Douglas Stuart: “John of John” | Oprah’s Book Club

(upbeat music) - Okay. - This is Oprah. Has it Oprah? - Yeah. - Uh-huh. - Is there any Oprah? - I'm calling about John, John. John, John. Oh my God. I'm calling, and I want to choose it as a book club. - Oh my God, that's amazing. - You must have had some people hang up on you for the years. I'll believe it was. It was really you. This is a real catching moment. I thought this was so interesting in light of heated rivalry and all that's going on with that. (laughing) If you like heated rivalry, you don't love this book. (laughing) All right. It's all I got to say. This is the deeper end of the ocean of heated rivalry. - Hi everybody. I am so happy to be here with you on the Oprah podcast 'cause today is my favorite kind of day because I'm with an audience of Reader. (cheering) - We are all reading people. And I know that book clubs are all the rage now. And when I first started doing it, nobody had a book club. And the idea of doing a book club certainly publicly was like, how are you gonna get people to read? And now look, everybody has a book club. I'm 30 years in and I'm so excited to share with you my 123rd Oprah's book club selection. (cheering) 122. John of John by the extraordinary novel is Douglas Stewart. You may have read or heard of his wildly acclaimed debut novel, Shiki Vayne. That was so good, which won the prestigious Booker Prize. But I was so immersed in this book that at times, I had to put on a sweater. (laughing) Because Scotland gets cold sometimes. And so we gave our audience an advance copy and I wanted to know what you thought. Allison? - Thank you for having me. Thank you for this book. You wrote with such a thoughtful and delicate hand that these complex characters truly became human. I was lucky enough to spend a year in Scotland and through reading this book, I was transported back. - Really? - So you knew the terrain? - Yes, I had been up to the Isle of Sky and to the Highlands before. - So you knew what a craft house was? - No, I didn't know that, but I had run around and chased sheep around the hillsides. - Okay, all right, Susanna. - Your characters were so well developed. I got to the end of the book and honestly, I was disappointed to leave them. I could have easily spent another 400 pages with John, Cal, Ella and Innes. - Thank you so much. - Wow, thank you. - So John and John is set in a small, fictional, farming and textile town. Didn't you learn so much about textiles? - Yes, and Douglas is wearing one of the Scotland textiles. - I am very hot for a studio, but yes. - Yeah, okay, so it's set in this town called Falabay where people do these textiles on an aisle off of Scotland where everybody knows everybody else's business. It's a story about a father, John, and his son, John Calum, who goes by Cal and the secrets they sow desperately are holding on to from each other, from their neighbors, from their church. Boy, this book has a lot of air about how's the secret. So we welcome you, Douglas Stewart. Bravo, bravo, bravo, sir. - Thank you, and thank you for having me. - Well, you know, I asked an author this recently and they said, I wrote the book that was inside me to write. So has this book, the words been living inside you? The story, was it living inside you? And obviously came out in the form of John of John, but how did it come about? - Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, I think it's always been inside me. I mean, I think in many ways it was inevitable. Although I'm not an islander myself, I think I had been drawn to the islands because I was a young man who'd studied textiles in college. And I'd always really revered this community that makes this beautiful cloth and I had wanted to go. But before I publish my debut novel in 2019, it takes about 18 months between someone accepting a book and then it being published. And I was thinking, what am I going to right next? What do I want to work on? And I think I was making my husband absolutely insane with my anxiety, how would this book do? What's going to happen? And so I said to him, I have to go. I'm being called to the islands. I have to go and see what it is. And he said, should be being already come out? - No, it hadn't. It was still had maybe about six months to go. And so I was thinking I was trying to keep myself busy with my work. - Because also the pressure, once you've had the success of a book or prize, it puts even more pressure on you. Does it not for the next book or do you feel that pressure? - Oh, I mean, I didn't feel the pressure before the book published, but certainly afterwards. - Yeah, now you got a really right. - And in fact, journalists would say congratulations. And is your next book going to fail? You know, it was sort of always success. Like failure was baked into success. And you couldn't even enjoy the moment. - So, I said to my husband, I want to go to and explore the outer Hebrides, which is this beautiful archipelago off the northwest of Scotland. I had never been. And he was like, what do you sound like you have? - And he said, absolutely go. You know, he was delighted to get rid of me. - So, where were you born? Where were you born, Ray? - I was born, so Scotland's quite a small country, but I was born in Glasgow, which is the big industrial city. And actually the most popular city. So I was born and raised as an inner city kid. And because I was born, you know, my family didn't have much money, I never really got to see all the beautiful wild life and the highlands and the nature that Scotland has. And I certainly never got to visit our many, many beautiful islands. And I've lived my whole life when just as I opened my mouth, someone would say, oh, I've been to the Isle of Sky, or I've been to the Isle of Harris. And I would say, oh, I haven't, I haven't done that. And so this also for me was about writing myself into my own country and sort of discovering my own nation in a way. And so I went for 12 weeks in 2019. And it was before I'd published my debut novel, I knew two people on the islands. I actually only knew one, and I had been introduced to another. And, you know, everyone was just so warm and so welcoming with me. Did you stay there? Did you live there? I did. I started, it's a chain of islands. And I started at the very southern tip. And I thought I was going to write a novel about loneliness. And then I thought, maybe it's about a prodigal sons return home. And as I traveled up, all the islands are very different. They have a very different character. And when I got about three quarters of the way up to the island of Harris, I suddenly was on the east coast of it. And it's a very lunar landscape. It's very rocky, quite barren. The houses feel quite lonely on the landscape. Yeah, because I think, and you all would agree, I'm sure the setting in the book is a character itself. Is it not? Yeah. I mean, it's absolutely stunning. The beaches and the landscape and the houses are incredible. But it's also a place where some very singular things converge. One of them is the Gallic language. Another one is a very devout form of Calvinism. And the last is Harris Tweed Weaving. And as soon as I got there, I just suddenly thought, this is it. This is where the book is set. So you actually saw people doing that weaving that you describe in the book? I did. They do it in their homes or behind their homes. And I absolutely fell in love. But I only knew two people, as I said. And I had to know everything about-- learn everything about sheep farming and about the reproductive cycles and about when you can launch a boat and when you can. So I would go and I would say, if I needed to know something, they would say, yeah, yeah, just go and talk to the person at the far end of the village, just go chat the door. And as a New Yorker, I didn't like that. It's his strategy. But I did. And I was admitted and I came away with over 100 hours of audio recordings, just people talking to me. And what were they sharing? They were sharing about what was going on in their daily lives. If you stayed there a long period of time, you became to understand yourself how isolated or removed. I know people don't like the word, the use remote, but how isolated or removed it was and how it did feel when I was reading that there was a lot of loneliness there. I think my character's experience, a lot of loneliness. There's a wonderful quote that opens the novel. And it's by a very famous Protestant minister. And he says, islanders, the world over, are born for exile. Islands give us such a privileged childhood. But then when we grow up, they give us no place to express that. And I think that was a very powerful feeling that I got when I was on the islands. They have suffered some massive depopulation over the last century. They've lost about 40% of their population. And the population, often, that is there. And the more rural corners can be aging. And so-- Yeah, because the young people want to get out. Yeah, they do. And so there's a little bit of pre-grief with parents as well. They understand that if their children are going to go out into the world, they have to give them to the world. And won't see them as often as they'd like. So without giving the plot away, especially-- you're not going to give the ending away. My producer was in tears reading it. We all were so moved by the ending, but you've got to get there. Tell us about John of John. Yeah, it set in the late '90s on the Isle of Harris. But I made you do that on purpose. I did that on purpose. I set that before the internet, which will become clear as you read the book. But it set in the-- Because if everybody was on their phones, there would be a very different story. Exactly, exactly. If you could find someone to date really quickly, it would be a short story, yes. No need to knit your penis. Spoiler alert, yes, exactly. Well, you could still do that if it's fun for you, but yeah. And so it's a story of a young man who is on the mainland in art school. His name is John Callum McCloud. We call him Cal. And in that wonderful moment of graduation, he is. down on his luck, he can't find work and he's having a tough time getting by in the capital city. And he calls home every Wednesday and Sunday to worship with his father back to the Isle of Harris. And one day his father says to him, "You have to come home, it's time." And is that wonderful moment where a young man should just be going out into the world? And suddenly he's pulled back to his home. And so he returns to this island, which is quite difficult to get to. It takes a lot of intent. And he's told his grandmother is very ill and he must come home and care for her. That his grandmother is his responsibility because it's his father's mother and not his father's mother. And so he does his duty and he comes home and it brings him back into a world where he has a lot of broken relationships and unfinished business. But it also brings him back under his father's roof. And his father is what is known as a deacon or a presenter in the local church, meaning he sets the hymn and the congregation sings it back to him. And he believes very deeply in scripture. He does not negotiate with it and he has very strict rules for the house. And so Cal comes home, he finds, I don't think it's a spoiler, he finds almost instantly, that his grandmother is in great health. And so she's the same as she ever was. So he's been falsely lured back home? For some reason that we will discover, yes. And Cal is coming home with a secret? That's right. And he goes home and his dad also has a secret. That's right, yes. We're not telling the secrets. We can tell the secrets, I think. OK, because it's really early on that you find out. That's right, yeah. And I thought this was so interesting in light of heated rivalry and all that's going on with that. If you liked heated rivalry, you're going to love this book. All right, that's all I got to say. This is the deeper end of the ocean of a heated rivalry. And so Cal is gay and holding the shame of that for himself, because he knows he's not going to be received in that community. That's right. And his father, the deacon, is gay. That's right. Yes, but you find that like 20 pages in, that's what is happening. He's coming home to that. And then all that happens with that. That's right. And strangely enough, I thought it was really just the story of a gay son returning to the islands. And when I was meeting with islanders, I would go from settlement to settlement. And in every sort of little village, I would hear the history of who lived there. And there would be some spinsters or there would be some bachelor, some unmarried older people. And I would ask, you know, oh, sort of what happened. And the conversation often was that person missed their moment for love. You know, they just didn't find somebody to love the missed their moment. Sometimes the story would be, oh, he looks after his mother and father into old age. And or, you know, he really didn't want to be bothered with the opposite sex. And I was listening to this for like a couple of weeks. And then I would say, and I said very casually, well, of course, some of the muscles would be gay. And the woman that I said it to said, oh, no, oh, no, no, no. And she didn't say it with any cruelty or malintent. But because faith was very important, they couldn't believe that. And I knew just instinctively in my heart that some of these men and women, these older men and women would have been gay and just had never had fun. You can't have a whole town and not have anybody. That's exactly so. Yeah, you just can't. You just cannot. And that's when the book for me became much more interesting. I realized it wasn't really about the sun. But it is also about his father and what we inherit from our parents. OK, so that's when you decided to allow him to be gay. And also the father, who is the deacon, is holding this secret. Now, what is interesting to me is I started out reading it. And I didn't know that I was reading a love story. But it becomes very evident that it's a love story. It's a love story in ways that we did not expect. Did you know that yourself, that it was going to be a love story? Yeah, I do. I think in all my novels, no matter what I thought my characters, I'm always testing the strength of the love, whether it's between a mother and son or two teenage boys. Or in this case, between a grandson and grandmother and a son and a father. And also the patience of love for some other other characters. But yeah, I always knew it was going to be a love story. I didn't have a father myself, my father abandoned my mother and I when I was about four years old. And so I've always grown up thinking what must it be to a father's love? And what would that have been? And what would it have meant for me as a young gay man as well, who had the father that I did have, you know, was really a product of the patriarchy. And I always sort of spent time imagining that. And the way I wrote John of John to sort of breathe life into that idea and to imagine these two on this island. But, you know, of the title, the important word on the title is the "of" because it is about how fathers possess sons and how they and often seek to control them. When you're on the island, you know, names are very common. Family names repeat. There's a lot of McDonald's and McLeod's and McNeil's. And then you're often named after your father and mother. And so the very first question someone might ask you is, you know, who are you? But then the very next question needs to be, and who do you belong to? And that sense of who do you belong to was something that can carry an awful lot of weight through your whole entire life because you've also got to show up and represent yourself in a good light, but also all the generations going back because everybody remembers who you're from. Yes, and that's the pressure that Cal feels coming home that you're not allowed to be yourself. And that's also why I'm sure so many people leave the island for the desire to fulfill who you were meant to be and not to be somebody else's idea of who you are. That's right, that's right. Yeah, and also for a 22-year-old man to come back, the island does have a very busy city or a very busy town of about 8,000 people, but they live, it's quite a big island and they live in a very rural part of it. And for 22-year-old man to return home at that time, you know, he says a couple of chapters in, he meets another character, he says, "You're the first person I've seen under 30." And he's been there a while, and so there is also a little bit of a social and a romantic struggle, even for straight people on the islands to find the person that they will fall in love with, and almost impossible in that time for a gay character. Okay, so a thread throughout the story is this struggle between faith and desire. What did you find in that struggle? Faith and desire. Yeah, I mean, I think it's an eternal struggle, isn't it? And I don't know that I could necessarily come to a place where I could resolve it, because I think it'll go on long beyond this novel. You know, it is a community that believes very deeply in God, and when you're on the landscape and you see the wind and the weather and the sea, you can understand that God is here, we're very close to it, unlike we often are in cities. But it is also a very conservative church, and it does, as I said, it believes very deeply in scripture, and does not negotiate with it. And so to be gay, or to be outside of any relationship that is not one man and one woman, is just not something that really can exist. And yet you have these two men, and probably other people in rural situations like that, that have this is how they were born, this is how they were made. And so the struggle becomes not only sort of with the community, but it also becomes inside self. You know, it's about how can you both love God and love yourself and love who you love, and how can you reconcile those things at the same time? I love it on page 23 where you describe the conflicting relationship between Father and Son, you say, although he never said it out loud, John felt that Cal thought their lives were lacking, as if the things that had sustained him as a boy bored him now. Cal's gaze tainted the things that John had always loved, and made him feel like he should apologize for the life he had built. And you later write, John thought about the life that he had tied himself to so that Cal had something to tie himself to, and now that Cal didn't want it, he realized that he hadn't wanted it either. Yeah, yeah, I have, I think I have a lot of empathy for parents, I think, I think often they build lives, and perhaps there comes a moment where you realize your children don't want that life, or they don't want to continue that life for you. And especially on the islands where, you know, the crofting of the farming is about subsistence, it's not for profits, about maintaining and remaining and living there. So if your child then doesn't want this thing that you've sort of held onto the house in the land all this time, you have to question, did you also want it? And John hasn't been able to be the man he wanted to be because he was the upstanding deacon in this settlement, there's only 26 people, Oprah, you know, it's not, it's very depopulated at this point. And so he feels like he owes not only his existence there to his son and also to his mother-in-law to keep her alive and well, but also to the people around him. You know, you cannot, at a certain point, you cannot leave because the community needs you. So this struck me, this is early on, this is just on page 2, you know, you write about John and Cal and you say, their conversation was always censored, missing the things they couldn't talk about. And what's fascinating to me about that and struck me is that I think a lot of people are in relationships having conversations that are censored, missing the things that you really can't talk about. And it felt like that wasn't just John and Cal, it felt to me like, that's the whole community. Everybody's just having conversations, but really missing the things that come from feeling and that you need to talk about. That's right. I think we're always all managing reputation, no matter who we are and where we are. First of all, let's just talk about that sentence. That is beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. And so you're just writing along. (laughing) And that just comes to you. - Yeah, I sort of do a little more crying and sort of struggling than just writing along. But yeah, I mean, I have a love of language and it's very much in Scottish people, I think, 'cause we love a good story, so. - So, but when you finish that sentence, you say, "Ah, that's a good one." (laughing) - No, you tend to think, oh, that's terrible. And, you know, will I ever survive? - Really. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I'm very hard on myself. - Yeah, what's your writing style? Do you get up and write every morning or are you on a computer or are you, you know? - I'm very slow. The first draft tends to be very quick. And then I'm meeting people as the reader meets people. And the reason why I write, I think, is also to understand the things that bother me that I can't quite locate. - Your meeting people as the reader meets, as we? - Yes, yeah, they're also coming to me or they're coming from inside me. But I also know in my first draft that I meet Ella and I meet Cal and I say, "Who are you?" and what are you going to be, "What do you have to tell me?" - And so does that come through your fingers or they're talking in your head? How does that show up? - It comes through my head. I mumble, I talk all the time. I write in a one bedroom apartment in the East Village and I have appeared in noise-canceling headphones and my husband just goes about his business around me all the time and-- - Yeah. - But yeah, I meet the characters on the first draft and then I find it what it is that bothers them. And I do-- - It's always fascinating to me. So they just sort of come in and they say, "Hi, I'm Ella." - Yeah, yeah, they do. I have a vague outline of who they might be but if you try to impose too much of that on them, they can resist it and they can push back. And I think because so many of them come from a place where they're trying to help me work out my own problems and things that sort of malformed me and my childhood, I am sort of drawing them from a very deep place and-- - So in this book, 26 characters, they just kept coming and coming. - Yeah, that's a noisy head. What can I tell you? - Yeah. - Did you finally say, "Is that everybody?" - Yeah. (laughing) - I had to limit 26, so it was like goodness for depopulation. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Time for a quick break. Up next, we're gonna hear from book club readers including a pastor who once wrote in his journal, how much he hated homosexuality. He's now here with his gay son. Their story gets to the heart of what it means to change your mind. That is next. - This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking. Maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home with agents who close twice as many deals. When you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. - Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. We're celebrating 30 years. - 30 years people of Oprah's book club, my book club. I'm so thankful to all the readers who have joined me along the way. I'm talking to award-winning author, Douglas Stewart, whose latest novel, John of John, is a vivid, captivating must read and is giving some heated rivalry vibes. Also, it's my 123rd book club selection. Let's get back to our conversation. So John is a man of God, as we read in John of John. He has deep struggles between faith and desire. And this is what Cal says about his father on page 279. Oh, I loved this so much. I didn't leave him. I left home. I didn't leave him. I left home. And he left me first. He looked at me and he looked at Jesus. And he chose Jesus. He stepped beyond that white cloth to be saved and left me on the other side. I was nine years old. So I'm chained to his side in this life, but to hell with me in the next. What did you learn and experience yourself about the church in Scotland? - Yeah, I think I went to the islands with a lot of misconceptions and preconceived notions. I've always felt a sort of look down upon, I think, of people of faith because I was a young gay man, and it was often used as the justification for people to be cruel to me, you know, how God felt about me. And they felt very sort of righteous in that often. And so I went actually a little afraid this being the most conservative part of Scotland. And I got there and I was so overwhelmed with the softness and the gentleness of the people with just how generously we're with me and with their neighbors and how interdependently we're in order to sort of get by and to survive. But the faith they believe in their own path to God is quite a hard path, you know, we're born and sin. We are going for damnation. And God will save only a few. And there's, we can give ourselves to Jesus, but there's not much else we can do to. - And no radio on Sunday. - Yeah, no, I mean, there you are very, I mean, it's a hard agricultural life. And so the Sabbath comes as a very welcome relief at the end of the week where everyone can rest, but it is intended that you give your whole day to God. There is no labor, there is no joining together unless it is for worship or to go to church. And even though not everyone is a part of the church on the islands, the church still has the dominating influence in that region. And to be there also on a Sunday, as a city dweller, I was like, we might need this, you know, might need a chance to stop and to think and to reflect for whatever it is we do. But it is a very sort of dominating experience. - You know what it felt like to me and meeting it? It feels, I was brought up, you know, strict Baptist. And it's so interesting because at one point, you know, you're not supposed to wear pants on a Sunday, you're not supposed to wear jewelry, you're not supposed to, and you know, it just seemed so crazy to me. You could go in the water, but you couldn't splash, you know? So it was like, take away all the joy. And that's what it felt like in this community that religion was joyless. - I think it's the religion is hard. The road to belief there is very, very hard. But the community itself has a lot of joy because it is very sort of soft and gentle, like I said. And people are very measured with their words, because words live a long time on the islands. And so it was that sort of tension between both of them that just really sort of inspired me and scratched my imagination. - Okay, so maybe you've heard of this story that last year in the New York Times opinion piece, Timothy White wrote an article titled, "How my dad reconciled his god and his gaze on. His father is an evangelical pastor who eventually came to terms with Timothy's sexuality and Timothy and his father Bill are here and they both read John of John." Yeah, and what did you think? - Oh, wow. - Well, first of all, wow for that article. Wow for that article. - Thank you. I mean, I think for me, it was heartbreaking, honestly, to see myself in it as much as I did. I mean, we have a different, Timothy and I have a very different relationship than John and Cal. - Thank goodness. - We would not be sitting here, yeah. - Well, tell us first a little bit, summarize what you said in the opinion piece in the New York Times, yes. - Yeah, so I wrote about what it was like to grow up as someone who had a father that loved him very dearly and placed a lot of expectations about what it would mean when I was an adult. A wife I would marry. I wrote about how in the doorway every night when I went to bed, my dad would say, "Pers over me, one of those prayers was for my future wife every night." And so then when I came out and in the lead up to me coming out, my dad and I were very close. He was going through this internal theological struggle this whole time about what it was like to try to reconcile his deeply held evangelical faith, faith that I was raised and believed as well with my burgeoning sexuality. - And I read that Bill, in your journal you wrote, I think deep down I hate homosexuality. I hate it more than just about anything in the world. That's what you had written, right? - Yes, that's in my journals. - And after more than two decades, you now say, having a gay son is one of the best things that's ever happened to you. - It is, so. - It is, so. - You have been reading, what happened? - Yeah, well, I mean, it's a, I mean, speaking as someone who's, you know, I love Jesus. I think Jesus is the best. I still do. It's hard to change. It's hard to change deeply ingrained religious beliefs. - Yeah. And so for me, my brother came out as gay in 1990. So I'm reading this book and it's, you know, that's the same era. And I sent my brother a book called Coming Out of Homosexuality, like, How To Be Straight. Right, I mean, this, I prayed with, you know, I've been admitted. - So when your brother came out, what was your reaction to your brother coming out in 1990? - Well, fortunately, I said, I love you. Unfortunately, I said, but, I love you, but I'm not so sure what I think about you being gay. Because at that point, I thought it was just an abomination, 'cause I didn't literally know any gay people. I mean, just was not part of the conservative evangelical world that I lived in. - Yeah. - So I had to go on this journey. - So that was really brave of your brother to come to you, evangelical pastor, and do that. - He pastored me through my journey. Even though he would say he's not religious, he literally walked with such humility and grace for decades. - Okay, so when you wrote that in your journal, all those years ago, I hate homosexuality. What was it? were you going through and why were you writing that? - Well, I was praying for people who were gay to be straight. - And you thought you could pray them straight? - Yes. - Okay. - And that didn't work so well. - Yeah, well, it-- (audience laughs) - So, I mean, it's no surprise to you, but it was to me. And so for me, it caused me to doubt God. Like God, you said that I'm supposed to do this and make them straight, but you're not coming through. And so for me, it was almost-- - So when they didn't turn straight, you then started to question God. - Yes. - Okay. - And so I knew Timothy was gay probably a year before he'd came out. - Yeah. - And so that's when I wrote that. - Yeah. - I'm like, "This cannot be." - That now my son is gay, my brother was gay. And I heard that you went to the beach and you were throwing things and yelling at God. - I mean, I was saying things that we cannot say on Oprah. (audience laughs) And I was crying and yelling and throwing sand and stones out at the-- And I was like, "God, why?" So what happened? So what happened to change you? - It's slow. Change is slow, but I hit my therapist and I were talking about it a couple weeks ago that it's this combination of pain and love that motivates change. And I did not want to lose my beloved boy. And that's what it happened. - But you didn't lose him. - No, I didn't. No. - Yeah. - I thought I was going to because that's what had happened with everyone else I loved who was gay. - Okay, so you saw yourself in the character John here. - I did. - He was so rigid. - Yeah. - I mean, I know he loved cow, but he was so rigid and so shame-based. There was so much self-loathing that the wrestling match and you had that great line, you know, the wrestling match wasn't with another, it was with myself. - That's right, with the God that I thought was the real God. And Jesus ends up being a lot better than I thought he was. (laughing) I love that. (clapping) And you say that because Jesus allowed you to be accepting and loving of your son just the way he was born to be. - I think so. I mean, that, yes, because Jesus was that kind of loving with others and Jesus was like, hey, come on, come over to my side. - Yes. - It's okay, you can love him. You can really love him. God was not mad at me for being mad at God, right? So I was learning how to express that. - That has a lot going on. (laughing) - Yeah, pretty true. - Yeah, pretty true. So reading this book did what for you, Timothy? How did you feel about you? - Yeah. I found the whole experience profoundly frustrating, I would say, in a way where I was just like, oh, he both have the same secret for the whole time. Like someone say something. Like it felt like a checkup's gone, where if you see a gun at the beginning of the play, it has to go off by the end of the play. And I was like waiting and waiting and waiting for that gun to go off. And I think what it did for me there was a line near the end where Cal and John are talking and Cal is saying in narration thinking, like if you would only apologize just once. If you would just say that he was wrong, one time, like we could make something of this. And so what it brought for me is just my profound gratitude that I got to experience something that very few children, very few gay children get to experience, which is their parent changing and largely changing out of a reaction of love for them. And so, yeah, that was great fun. - Yeah, that's wonderful. And I think you changed because you changed because of your love for your son. It was so important for you to reconcile that that's why you changed. - And that day, I mean, that day at the beach, I mean, I just told God I said, look, I'm done. This is it, I'm gonna die on this hill. You're not gonna let my son drift off and not let us part. - So did it come to you in a feeling of release or release? - No, intense anger. - No, but I mean, when you finally were able to reconcile that I can love my son the way Jesus wants me to love my son. - Boy, it's still long slow journey. You know, long slow journey. - Wonderful, thank you. - Thank you for being here to share it. Bill and Timothy. - After this break, a former professional baseball player who says Douglas Stewart's novel, "John of John" made him feel seen for the first time. His coming out story and more questions from our audience are next. Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. I'm joined by an audience full of readers of my latest book club selection, "John of John" by award-winning novelist Douglas Stewart. - So Kenny is a former professional baseball player and I heard the book made you feel seen, how so? - It did make me feel seen. First, I just have to say that there's something profoundly healing in reading your words and affecting the chapters of my life through your words, through your lens. So thank you for this book, it was really splendid. - Thank you. - You know, I really enjoyed how the characters were portrayed through the relationships and dynamics through different perspectives. And the one that really struck a chord with me was the relationship between John and Cal, the strained father-son relationship with this dual secret. I've known that I'm gay since I was seven years old and I came out when I was 21 and I couldn't take it anymore. It was just eating me from the inside. My father was outed, not as being gay, but as having a second family. And so it really illustrated like, wow. So if I just kept my secret for a very long time it would have exploded into this big thing. So I felt this catharsis and seeing the other perspective and really empathized with the pain that he must have been going through. And throughout this all, it brought up the question of your intention and your hope for writing in this way. For me, I grew up in a patriarchal society. It turns out we all did. I'm trying to make sense of what it means to be a good man in a world that says that the kind of man that I am is never quite good enough. And so was it your hope and your intention to connect with readers like me? And I just want to know a little bit more about that. Yeah, that's a thank you so much for all of you for your stories. Yeah, I think often I feel that I come from a generation of gay men that's sort of been left behind by progress a little bit. I feel like because I write about life before the new century that we don't often like to talk about what oppression was like and what violence and homophobia was like and now that things are getting better, not for everybody, but they're improving all the time, I feel like sometimes the desire is to move towards the joy and the inclusion very quickly and I want to just keep taking us back and saying, actually the queer experience is universal and we often all felt very unloved and unseen and very hidden as children and as young people. And I think it's also certainly for me, I'm not sure about yourself, but certainly for me as a working class kid, I feel like even literature and television doesn't talk about class as it intersects with queerness in many ways. It sort of tends to focus on a slightly more privileged life and the consequences change in every sort of part of class. And so a lot of my work is to say, well look, it's very, very different if you don't have the options to move and to be different places and you aren't exposed to as many things as other people can be. And so I hope just by sort of telling that story that people can relate to it through their own experience. You know, I don't know quite how else to reach people, but if I can just tell it with detail and with heart and with dignity, then I feel like people can see their own struggle in it. - Yeah, because you're not setting out to, I want to reach Kimmy. - Yeah. - You're setting out to tell a story that's inside your-- - That's right, that's right. - And your goal is to tell that story as fully and as honestly as possible. That's why you're talking to all of those people in the community and doing all that research and sitting with them. And if that story is a fully realized and developed story, then people like Kenny will see themselves in the story. - That's right, that's right, yeah. And also it's part of the joy of being a writer. I mean, we set things in very specific places, but human experience is universal and it's wonderful to meet you and wonderful to meet people all around the world who see themselves from my characters and the experience. - All right, so you have a question. It's fine, right? - Yes, it's frana. - Okay. - It's great to read the book and it's super captivating, but the theme throughout it was lacking hope, I would say, and there's a lot of sadness throughout the story. So I was curious what were you hoping the reader would feel, especially by the end without giving it away. - Can we talk about men a minute for a second? You know, I was raised with men who did really hard jobs and dangerous jobs that could have killed them and at any time, you know, shipbuilders and coal miners and also people that went out into boats and fished very rough seas. And I found often that one of the ways that they coped with that was by not being very expressive. But I've spent a lot of my life as a writer thinking about the sadness that men must also carry and how they have no outlet for it often. Often they couldn't say that they were scared or they felt undervalued or this was dangerous work because so many people were reliant on them for it. And so the novel starts really in that place, where John is doing this thing that is Sunday. does not want his inheritance, but he has to keep doing it because he is there. And so I'm very interested in-- So he wouldn't know what to do without it. He wouldn't know what to do without it. Yeah, and his life is amounted to something that turns out none of the generations around him want. But in that is a sadness, a particular male sadness that sort of fascinates me. And so I think I'm just trying to excavate that and to give sort of the working class male in this fiction a voice that says they also carry these very deep, male and collie emotions in that way. I think there is hope, but I think that hope comes slowly. One of the things that was interesting about this book from my others is I had to submit to the rhythms of the island. I had to-- things don't happen quickly or explosively. It's a place where time has measured very differently. And so I had to build it very slowly, so that the profits of 50 years of keeping secrets are revealed towards the end of the novel. And in that revealing is the hope that things will heal and get better, I hope. So does that satisfy you? Yes, I think the ending is going to surprise a lot of people. The ending is going to surprise a lot of people, which we're not telling you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's talk about the brothers, innocent sorely, who live in the same home. And they literally aren't speaking to each other. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Well, you know, on the islands-- They have brought no contact to a different level. They have brought no contact for 16 years. They have lived in a small farmhouse. And they have-- they are entirely ignoring each other. To the point where, if anyone has a conversation with them, they have to ask one brother the question, and then turn and ask the other. How is your father? How is your father? How is your father? How is your father? And really, what sort of-- that stems from is when you have children in a sort of rural life, there is the agreement that one of the children would have to take care of the parents, take care of the house, would inherit this thing here. But the other children get to do almost anything they want. They can go into education. They can go see the world. And sorely has broken that agreement with his brother. His brother, Ennis, has dedicated his whole life to looking after his father. And then sorely went to university, saw the world, and then returned anyway, which just breaks a tacit agreement between them. But I wanted to create these men where, because someone had really sort of not only stolen from one brother's life, but then ruined the opportunities he might have had, which might have involved love with another character. We won't spoil it. How do you cope with that? How do you live in a house with someone? So much of the novel is about families being quite claustrophobically bound together through eating and worship and working and then living in this house. And how well could I write these families where they think they know everything about each other. But actually, they don't know each other almost at all. In the end, writing a book, and when you finish, I know as I was just saying with Kenny, you're not writing the story because you want people to-- you're trying to reach a certain person. But in the end, do you, as the creator of this beautiful story, do you have a feeling about what you want it to do and say in the world? Yes. And in fact, I wrote the ending of the novel many times. I kept pulling the novel back to the halfway point, and a character would do something different, and then I would get the final thing. But I knew by the end of the book that I was trying to show that it's often the arrogance of youth if we are the youngest generation in a family that we think were the only ones with secrets and hidden lives that were disappointed in how things turned out. And we don't often afford enough empathy to our parents and our grandparents to also wonder, are you living the life you want to deliver? Are you the person you want to be? And so by the end of the novel, that was the question I wanted to answer. It's not just centered on us as the children, but it is about the generation that go before us. And can we really heal? Can we move on? Can we have a happy life ourselves if our parents and grandparents are not having that for themselves? Got it. After our last break, his book is so compelling. This audience has a few more questions for Douglass. And listeners, I hope you're adding Douglass Stewart's John of John to your reading list. Feel free to share the link to this episode with your own book club or fellow book lovers in your life. This episode is brought to you by HBO Max. For your awards consideration, HBO Max presents Rooster. Starting Steve Carell, this new comedy series focuses on the complicated relationship between a successful author and his daughter. Don't miss the series IGN called "Hilarious and Brilliant." Rooster is streaming on HBO Max. Watch now. Nice. Welcome back to the conclusion of my conversation with celebrated author, Douglass Stewart. His latest must-read novel, "John of John," is available now and is my 123rd Oprah's book club selection. Yes, sir. I came of age and came out of the closet right about the same time as this story takes place. And what really struck me was not just the sense of carrying your secret, but this strong sense of needing to worry about what everyone else thinks about you. I was forced by my father to cut my hair around this time. And I remember asking him almost the same thing. Kyle asks, "John, in the book, why does it matter so much what other people think?" And my father was just incredulous at the question. Like, of course, you should carry yourself through your life thinking about what everyone else is going to think about you. And even after I came out, he had said to me, I don't think I can live knowing that other people know that I have a gay son. It was so much about what people would think of him in relation to me. And I just wondered if this was something you found when you were-- on the islands, I know there's a lot of-- when you're in small towns, everyone's gossiping about everyone else. And so you're more worried about that. But I was just curious about your experience with that. Yeah, I think it comes back to the off of the title again for me. It's in masculinity in a slightly broader sense. I think a lot about how fathers often want their sons to be made in their images. And in terms of the novel, that's a very dangerous thing when the father hates his own image and how that's where the problem really stems from. But fathers often want that for their sons because they understand how the patriarchy works and how narrow masculinity often has to be expressed in the world. And so while they're doing that to their sons, they're also upholding something that should probably dismantle in that way, if that makes sense. But-- Oh, I hadn't even thought of it that way before. Yeah, I mean, it's a sort of self-fulfilling trap, in a way. When your father says, you have to be tough and strong and short hair and brave, and all this. And not allowing you to be whatever it is you might not-- So John is looking at the image of himself and not liking and hating that image in there for hating himself. Don't want it for cow, yeah. Doesn't want it for cow. He sees it. I mean, I think fathers and sons, even if they try to ignore each other, they say parents see what is happening inside their children on some level. And I think that's why he doesn't want to sort of-- Bill Saudi knew Timothy was gay a year before he came out, yeah. That's right, yeah. But I'm sure it's your experience. But one of the things about growing up gay is you're an absolute fiction to everybody around you until you can claim yourself. You spend all of your formative years not being yourself, but actually looking at how someone else looks at you always and then trying to hide the part of you that you know might bring you shame or judgment. That's so interesting. And so you are-- It's so interesting for a writer's point of view. You're an absolute fiction. All young queer people of a certain generation and before are an absolute fiction. If they don't feel like they can be themselves, even with their parents. And so much of the work that we do as adults is trying to figure out who we actually are and who we should have been the whole time. But it's not just about-- I mean, you're too young to have sexual desire at that age. But it's even just about very simple things. I like playing with a skipping rope or a doll. Or, you know, I like this pop star or that. And you're forever not really inside your own experience. You're always looking at how other people are seeing you and what they can catch you in. And so that-- And building on the fictional story-- That's right. --until you can actually come out and be your authentic self. Or go to the mainland to art school and then go-- Yeah. Before your grandmother decides she wants to see you again, yeah. Yeah, yeah. The end of the novel made a lot of people we did it not make it theory. Yeah. The book was just a magnificent reading experience that we thank you for. And I have to say, for all of us who completed it, it's like you dug into what love can do for those living in a hostile and a judgmental world. Did you not think that, Kenny? Yeah. And I think many people are going to be thanking you for that. Thank you. Thank you, Douglas Stewart. Thank you. John F. John. By 1/23, Oprah's Book Club Selection is now available wherever you buy your books. Thank you to this insightful reading audience. Thank you for your thoughtful observations about the book. We appreciate you. And we'll see you next time. Go well, everybody. Go well. You can subscribe to the over podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.