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

20:58Douglas Stuart: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 a pair of noise-canceling headphones and my husband just goes about his business around me all the time. But yeah, I meet the characters on the first draft and then I find what it is that bothers them. This always fascinates me. So they just sort of like 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.

21:37Douglas Stuart: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 in my childhood, I am sort of drawing them from a very deep place. So in this book, 26 characters, they just kept coming and coming. Yes. It's a noisy head, what can I tell you? Did you finally say, is that everybody? Yeah. I had to limit 26. So I was like, thank goodness for depopulation. Yeah. Time for a quick break. Up next, we're going to hear from book club readers, including a pastor who once wrote in his journal how much he hated homosexuality.

22:13He's now here with his gay son. Their story gets to the heart of what it means to change your mind. That is next. 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.

22:58And this is what Cal says about his father on page 279. Oh, I love 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?

23:36Douglas Stuart:Yeah, I think I went to the islands with a lot of misconceptions and preconceived notions. I've always felt sort of looked 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 generous they were with me and with their neighbors.

24:11Douglas Stuart:and how interdependent they were 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 in sin. We are going for damnation and God will save only a few. And 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, they 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.

24:54Douglas Stuart: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 in reading it? It feels, and 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.

25:30You're not supposed to. And, you know, it just seems 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.

25:47Douglas Stuart:I think the religion is hard. The road to belief there is very, very hard. But the community itself has a lot of joy. 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 Gay Son. His father is an evangelical pastor who eventually came to terms with Timothy's sexuality.

26:28and 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. Yeah. 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, Timothy and I have a very different relationship than John and Cal. Thank goodness. Yeah, we would not be sitting there. Yeah. 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, the wife I would marry.

27:14I wrote about how in the doorway every night when I went to bed, my dad would say prayers 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 in 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.

27:47That'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. It is. You have been redeemed. What happened? 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.

28:34I mean, I prayed with, you know, I've been in ministry. 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. Because I didn't literally know any gay people. I mean, it 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.

29:13Even 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, I hate it more than just about anything in the world, what 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... So, I mean, I'm so surprised 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.

29:58And 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 came out. Yeah. And so that's when I wrote that. 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. Okay. 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.

30:35But I think 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. OK. So you saw yourself in the character John here. I did. He was so rigid. Yeah. I mean, I know he loved Cal, 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.

31:16It was with myself. That's right. And with the God that I thought was the real God. And Jesus ends up being a lot better than I thought he was.

31:28Douglas Stuart:I love that.

31:33And 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, 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 stuff. That has a lot going on.

32:06Douglas Stuart:Yeah. Pretty true. Yeah, pretty true. So reading this book did what for you, Timothy? How did the book impact you? I found the whole experience profoundly frustrating, I would say, in a way where I was just like, oh, you both have the same secret for the whole time. Like, someone say something. It felt like Chekhov's gun, 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 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, if he would only apologize just once, if he would just say that he was wrong one time, we could make something of this.

32:51And so what it brought up 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, I was grateful. Yeah, that's wonderful. And I think you changed because of your love for your son. It was so important for you to reconcile. That's why you changed. And that day at the beach, I just told God, I said, look, I'm done. This is it. I'm going to die on this hill. You are not going to let my son drift off and not let us part.

33:29So did it come to you in a feeling of release or relief? No, of 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. Oh. Boy, just a long, slow journey. A 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. This episode of The Oprah Podcast is brought to you in part by Booking.com.

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34:41And it couldn't be any easier. You can register your property in as little as 15 minutes. Nearly half of hosts get their first booking within a week. So if your vacation rental isn't listed on Booking.com, it could be invisible to millions of travelers searching the platform. Don't miss out on consistent bookings and global reach. Head over to Booking.com and start your listing today. Get seen, get booked on Booking.com. 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.

35:20How so?

35:21Douglas Stuart: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.

36:07Douglas Stuart:It was just eating me from the inside. my father was outed not as being gay, but as having a second family. And so, you know, 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, you know, felt this catharsis in seeing the other perspective and really empathize with the pain that he must've been going through. And, you know, throughout this all, it brought up the question of your intention and your hope for writing in this way. Like, you know, for me, I grew up in a patriarchal society. Like, it turns out we all did.

36:51Douglas Stuart:And, you know, 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, you know, 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, thank you so much, 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.

37:36Douglas Stuart: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, you know, 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.

38:14Douglas Stuart: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.

38:46Yeah, because you're not setting out to, I want to reach Kimmy.

38:49Douglas Stuart:Yeah. You're setting out to tell a story that's inside your... 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 in my characters and they experience.

39:27All right. So, you have a question. It's Brianna, right? Yes, it's Brianna.

39:31Douglas Stuart:Okay. Great to read the book and it was super captivating, but the theme throughout it was lacking hope, I would say, and there was 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.

40:11Douglas Stuart: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 his son does not want his inheritance, but he has to keep doing it because he is there. And so I'm very interested in... Because he wouldn't know what to do without it. He wouldn't know what to do without it. Who is he without it? Yeah, and his life has amounted to something that turns out none of the generations around him want.

40:46Douglas Stuart: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, you know, that they also carry these very deep melancholy 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, you know, things don't happen quickly or explosively. It's a place where time is measured very differently. And so I had to build it very slowly so that the prophets of 50 years of keeping secrets are revealed towards the end of the novel.

41:28Douglas Stuart: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. 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 and... 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 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 same question.

42:11Douglas Stuart:How's your father? How's your father? Yeah, how's 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 Sorley has broken that agreement with his brother. His brother, Innes, has dedicated his whole life to looking after his father. And then Sorley went to university, saw the world, and then returned anyway, which just breaks a tacit agreement between them.

42:46Douglas Stuart: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.

43:22In the end, writing a book, when you finish, I know as we were 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 wanted to do and say in the world?

43:46Douglas Stuart: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 we're the only ones with secrets and hidden lives and, you know, that we're 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 wanted to live?

44:17Douglas Stuart:Are you the person you wanted to be? And so by the end of the novel, that was the question I wanted to answer. You know, 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 Douglas. And listeners, I hope you're adding Douglas 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.

44:53Welcome back to the conclusion of my conversation with celebrated author Douglas 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 asked Sean in the book.

45:35Douglas Stuart:Why does it matter so much what other people think? And my father was just incredulous at the question. Like, of course, you know, 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, you know, 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.

46:13And so you're more worried about that. But I was just curious about your experience with that.

46:19Douglas Stuart:Yeah, I think it comes back to the of of the title again for me. And 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, you know, that's a very dangerous thing when the father hates his own image and how sort of, you know, 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 they should probably dismantle in that way if that makes sense.

46:56Oh, I hadn't even thought of it that way before.

46:58Douglas Stuart:Yeah, I mean, it's a sort of self-fulfilling trap in a way, you know, 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 naturally be. So John is looking at the image of himself and not liking and hating that image and therefore hating himself. Doesn't want it for Cal. Doesn't want it for Cal. And he sees it. I mean, I think fathers and sons, even if they try to ignore each other, they see parents see what is happening inside their children on some level. and I think that's why he doesn't want to sort of talk about it.

47:28Bill said he knew Timothy was gay a year before he came out. That's right, yeah.

47:31Douglas Stuart:But, you know, 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 from a writer's point of view. You're an absolute fiction. 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.

48:09Douglas Stuart: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's... And building on the fictional story. That's right. Until you can actually come out and be your authentic self.

48:38Douglas Stuart:Or go to the mainland to art school and then go. Yeah. Right before your grandmother decides she wants to see you again. Yeah, yeah. The end of the novel made a lot of people weep. Did it not make you teary? 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. Yeah. And I think many people are going to be thanking you for that. Thank you. Thank you, Douglas Stewart. Thank you. John of John.

49:19My 123rd 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 Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.