In Douglas Stuart's new novel, an unbridgeable gap between father and son

[0:00] Hey everybody, Jeff Bennett here. Welcome to another episode of Settle In from PBS News. [0:04] Our guest today is Douglas Stewart. He's the renowned author behind the 2020 Booker Prize [0:09] winning novel Shuggy Bane, which tells the story of a young boy in 1980s working class Glasgow, [0:15] caring for his alcoholic mother. His latest book is called John of John. It follows a young man [0:20] as he returns to his home in the islands off the Scottish mainland, navigating relationships with [0:25] his family, his religion, and his sexuality. I spoke with Stewart about his new book, how he [0:30] started writing, and how his own life is reflected in his work. So, settle in and enjoy our conversation [0:36] with Douglas Stewart. Douglas Stewart, it's great to see you. Thanks for being here. [0:43] Thank you for having me. [0:44] So much of your work is inspired by your early years. Tell me about growing up in Scotland. [0:49] How did that shape you? [0:50] Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm a Scotsman. I grew up in Glasgow in the 1970s and 1980s, although I've [0:57] been an American. I've lived in America since about 2000. But I grew up in Glasgow, which is the [1:03] large city, a really tumultuous time in the city's history. As you know, Britain de-industrialized [1:08] really rapidly under the Thatcher government, and unemployment in the city went to about 20%, [1:13] which affected my grandfather, my father, all my siblings. You know, they closed shipbuilding and [1:20] steel and coal mining. And so it was a time of real hardship in the city, and that was really [1:26] the backdrop of my youth. On top of that, I was raised by a single mother because my father [1:31] eventually abandoned us. And my mother, I think, because of some things that were going [1:35] to be a wonderful woman, but because of some things that were going on in her personal life [1:39] and also how she felt about sort of hope and the city, she had a problem with alcoholism, [1:45] which eventually killed her when I was about 16. And so I found myself without parents at [1:50] age 16. And I think in many ways, a lot of my writing, although I've been in America all these [1:55] years, is about trying to go back to the past and to sort of reclaim it for myself, to also add voices [2:01] to the landscape that often aren't heard of. You know, certainly single mothers are often overlooked, [2:06] working class single mothers. And because I was a young gay boy, I felt like I was never quite part [2:11] of the city's history. [2:13] And you had to find your way to becoming an author. You took quite a circuitous route, starting in fashion. [2:18] Tell me about that journey. [2:20] Yeah. I mean, I'm often asked as an author, you know, what's your favorite childhood book? [2:23] And the truth is, is I grew up in a house that didn't have books. We didn't read when I was a kid. [2:28] We were hyper literate because we were very, you know, education was wonderful, but we just didn't [2:32] have books at home. And I didn't have any, you know, children both need access to books, but they also [2:38] need peace in their environment to be able to read. And I didn't have peace at home. I also didn't [2:42] really have peace at school. But as I said, when I was 16, my mother passed away very suddenly. [2:48] from her addiction. And school actually went from about 300 kids in my year to only 12 remaining [2:53] in education for the last two years of high school. A lot of the other kids went out to find work or [2:58] to do something else. And I suddenly found myself in an English class with these two teachers for [3:04] eight hours a week. And I was the only kid in the class. [3:07] Really? [3:08] Really. Yeah. The only kid in our high school English class. And it was just in a really intense [3:13] way to be introduced to books. But I suddenly found I had both the attention from a teacher who [3:18] for the rest of their career was sort of very invested in crowd management and just keeping [3:23] kids safe and on curriculum. And suddenly had like all this time just to talk to a reader to teach me [3:27] how to read. But the truth is at 16, if you leave high school at 18, it's too late for me to think [3:34] about going to university to study English. And it's often reported that they turned me away from [3:39] English because I was a working class kid. But I think they were guiding me towards something that [3:43] would make me feel successful and I could have a living at. And so instead, they turned me towards [3:47] textiles. And actually, I went to college to learn how to be a weaver and a knitter because I was a [3:52] very creative kid. But at the end of the day, what does Scotland make if not lots of beautiful cloths? [3:58] And so it was seen as a as a way to sort of get me employment and to and to help me to build a life [4:03] for myself. But, you know, I didn't know that my education in textiles would lead me to a life in [4:09] fashion. I didn't know that life in fashion would bring me to New York. But I worked for many large [4:14] American brands for Calvin Klein, for Ralph Lauren. I was at the Gap for 15 years designing menswear for [4:20] for Banana Republic. And it was at the height of my fashion career that I, you know, I'd always been a [4:26] huge reader and I thought I really want to be a writer. And so I sat down and wrote the first pages of [4:31] Shuggy Bain. And it took me 10 years to write it. But I wrote it entirely in secret while I was [4:36] working in fashion. And here I am today, 10 years, 10 years to write it. There are a million different [4:44] ways you could have said to yourself, this will never happen. I can I can let this go. Why did you [4:49] persevere? That's a good question. I think I persevered, first of all, because it brought me some [4:54] kind of joy and catharsis that nothing else in my life was was giving me. I think I was feeling [5:00] incredibly homesick because I'd been living in New York by that point for maybe 10, 12 years. [5:05] And I felt not only did people not understand me as a Scotsman, but the city I grew up in had [5:10] changed so ultimately, so totally, that in fact, that was lost not only to geography, but also to [5:16] time. And so I think writing my debut novel was a chance for me to, to really sort of capture [5:22] something that I felt I had lost. And, and also to explain myself to myself, I felt very much as a [5:28] young man who grew up in poverty, and then a young professional man who was working in luxury [5:33] fashion. I felt like two very different people, I felt very broken down the middle. And so I think, [5:40] you know, writing the story, writing about my hometown was a way for me to feel whole again. [5:46] And you've mentioned how you were intentional about capturing depictions, writing about working [5:51] class life, writing about poverty. What do other depictions of working class life get wrong, [5:57] do you think? Well, I think before we answer that, what we often don't see when we think about the [6:02] great canon of queer literature, is it's never sort of tackles class, it's always told from a [6:08] middle class point of view, there's always usually a university or a large cosmopolitan city. And [6:13] essentially, when you're gay and you're working class, all the consequences are different, [6:17] your, your ability to sort of move about the world, what you're exposed to, and also the type of [6:22] masculinity you're often surrounded by is so completely different. But I also think often, [6:28] certainly in representations of the British working class, there's always an expectation of [6:34] community and solidarity. And that is certainly there, you know, I was always raised to think [6:39] only of the we, and never to think of the I. You know, it comes from coming from a unionized place [6:44] where not only were all the jobs very standardized, but the houses were determined by the jobs, [6:49] and so the houses were standardized. But in order to access that solidarity, you need to conform, [6:56] you need to fit in. And as a young gay person, I just never fit in. I was, you know, my masculinity [7:01] was just very different in very subtle ways. But those subtle ways were incredibly conspicuous to all [7:06] the other boys and men around me. And so for me, I never felt I could access that solidarity of the [7:11] working class. I was always made to feel on the outside of the only community I knew. And I think a lot [7:17] of my writing is about characters who are trying to figure out where they belong, when the only place [7:23] they belong doesn't let them feel like they can rest. [7:26] Well, let's talk about this book, John of John. Where did this story come from? And did you know [7:30] where John and Cal were headed when you started? [7:34] Yeah, I actually began this novel in 2019, when I was waiting for my debut novel, Shuggy Bane, [7:40] to publish. You know, I was filled with anxiety, and I'd sort of taken my fashion career and [7:45] put it on hiatus. And I was wondering if that was the right thing to do to risk it on my dreams of [7:51] becoming a writer. And so I was looking at my husband one day, and I said, I have an idea for [7:55] a new novel I want to write, but I have to go to the Outer Hebrides. And as a kid growing up in the [8:00] inner city of Scotland, I'd never been to the islands. You know, the Outer Hebrides are an [8:05] archipelago of islands that sit off the northwest coast of Scotland. And they're absolutely stunning, [8:09] but they're quite difficult to get to. And so I think my husband was sick of dealing with my [8:14] anxiety. And he said, 12 weeks away from me sounds like a great idea. And so he totally cosigned me [8:19] going to the islands. But I showed up on the islands in 2019, knowing only two people. And I [8:26] was there, first of all, for 12 weeks. And I just sort of traveled up the islands and got a sense of [8:31] my own country, a sense of the people. And I found that everybody was incredibly generous with their [8:35] time. They were curious about what I was doing, what I was interested in. And I fell in love with the [8:41] place. You know, I sort of journeyed up from, there's a very small island at the bottom called [8:45] Vattersea. And I went up about four to five islands until I got to the Isle of Harris, which is almost [8:50] near the very top. And when I got there, I realized that there was a convergence of fascinating things. [8:55] First, it's the last stronghold of Scottish Gaelic, the language. It is the sort of home of a very [9:02] conservative Calvinism. There is beautiful Harris tweed weaving. And then there's a crofting way of life [9:08] that's sort of dying, you know, a subsistence farming that is not so common these days. [9:14] And when I was on the island, I just thought, there is a story here. It's this wonderful, [9:18] almost lunar landscape, very rocky, quite barren. The elements are very wild. And I just thought, [9:25] oh, there's a story here. But I thought the story was about a young man who had gone to art school. [9:31] And in that wonderful moment we all have when we first leave home and we think we can expand and become [9:36] who we are going to be. My protagonist is actually called by his father and says, you have to come [9:41] home. Your grandmother's sick. And so he does the dutiful thing. He loves his grandmother very much. [9:46] And so he sort of puts his own life away and he comes home to the island. And as soon as he gets [9:51] home, he realizes his grandmother's in fine health. And so something else is actually a foot. [9:57] And I thought that was going to be the novel. But on my trip, when I was on the islands, I was sort of [10:02] sitting at a lot of kitchen tables just meeting islanders. And I was about five weeks into my trip [10:08] and I had heard frequently when I would go from settlement to settlement that there would maybe [10:13] be an unmarried man or some bachelors or spinsters in each settlement. And I often asked, you know, [10:19] why didn't they marry? Why weren't they interested in marrying? And the answer would be often, well, [10:24] they missed their moment for love. The person would say, you know, there's a very short window and you [10:29] don't meet so many people when you live so far away. And, you know, they just miss their moment [10:34] to meet that special person. And I've been listening to that for some weeks. And I said just [10:38] very casually, well, of course, some of them might be gay and that makes it harder. And the woman I [10:43] said, I said, oh, no, no, no, that's not possible. And she was neither cruel nor homophobic. But for her, [10:49] it was just not a thing she could imagine. And I thought, oh, there's the novel. It's not really about [10:54] the son returning home. It's about the home he returns to and about the father and the grandmother who he's [10:59] left behind who couldn't quite become who they were meant to be either. [11:03] Yeah. I want to come back to that. But a question about the setting, because the Western Isles feel [11:08] so fully inhabited in this book. And now I know why you spent 12 weeks there. How much of your [11:15] imagination fills in the rest of the place? [11:19] Yeah, I think I would absolutely claim that this is not a work of a survey of the people that are [11:25] there. It is entirely of my imagination. And in fact, the small settlement doesn't exist. [11:29] It is entirely fictional. But, you know, I was it was curious because it was such a one of the [11:37] things I had to do. I had to come to terms with as a very urban person in the first instance was the [11:42] different rhythm of the islands. You know, it has many heartbeats. But one of the things, you know, [11:48] there is the weather, the seasons, there is the heartbeat or the rhythm of sort of rearing sheep and [11:53] farming sheep. But there is also the rhythm of what is said and what is unsaid when people live in a [12:00] place where they're very familiar with their neighbors and they will live next to them for [12:04] generation upon generation. I had to understand that people were often very reluctant to speak [12:09] the truth because they would have to deal with the consequences of whatever they said for a long [12:14] time. And so as I was building the characters, although they are all of my my imagination, I had [12:21] to sort of create islanders that sort of were almost not wanting to face the emotional truth and were [12:29] quite comfortable in the gap between what was known and what was spoken about. And and that for me was [12:36] was was sort of the biggest challenge, I think, because I think as in fiction, you often sort of create [12:40] characters and then you set them to plot and you set them going. And this was about withholding an awful [12:44] lot. And so trying to sort of understand the island way of life was important. [12:49] And there's a real sense of isolation in the setting, the physical isolation. And to your point, [12:54] the emotional isolation. What does that kind of environment allow you to explore about identity [13:01] and belonging? Well, you know, like all rural places, it suffers with great depopulation. [13:09] And perhaps your viewers and listeners would know about the Highland Clearances, which cleared lots of [13:14] Scottish people off the land, the wealthy landowners cleared people off the land in favor of sheep. And so I think the [13:21] Outer Hebrides have lost about 45 percent of their population over the last century. And the population that [13:26] remains is often aging, like many rural places. And so for a 20 year old man, 22 year old man like Cal or [13:34] a protagonist is to come home and to think he's going to find love and to build a life is just naturally very [13:39] difficult. There's a wonderful epigraph at the beginning of the novel that said islanders the world [13:44] over are born for exile. Islands give you the most privileged childhood, but then once you're grown, [13:50] they give you no way to express it. And I think that was sort of what was stuck in my mind, that sort of [13:57] loneliness and that search for love. And, you know, and if you have this very short window to to to find love, then [14:03] then how does that form a person? All the characters in the novel, whether it is son or whether it's father or after [14:09] looking to find a version of themselves, but also to find the person that they want to spend their life with. [14:15] Faith also plays a major role in this book, shaping how characters see themselves, see each other. How did you think about [14:21] religion as a source of structure and at times a source of constraint in the lives of these characters? [14:28] Yeah, you know, I think one of the things I had to do was to get past any preconceived notions of what [14:34] the religion is on the islands. You know, Presbyterianism, this very sort of devout Presbyterianism is often [14:40] expressed as a very sort of dour religion and and a little joyless sometimes, if I'm being very honest. [14:46] And it's it's often represented in the media that way. But in my 12 weeks on the islands, I came to [14:52] realize there's actually quite a schism there. There's there's a divide because the people are [14:56] incredibly gentle, incredibly kind, very community minded. But because they believe deeply in the [15:02] scripture and the scripture is, I think, you know, that we are born in sin, we are born in total [15:08] depravity. And unfortunately, our reward is going to be hell at the end. And God will save only [15:13] very few of us. That's quite a hard path to God. And so what I discovered is you have a very gentle [15:20] people that believe a very difficult thing. And trying to sort of show that and portray that with [15:25] nuance was was a great challenge in the novel, but also a joy in many ways. But although the island [15:31] religion is a minority religion, it has an effect on everything. They are very strict Sabbatarians. [15:38] And so the island stops even if you're in the church, you're not everything halts on a Sunday. [15:43] All work, all labor, even all joy, all recreation stops and people are meant to sort of be very [15:49] quiet, very still and give themselves over to the Lord. And so that was another sort of rhythm and [15:54] heartbeat I had to had to get used to. But Cal, our protagonist who returns home, doesn't necessarily [16:01] believe in the church. He doesn't he hasn't felt his own calling to faith. Although his father is [16:09] a deacon, he's actually a presenter. One of the the wonderful things about faith on the island is [16:14] because the Calvinist faith believes in no accompaniment, nothing but bear worship of the [16:19] Lord. [16:20] John, the father, is the presenter in the local church. So he sets the line, as you might hear in [16:25] some gospel churches in the south. He sings the line, the congregation sings it back to him. [16:30] Call and response. [16:31] Call and response. And it's a very, very beautiful thing when you hear it in this quite [16:35] archaic Gaelic. But these two men have very different beliefs. They have very different [16:40] paths to God. And Cal does not believe in his father. For his father, it is everything in [16:44] life. And Cal has to sort of work around that. [16:47] The novel gives us two points of view. You've got John's, you've got Cal's. We understand [16:52] each man completely, even when they're hurting each other. Reading it, I thought to myself, [16:59] this, I mean, you talk about the challenge. I mean, that is a Herculean task to structure a book [17:04] that way. Why that approach? [17:07] That's a great question. I think emotionally, first of all, you know, I didn't know my own [17:12] father. And I'd written two novels about a son's relationship with his mother and how [17:16] that can sort of change a life. And I went into this thinking I had wanted to explore [17:21] what a love between a father and a son was, almost in a completely imagined way, because [17:26] I had no reference in my own life. But I had been raised around a lot of men who would [17:31] put a lot of energy into avoiding the emotional truth. They would never speak about how they [17:36] felt or what their own feelings were in life. You know, they did, the men that I was raised [17:40] around did really difficult, dangerous jobs. And I think if they started to talk about their [17:45] feelings, then everything would unravel because the very first thing you would say is, I don't [17:48] want to go into a coal mine. I'm scared. I'm underpaid. I feel undervalued. And so instead, [17:53] in order to protect themselves and to protect the families, they would say nothing about their [17:57] feelings. And so the book becomes about that in a way. They are sheep farmers. And John [18:02] doesn't express how he feels very much, but they love each other, father and son. And [18:08] a lot of the frustration is about the fact that they cannot communicate. They can't actually [18:12] say who they are and what they want and how the other lets them down. Cal feels very much [18:18] like his father wants to control them. And, you know, when masculinity is expressed very [18:22] narrowly, something that fathers do is they try to make sure their sons come out in that [18:26] image. And the sort of, it's almost as a protective thing, you know, that your masculinity has to [18:31] be tough and macho and quite stoic. On the other hand, John, the father feels like Cal doesn't [18:37] respect everything he has sacrificed, everything he has built, that Cal looks at their home [18:42] and their farm and their croft almost like it's worthless and it's a bore and who would want [18:46] to do this. And so in that sort of misunderstanding, the men are trying to love each other. But, you [18:54] know, the thing is, is it's, it was almost a sort of exercise and how as a writer's exercise [19:00] and how claustrophobic could you make this relationship? How could you take these two [19:03] characters that almost know everything about each other, but then won't say the things that [19:08] are sort of closest to their hearts? And, and how far could I push men together in that way? [19:12] You know, they work and they worship and they eat together. They're together all the time. [19:16] And yet there's so much they're withholding. [19:18] And John is a man capable of tremendous cruelty. I mean that the violence, the way he uses silence, [19:25] the way he uses scripture as a weapon. And yet by the end of the book, the reader, I think it's [19:30] fair to say, feels a certain tenderness toward him. How are you able to hold both of those things [19:36] at once while writing that character? [19:39] Yeah. I had always understood that John's cruelty or his anger was never actually generated by Cal. [19:46] I always felt that he didn't love himself and that he didn't like himself very much. He says at some [19:52] point in the book, he has not become the man he set out to be. And I think so much of the book is [19:58] about inheritance, but one of the central things in the novel is, you know, crofting is a subsistence [20:04] farming. There is no great profit in it, but the only thing that they have of value is this little [20:09] bit of rocky land and then this house that has sat there for generations. And John has been maintaining [20:14] this for all of his adult life in the thoughts that Cal would one day want to inherit it. He would [20:20] give his son some land and a house and Cal has no interest in it. He doesn't want to be on the [20:24] island. He wants to be on the mainland. And as Cal sort of rejects his father's inheritance in a way, [20:32] John's furious about it because why is he given his life to this project if your children don't want [20:38] it? And so I could have John be sort of stern and cruel and mean at times because I also understood [20:46] that he was just very deeply hurt. And I think our parents often make great sacrifices for all of us [20:52] and we don't often fully appreciate what they have done. And we don't often want it sometimes, [20:58] you know, perhaps they should ask us, but it was really about that. [21:02] Do you write chronologically or do you think of an emotional scene and expand on that first? [21:08] You know, I'm a very visual writer because I myself studied textiles and I went to art school. [21:14] I see things almost as film in my mind. And when I see the piece of film and it feels full and I can [21:20] imagine the characters in the world down to the textures and the smells and the sound, I can really [21:24] be in the room. Then I follow that vision in a way. Really? Yeah, really. How do you slow it down so [21:31] that you don't get ahead of the film? First of all, so how do you not forget the film that's in your [21:36] head? But then how do you slow it down so that you are articulating what you're what you're thinking [21:40] and seeing in your mind's eye? Yeah. Well, it becomes an obsession for me. It becomes a thing [21:44] that really haunts me and I can't stop thinking about it. The struggle, the gap is always taking [21:49] that and finding the words to capture the richness of it that you can then project that film in someone [21:54] else's mind. But for me, to your question, I sort of have that vision and then I write into the [22:00] vision. The problem often becomes is then when I have what feels like a first draft of a novel, [22:06] it's a very disjointed thing, you know? It can feel sort of like out of place and you have to sort [22:11] of smooth it almost, almost like a potter or whatever you would say, where you have all the [22:16] raw clay and now you have to make it feel like a seamless hole. But yeah, I sort of, I never try and [22:23] stand in the way of my muses by putting form on something too soon because I feel like writing is [22:29] quite a precious thing that can sort of get stuck or evaporate at any moment. And so I follow it [22:35] where it will lead me and then see where I end up. Shuggy Bane took 10 years and faced a number of [22:40] rejections before it was ultimately published and then Young Mungo followed it. How has your process [22:45] changed or has it? I think, in lots of ways, my process hasn't changed at all. I mean, one of the [22:52] things about Shuggy, the reason why it took 10 years is because I was working full time in a job that [22:57] never ended. There is no conclusion in fashion. So you never, you never worked on something and [23:01] then thought, now I'm done. One season on to the next. That's right. There was always just more [23:05] and faster and, and, and extra. And so in a way I had to often put my work aside for months sometimes, [23:11] you know, for half a year because I would be too busy to sit at my desk. And so I think what that [23:17] really taught me though, is you've got to, you've got to write and you've got to do it when you can do it. [23:21] You cannot get, always get a room of your own. The conditions won't be ideal. And so you've almost got to [23:26] be in a state of preparedness to, to do it at any time. And, and in a way that's quite a, a healthy [23:32] skill to have, to always feel like your writing is going to be threatened. And so do it when you, [23:36] you know, you know, get the crop while you can get the crop, I suppose. And so, and so I do that. [23:43] But I think what I've, I've learned over the, over the writing of the three novels is that each book is [23:49] different and they come to me in different ways. Shuggy was such a portrait of a city and a place that I [23:55] wanted it to be this huge tapestry. And so that really was like embroidering around in different [24:01] places. Mungo is a plot driven book. And so that came in a way where I had to sort of consider plot [24:06] first. And this book is a sort of gentler novel than my, my first two. And so that was really about [24:12] creating characters in a way where the moment they felt like they were very real to me was the moment [24:18] they said, this is now what I want to tell you. Yeah. On the one hand, I want to resist the urge to put [24:24] creative work into categories, but so much of your work focuses on this idea of masculinity [24:29] under pressure. Do you view your books as a, as a trilogy in some ways, or are they each sort of [24:36] separate reckonings? They're very separate reckonings because none of the characters carry [24:42] through and the story and the, the peril and the plot is different and all. But I think of them [24:47] almost as a loose triptych. You know, I like the metaphor of a tapestry. A loose triptych. I'm writing that [24:53] triptych. I will be using that again. I do. I think of it. The thing that is behind all of [25:00] my novels is a country and it's a country in flux, you know, from how the devastating policies of [25:06] Thatcherism in my first novel caught the working class unawares who had built the country and who [25:11] were very proud with their work. And then suddenly through the, found themselves thrown on the, [25:16] the scrap heap of history. My second novel is about post that when young men have sort of given up hope [25:22] on themselves because they realize the government doesn't care. And this last novel is looking at [25:28] just a little beyond that when we start to get into the Blair years is the backdrop where the country [25:33] is just on the cusp of great hope again, but lots of old ways of lives are dying. This is, you know, [25:38] crofting is really under threat. Rural communities are shrinking. And so in a way, although there is no [25:45] through line of story, I hope I'm sort of painting a portrait of a nation that is changing. [25:49] You won the Booker Prize in 2020, a genuinely life-changing event. On the other hand, how do [25:56] you protect the part of you that writes from a place where that kind of recognition can change [26:02] a writer's approach, point of view, and work? One of the most helpful things in that was the year I [26:10] won the Booker Prize was the year when we were all locked down for the pandemic. And so I won it from [26:15] my own couch at home. So I didn't get to go. There's usually a big fancy guild hall dinner where [26:20] people are in sort of tuxies and fancy dresses. And I was literally sitting on my couch at home. [26:25] And then about a year and a half after that was the first time I could leave, that we could all leave [26:29] and go and sort of mix and I could meet my readers and things. So in many ways, my life didn't change [26:34] at all. It was a very protective thing, I think, that happened. It almost felt like it happened to [26:39] someone else altogether. But the truth is, prizes are nice and prizes are helpful. But all that [26:46] matters is the work. I think the one thing that winning a prize like that does is often it makes [26:52] people sort of want to challenge you a little bit more. And so the work is scrutinized a little [26:57] deeper. And certainly in Britain, we have a very different feeling about success than Americans do. [27:06] What I love about being an American is people think sort of success, there'll be more success. They [27:11] celebrate it. And everyone can have some. And isn't it good to see someone doing well? [27:15] That's the American dream. That's the American dream. That's not the British dream. The British [27:19] dream is that success is finite. And if you get it, I'm not going to get some. And also when you [27:24] think about a class system, you know, we often talk about being oppressed from outside a class, [27:29] you know, the middle class wanting to hold the working class in place. But sometimes if you do very [27:33] well in the working class, the working class can look at you as well. Like, are you, you know, are you a [27:37] traitor? Are you trying to get out of here? Are we not good enough? And so there's very [27:40] complicated things with winning the booker in Britain. But what can you do but write? [27:46] Is there a character in John of John that you understand more than you wanted to? [27:54] Surprisingly enough, I think I feel closest to the character of the grandmother, Ella. [27:59] When I was writing the novel, if it was about the sort of how close these two men are, but how [28:04] distant they are because they can't tell, talk about their feelings, then I knew that I needed to [28:09] introduce a character that could hold all of the truth, that just saw everything. And I was raised [28:15] by these really strong women in Glasgow, my grandmother and my grandmother's friends, who [28:21] were women who operated in a patriarchy, where men controlled worship and labor and all recreation, [28:28] sports. Everything was really under the control of men. And yet the women absolutely ran the world, [28:34] but they had to run it from the back. And a lot of what they had to spend their energy doing was [28:39] making sure that men that didn't want to emotionally understand the world didn't cause any harm for the [28:45] family or for themselves, and were also getting by all right. You know, the wisdom of my grandmother and [28:50] my aunts and people like that was really outstanding, because they had to sort of see what men weren't able [28:58] to cope with and then hold all that truth and silence and be able to sort of make the world [29:03] manageable for a lot of the men in our life. And so when I was writing these two very taciturn [29:10] Presbyterian men, I thought, I want the antithesis of that. I want a woman who is so not afraid of men, [29:16] who would speak her mind, who also is worthy of Cal's love. When Cal receives the phone call that says, [29:23] your grandmother's sick. I needed him to be like, I will be right there. She is a woman that is worth [29:29] loving, you know, and he comes home without hesitation. And that for me was really my own [29:35] grandmother. You know, she, my grandmother loved to collect insults. Nothing like tickled her more [29:40] than hearing new swear words or hearing how kids sort of, you know, could be very irreverent. And she [29:46] liked to bring that out in all of us because she felt that a great sense of humor or a way to sort of [29:51] obscure the world was a great self-defense against it. You know, it meant people couldn't control you [29:56] and that you couldn't ever be kowtowed. And so the character of Ella, I've never had more fun [30:02] writing a character. We could certainly use more Ellas in the world these days. I think so. I think [30:06] she thinks of herself as a gay icon as well, this character. So we'll see, you know, she's, [30:10] she's certainly her grandson's best friend. The book John of John Douglas Stewart. This is [30:17] tremendous. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Thank you for speaking with me.