, okay. And so I jump over it. Like it's the least graceful thing I've ever done in my life. And I land, and I sort of turn back, and the ram doesn't move. It had died. It had died in the night. And so it's pouring rain. I've not eaten. I'm thinking, oh, my God, what am I doing here? Like, I don't. And so I have to go find a neighbor, and I find him and I say, I think, I don't know if it's your sheep, but it's dead. And he goes, okay. And I said, can you come and help me with it? And he says, not until the rain stops. And I said, well, what am I meant to do with it? And he says, just drag it round the side of the house. And I did. So I got this ram on my first day by the back legs and dragged it around the side of the house, and he makes me cover it with tarpaulin, and I just sort of leave it there. But that was. You asked me about where I wrote. That's what I wrote, you know, that's what I did. And so I was just on the islands to learn everything about sheep farming, tweed weaving, religion, how to launch a boat. And I wrote the first, not the whole draft, but most of it right there.
- [11:05]
Jack Edwards
So one ram was harmed in the making of this book.
- [11:07]
Douglas Stuart
One ram was harmed. And it appears in, like, the second chapter. We start with a dead ram. Because I thought, I've got a.
- [11:14]
Jack Edwards
And it's. You know, I had to honor it.
- [11:15]
Douglas Stuart
Yeah. Had to honor it. Yeah. It's sacrifice.
- [11:17]
Jack Edwards
And at the beginning of the book, an islander asks Cal the question, who do you belong to? And that sort of becomes the philosophy for the Entire novel, I suppose. So I wondered, when you're writing, do you have a key question in your mind? I noticed that you actually have it emblazoned on a tote bag now, which in publishing is the highest honor when a quote you've written ends up on a tote bag. So when you write, do you have a kind of key question that you're working to answer?
- [11:44]
Douglas Stuart
Yeah, I think sometimes the question comes later. I didn't realize what was bothering me until much later. And anybody that knows my biography knows that I never knew my father. My mother died when I was 16. And when you lose your parents at that age, my grandparents were already long gone. I felt such a sense of bereavement. But I also realized that I was entirely alone in the world in that way. I didn't have an older generation. I didn't have grandparents. I was entirely my own man, and I didn't owe anything to anybody. And so, as sort of shocking and jarring as that was, maybe there was also a benefit to it or a confusion. But, you know, as a gay man, I've lived my entire life almost in the eras of my straight friends. You know, they've gone through these massive journeys. They get married, they, you know, they have kids. Some of them get divorced. They buy their houses. You know, I'm currently in my menopause era with all my female friends. We're all buying magnesium in bulk for any birthday gift that comes. But I'm also sort of approaching that era where all my friends are turning and worrying about elder care and worrying about what they owe to their parents and whoever's above them and how they're going to look after them. And I was watching it, and I was sort of thinking, oh, this is fascinating. And I think that's what took me, in a way, in hindsight, to the islands. Because, you know, the title is a really. It's a very island title. Because when you're on the islands, family names echo on and on, and Christian names are often after your father, your grandfather, grandmother. And so if you say to someone, who are you? And they said John MacLeod, the person would go, I know 300 John MacLeods. And so the question very quickly becomes, not who are you? But who do you belong to? And they want to know, you know, they have to know your lineage, and then they can place you. And Cal answers it by saying, I'm John of John of Ian of Ian of Breidevere, which is the all Gallagher word for the weaver. And for him, that question is really crushing. You know, because will he get to be his own person? And I think I was wondering about what that feels like both for my friends and also the absence of that in my life.
- [13:54]
Jack Edwards
Yeah. Okay. So pre menopause era, I wanted to talk to you about the concept of coming of age. This is a term that sort of unites your first two books too, thematically, as both Shuggie and Young Mungo are stories of characters growing into themselves and particularly into their queerness. In John of John, we meet our protagonist cal, when he's 22. So he already technically has grown. He's been to art school, he's been sofa surfing with friends and stealing just enough milk that they hopefully won't notice and topping up the bottles with water. And now he's back home and he's experiencing this sensation that is quite common for a lot of young people where you've been away, you moved, you experienced freedom, but now financially, you can't sustain that, so you have to move back in with your parents. And I wanted to ask you about that experience of kind of having a taste of the world and then going back to where you're from.
- [14:53]
Douglas Stuart
Yeah, yeah. I think home's a complicated thing for me because not only do I not have a physical home in Glasgow, I think also Glasgow is a city. When I was younger, it didn't let me feel like I belonged because I was gay. And so I was wrestling with that question, you know, Cal, the elephant in the room is Cal is gay. And when he's in art school, he sort of comes out and becomes himself. But he's called back against his own will. And I should say, as soon as he arrives back on the island, his grandmother's in fine health, there's absolutely nothing wrong with her. And so that sets the novel. It happens very quickly. You'll learn it right away, but that sets everything in motion. But he's returned to a home where being gay is not acceptable. You know, the community of very, you know, the characters are very. Are based on very gentle, kind, family orientated, community based people. But they are of the Free Presbyterian Church, which is a very hard path to God. By their own admission. They know this and they say it, that's the point. But, you know, the belief is we're all born in sin, we're all born in total depravity, and we're all going to be damned for it. You know, some of us, we should all turn to Jesus, but God, through the theological doctrine of predestination, will save only a few of Us, and it's his mystery. We don't know who he will save. And so, you know, they believe that scripture is the inedible word of God, which means God can never be wrong. And of course, in Scripture, it's one man and his wife. It's one man and one woman. And so Cal, there's no way for him to express himself as a gay man. But I thought that was the story. And when I was on the islands, I was going from settlement to settlement, and I was learning everything I didn't know much about. You know, I was terrible with dead rams. I had to learn everything. But everywhere I went, there was always, you know, there's such a. In rural places and especially on the islands, there's such a need to care for the generation that went before you. And oftentimes, older people had never married. And I would ask, you know, oh, why did he remain a bachelor? Why did she remain a spinster? And there was great reasons, often practical reasons, but sometimes the answer was, well, they never, you know, they missed their window. And I loved that as a novelist, the idea that in a rural place, the opportunity to find love is quite narrow or short, and you might. Someone might not pass through town that you can fall in love with. But I was getting too comfortable when I was there for about four, and I just said, well, of course, maybe some of them are gay. And the woman that I said that to sort of reared back at her own kitchen table, she almost, like, fell on the floor and said, oh, no, no, no, that's not possible. And she wasn't meaning to be cruel. She wasn't homophobic. But it was, in a way, an absolutely ridiculous thought. And so it was an erasure. And I thought some of these older men, for some of the generations, must have been gay, and they must have been. Or the women might have been lesbians. And I thought, that's the novel. And so that's the world that Cal comes back into. And that's the thing that makes it really not about him, but about the generations he's back amongst.
- [17:55]
Jack Edwards
And he finds it hard to assimilate again, visually. He just stands out. His clothes that he wears, his hair is vibrant and long. And people are kind of horrified by the way that he looks in this way that you're talking about and following your career and following your books in chronological order. I thought it was interesting that we meet Shuggy at 5, and then we follow him into his teenage years. Mongo, we meet at 15, and he so desperately wants to be 16. And then Cal is 22. So I wondered, do you think that this might end up being a pattern that we're following through your novels, or is it coincidental?
- [18:33]
Douglas Stuart
No, I think it's definitely a pattern.
- [18:36]
Jack Edwards
Yeah.
- [18:36]
Douglas Stuart
And patterns are important to me. But the main character in all of, I think, is Scotland, and Scotland changing behind and underneath it. But, you know, I'd written two novels about the working class. And I realized that we're wrong in Britain when we talk about class because we often allow all that conversation to be sucked up by urban places. And in Scotland, certainly in the central belt. And I thought, I have to look at the working class in a rural place. And I didn't know anything about the upheavals and the changes of the times. We think about Thatcherism, we think about big cities, but I didn't know how sort of rural communities were affected. And they have very real concerns and worries and problems too from all of that. And so that's why I went to the Islands as well. But I realized the other day that if I set a novel in 2026 and I invited Shuggie and Mungo and Cal back, they would all be the same age. They would all be sort of like 45. And I thought, oh, maybe I'll write like a late in life romance where they all get together. Let me see if they get together. And I was like, where could they meet? And I thought they could meet at like a self help group for terrible mothers. That could be the first page and they could just fall in love. Yeah. So I think, yeah, I think the real thing is the country underneath them.
- [19:49]
Jack Edwards
One section I found really fascinating, and you kind of alluded to it there, talking about class, is that when Cal goes to university, that's when he first becomes aware of class. And in the novel you say growing up, he had never given social class much consideration because there was no real difference between them and their neighbors. But in those first few days of Freshers week, it had been jarring to find himself interrogated, categorized, and then lumped into the working class. So my question for you, I think, is I wanted to ask you about this first encounter with class categories. Categorization was. And it's so jarring for him. Was there a moment for you when you first saw that happen? And Cal describes it as being a way to read him, sort him, and ultimately limit him. So do you think that this categorization is limiting?
- [20:41]
Douglas Stuart
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think as British people, no matter where we are, we're always subtly searching one another. So, so that we can sort of find out who that person is and where they belong in society. And certainly in my first weeks of university I found that really overwhelming because I went to college with what was predominantly quite a nice, polite, comfortable, middle class group that all came from a two parent home and had a car and had these things. And I rocked up to college with a mother who had just drank herself to death. And so I had no parents. I was the only kid not living in halls of residence, but I was living in a sort of bedsit in town. And I found class like really jarring in that moment. But for Cal, it's a different situation because the islanders. I don't know if you know much about crofting, but a croft is a parcel of land that is given to you that you rent from a very wealthy landowner. And it's often a piece of land that only allows subsistence farming. So enough rough vegetables for your family and to keep some sheep on and then access to a common grazing. You're never going to make much profit at it and you're never going to sort of be able to advance very far just on the crofting alone. But what that meant was if you weren't the landowner, then everybody was the same. And there's a great sort of comfort in that. I think for Cal, he never had to think about class. And in fact, I think when I speak to my island friends, they said until like oil and gas money really came to the islands, they didn't really ever have to think about it because they were all very similar. And so for Cal, I think it is very jarring and I don't think he knows how to interact with the codes that we have on the mainland that everyone else is always searching out. Because for him, he's always been one of many and now suddenly people are trying to sort him and figure out where he.
- [22:34]
Mia Sorrenti
Ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play. You choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end dj, a road dog or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit red bull.com brightsummerahead to learn more. See you this summer. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. That's Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for indeed.
- [23:29]
Douglas Stuart
Sponsored Jobs make every get together Chill this Memorial Day. Get up to an extra thousand dollars off select top brand appliances like LG plus get free delivery at the Home Depot Tackle pool towels and camp laundry with a large capacity washer and host in style with the fridge serving craft ice, mini craft ice, cubed ice and crushed ice. Shop Appliance Savings now through June 3rd at the Home Depot offer valid May 14th through June 3rd US only. Free delivery on appliance purchases of $998 or more. C Store online for details when you finally find your thing, you want the whole world to know about that thing. So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing. Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing, you can do anything so people can see your thing, feel your thing, love your thing. The next thing you know, it's a thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing.
- [24:31]
Mia Sorrenti
Expedia and Visit Scotland Invite you to come experience the beauty that awaits in Scotland. The sweep of wild coastlines, quiet lochs and untamed landscapes. Fresh cuisine that feels rooted in the land. Come experience. Experience the kind of stillness that stays with you long after you leave. Plan your Scottish escape today@expedia.com visitscotland.
- [25:06]
Jack Edwards
You yourself studied at the Scottish College of Textiles, and working with wool and weaving is a really important motif throughout this novel. There was no way of me writing this question without an accidental textiles pun. So my question is threading this into the fabric of the novel is obviously very important for you. I wondered if you might read us a section that was about the kind of colors and the weaving and that experience of working in textiles.
- [25:35]
Douglas Stuart
Yeah, yeah. I mean I had a very also similar experience. I really do pull on my own experience at the Scottish College of Textiles because it's a school that is about 14 women to every one man. And so for a gay man it was like heaven because suddenly you were in this matriarchy. But as a gay man that was looking for sex, it was hell because there was nobody to have and also probably hellish for the women to have me be the only man amongst them. And so Cal definitely feels this in the book. But yeah, his father is a Harris tweed weaver and he has returned home. Harris tweed. Maybe we'll take talk about later, but this is Carl watching his father at work. In the center of the room was the iron pulpit itself, the Hattersley loom, with its multiple shafts and treadle pedals. Its heavy iron frame gave the room the feeling of a Victorian workhouse, although there was talk of introducing the double width rapier loom. The weaving technology had not changed much since the Industrial Revolution. The loom had to be man powered. That was the accredited stipulation. It could not be driven by electricity or gas. It could not be steered by computer. The rest of the world were making lengths on screaming, ceaseless power looms. But not here. Here on the islands, the cloth had to be woven by hand and powered by foot. It had to be made at home in exactly the same manner as it had been centuries before. The one innovation, the single concession to the weaver's comfort, was that the looms could now be attached to a fixed pedal and shaft. In front of the loom was his father's seat and the loom pedals, which, ironically enough, made the whole thing resemble a Papist's organ. Do you never get lonely? Cal asked, working here by yourself? Sometimes, said John. But I'm never alone. Cal was expecting some trite line about the omnipresence of the Lord, but John surprised him when he said, I think about you and I talk to you. I tell you the little things about my day. Cal 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 skillfully John could mix sour greens with wheats and nightshades until it was a field of spring bluebells. It was a treasure box. Carl had loved playing with these cones when he was younger. He would take a color and wrap it around his finger until each finger was a multicolored worm of mad stripes. John had taken time with them then, unwrapping the cues, rewrapping 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 finger 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 Callanish. Do you remember? That was what the stones in the sky in her good coat looked like. John unspooled a single strand of vermilion and wrapped it amongst the other colors. You took a nosebleed. You could never stop picking at yourself. When he was underfoot, John would give him spools of color and send him outside to find the article that inspired them, with strict instruction not to come home again until he had matched the colors perfectly. Cal liked the searching, the wandering with watchful purpose and the reward. He would return holding the hem of his jumper, and his father would take the bladder rack or the scab of light or the guillemot feather and hold it next to the yarn. Cal's matching had become near exact. But you've no match for the teal, his father had said. But the teal is the sea. And when I fill my hand with sea water, it's a watery nothing. Cal picked at the tiny green flecks amongst the teal. So I have matched it, but we need to go look at it together. Where the water meets the kelp and floats over the sand underneath. John would bury his nose in Cal's crown and inhale the fresh air. And it was on days like this that Cal had come to love colour. Cal leant against his father now as he had when he was a boy, but John brushed him off. You're not here to be a nuisance. And tomorrow, soon as you get up, get dressed, I'll not have you half naked at all hours. And if I catch you over the door in your boxer shorts again, you'll be sorry. Your student days are done. Do you hear me?
- [30:38]
Jack Edwards
Thank you so much. And it's so wonderful to get to hear you read these words yourself as well. So thank you for doing that. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about the textiles that we see within this book and the Harris wool. The colors talk to me about bringing that to life on the page.
- [30:55]
Douglas Stuart
Yeah, I've always been obsessed with Harris tweed. And even when I worked in New York in fashion houses, anytime someone would give me, like, money to spend, I would try and buy Harris tweed and, like, fit it into the collection. And I used to work for, like, Calvin Klein and we would do, like, collections on the Greek islands. And I'd be like, you know what this needs? A little tweed. And Calvin would be like, it does not need tweed.
- [31:18]
Jack Edwards
It's so breathable.
- [31:19]
Douglas Stuart
Yeah, it's so breathable. You know, it's just, just a thing for a silk dress. But I've always loved, I've been fascinated by it. You know, I don't know if you know much about it, but it's, it's cloth that is one weaver to one loom. And the looms are behind the house that the people live in. And it was really sort of established centuries ago to make cloth, but also to help people stay on their land. If ever the sort of the sea or the land failed. And as the world, world modernized, they still continue to make it in that way, you know, made by hand. Every weaver is responsible for a single cloth. And I think that's just miraculous that in the Western world we still have people making things at home and sort of doing it the right way. But the cloth works as a metaphor as well in the novel. You know, John loves weaving. He's very suited to it because it's about receiving a pattern from someone else and then the cooperation of all these threads doing exactly as they're told and then about the sort of consistency and the dedication and seeing these lengths come together in a perfect pattern. And for Cal as a kid who's come back and just feels very trapped by everything, he doesn't want to be weaving. He doesn't. You know, it's quite a burden for a 22 year old that's already suffering a little bit of a social and a romantic death to spend these days behind the house in his father's shed making the cloth. And when he went to college, he decided he wasn't going to be a weaver, he was going to be a knitter, which, you know, for him is the coolest thing on the planet. But it's about, you know, knitting is about one thread that relies on itself. It loops over and over and over and it becomes whatever it wants, but also if it goes wrong, you just rip it out and start again. And so for his psychology, that's a much better fit.
- [32:57]
Jack Edwards
Tells us a lot about how these two men live their lives differently. And we've touched on this concept of homecoming. For Cal, this is a homecoming to a place, but also to people. And specifically, I want to ask you about that relationship between Cal and his father, John. So we've got a father and son dynamic here and we've seen you write so exquisitely and painstakingly about mothers and sons and it's exciting to see you write a father and son here. Cal's Four name, as you said, is John Callum. And so he literally carries his father's name everywhere he goes. It's a stamp imprinted on everything that he does. And you talk in the novel about how John, quote, saw Cal as property or as an extension of himself. He treated him in ways he would never dream of with any other human. So tell us about John's impact on Cal's life.
- [33:50]
Douglas Stuart
Yeah. Oh, I mean, I think John, you know, John often sees Cal as a belonging and not quite as a son. And I think, I mean, through all my work I've been writing about the narrow, you know, the narrow vice grip of masculinity and how we're all sort of historically have been complicit in it. You know, where we say this is an acceptable form of masculinity and these things outside of it were not. And this happens here on the island. But what Cal also has to contend with is also his father's ideas of what is clean living or godly living. So he sort of hemmed in on this way and also on this way. But the novel for me was sort of a technical exercise. As a writer, how could I have this father and son who love each other very deeply, who know everything about each other, who have a very claustrophobic relationship because they work and they worship and they live together, and yet they're both carrying a really big secret or a set of secrets that they cannot share. And, you know, I grew up around men who would do everything to avoid talking about feelings. And sometimes that was a form of self protection, but it was also a form of protecting the family and their own sort of emotions. You know, the men that I grew up around did very hard jobs. And if you were going to talk about your first feeling, the first feeling was be, I don't want to do that job. You know, it's scary to go into a coal mine and be underground. And so they did it as a form of self preservation protection and protecting a lot of people. But I wondered if I could make a novel where these people knew everything about each other except this one thing. They didn't want to face the thing. And I was thinking that even for all of us, I think we're always managing reputations and our families know us very deeply, but do they ever know all of us? Are we always sort of withholding something from them? Whether you're gay or straight or whatever. And so that was really the idea. But if you have these two very sort of tight lipped Presbyterian men, you need someone to disrupt that and the disruption comes in the form of Ella the Granny, who's this woman who just, you know, will say whatever she thinks.
- [35:47]
Jack Edwards
Yeah, we have to talk about Ella the Granny because you have these two men who in many ways are diametrically opposed. And then Ella is this kind of free agent doing her own thing. So tell me about her role on a craft level in the novel. But then also, she must have just been so much fun to write.
- [36:05]
Douglas Stuart
She was so much fun to write. Yeah. You know, I think if you've read my other works, you might imagine that I don't have much fun writing characters sometimes. And so Ella was like, the first time I just had, like, unabashed fun. And she's sort of based on my own granny, who was a woman who sort of really ran the world, but had to run it from the back. And I always loved the women of my granny's generation who had put up with the men in their lives. And then when they became widows at late age, they just really became themselves. And they were, you know, they were fearless and I was. I just loved them. But, you know, Ella works as a corrupting force in Cal's life because she's come from Glasgow. She's been on the islands for 50 years, but because there's a long memory of place, they still refer to her as the newly arrived. You know, it's Ella who has newly arrived and she's been there 50 years. But she loves to. She thinks John is raising Cal to be too strict and men who are too straight laced get taken advantage of in the world. You know, she comes from Glasgow, so she knows that men have to fight and swear and chase women and do all these other things. And so her favorite thing to do is to teach Cal swear words. But her really favorite thing is when Cal comes home from the mainland, he brings home swear words for her, and so he tells her them and then tells her the definition of them. And then she spells them and puts them in a book. And so he teaches her what a snurger is and what a plamph is and all these different things. And she was just a lovely relationship to write because I also needed her to be a woman that was very worthy of a grandson's love. If a grandson's going to throw over his own life to care for his granny, then the granny had to be worth it. And so that was the challenge with her.
- [37:44]
Jack Edwards
Yeah. And she kind of provides some comic relief at times when we really need it. John is sort of dreading Cal's return in equal measure. And he. He finds it almost exposing for him. He says in the novel, you say John felt that Cal thought their lives were lacking, as if the things that had sustained him as a boy bored him. Now Cowell's gaze tainted the things that John had always loved. So I wanted to ask you about how Cal makes John feel almost embarrassed and a little inept by the things that otherwise he had found himself. You know, I can manage this. I'm satisfied with this. Or at least I can pretend to be.
- [38:22]
Douglas Stuart
Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, sometimes I don't know if we all have a little bit of this, but when we go home after college or university or if you've lived in a big city or been somewhere else, it's hard to go home again. And I think sometimes your family can. You don't have to say it, but they can feel like you're implying that it's too small or it's not enough for you anymore. And John can sort of see where Cal's eye lands. And he feels sort of insulted by how Cal treats, you know, the house and Cal's first night home. He says he would love to have wine with dinner because that's how people should have dinner. And of course, his Protestant father's like, are you kidding? Are you out of your mind? And Carl's so naive, he calls it Marlo and not Merlot. And so he keeps asking his dad, could we get some bottles of Marlo? And his dad's like, no, absolutely not. But I think it is about that sort of tension of coming home again and can you fit in in a place that you've kind of outgrown? And of course, John's been there his whole life. John's problem is that he never sort of went out into the world and became his own man. And so the men are sort of at opposite ends of this. And that's the heartache.
- [39:27]
Jack Edwards
Yeah.
- [39:29]
Mia Sorrenti
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by me, Mia Sorrenti, and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings, you can become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership and if you'd like to join us at future live events, you can find our full program and buy tickets over@intelligencesquared.com attend. You've been listening to listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
- [40:14]
Douglas Stuart
You can't reason with the sun. Trust us, we've tried this summer. It's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's Omnishade Technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your summer@columbia.com to spend more time outside and less time slathering on aloe lotion. You're welcome, Columbia. Engineered for whatever the right window treatments change everything. Your sleep, your privacy, the way every room looks and feels. @blinds.com, we've spent 30 years making it surprisingly simple to get exactly what your home needs. We've covered over 25 million windows and have 50,000 five star reviews to prove we deliver. Whether you DIY it or want a pro to handle everything from measure to install, we have you covered. Real design professionals Free samples, Zero pressure right now. Get up to 45% off with minimum purchase plus get a free professional measure@blinds.com rules and restrictions apply. There's a new way to Sweetgreen Meet Wraps handheld, hearty and made for life on the market. With bold, chef crafted flavors, fresh ingredients and over 40 grams of protein, they're built to satisfy without slowing you down. Try wraps today in the app or@order.sweetgreen.com available at all participating locations.
- [41:43]
Mia Sorrenti
This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Selling your car should feel like one less thing on your list. Not one more. With Carvana, it is just go to Carvana.com Enter your license plate or VIN and get a real offer. Down to the penny. No back and forth, no surprises. Just an experience you can trust, like your offer. Accept it, schedule pickup and we'll come to you with a check in hand. Your car, your timeline, your terms. Visit Carvana.com to sell your car today. Carvana Pick up Fees may apply.