JOHN SAM JONES | INTERVIEW
The Journey Is Home is a pretty suitable title for this esteemed author’s new memoir, covering as it does his journey – raised in Barmouth, out to California, back to the UK and most recently Germany – and his home, the Wales that shaped him. Joshua Rees found out more.
Your new book The Journey Is Home [the author is pictured above recording its audio version] could be seen as an exploration of a wide range of identities you’ve embodied during your life. To what extent does the ‘journey’ of the book’s title refer to your search to find yourself?
What I conclude from the early responses of readers is that ‘the journey’ is interpreted in different ways – and that’s how it should be, because readers always bring their own life experience and perception to any author’s work. If by “search to find yourself” you’re implying that there is (still) a sense of ‘lostness’ in my life, then I’d reject your inference.
However, I believe that my years of self-discovery in California did open me up to the on-goingness of ‘becoming who we are’… that we continue to grow into ourselves throughout life. I’m sorry if that sounds a bit California-whacky… let me put it this way: who I am tomorrow is likely to be somewhat different from who I am today because something I have read, something I have seen, something I have heard, something I have experienced has led to reflection, which has then changed me. So I continue to become John Sam Jones – and that’s an exciting way to live, and an exhilarating journey to be on.
Elements of autobiography have featured throughout your fiction, such as in Crawling Through Thorns and Fishboys Of Vernazza. What has writing a memoir allowed you to do that fiction hasn’t?
Much of my fiction writing is what I know – so yes, I plunder my own experience and offer it to my fictional characters, who then take twists and turns that are not about me at all… and so it’s not unusual to feel quite safe as an author ‘hiding’ behind the lives of fictional characters, even if part of their experience is my own. Writing this memoir has been different!
Richard Davies at Parthian had been encouraging me to write a memoir for a long time, and after Crawling Through Thorns was published – a work of fiction in which a young man has electric shock aversion therapy to ‘cure’ him of his gayness, but which doesn’t go into much exploration of how that character in the novel was rehabilitated after that abuse had occurred – Rich became even more keen on my experience of conversion therapy and how I rebuilt my life. Writing this memoir has invited me to be vulnerable, and I think, in that vulnerability, I’ve been able to be truthful in a way that sometimes only writing things down can achieve. Of course, that vulnerability also has a potential downside – in leaving me feeling exposed.
One of the most moving sections of the book deals with your relationship with your mother while she had dementia. How important do you think it is to make people aware of the reality of what it means to live with dementia?
Something I learnt from my relationship with my mother in her last years is that everyone’s dementia is different. I’ve tried to capture some of the actuality of our time together, but that reality may not be the same for anyone else, so I’m unclear how helpful what I’ve written might be to others.
I chose to include this section in the memoir mainly because of the family secrets that were disclosed by my mother during her forays into her past – secrets which, had they been know, may have helped me in my early life not be so convinced that we were a family of ‘such noble character’ – and thus a family onto which I was bringing great shame because I was homosexual.
You felt understandably disappointed that Wales voted to leave the EU, and the xenophobia that arose around the time of the Brexit referendum led you to start a new life in Germany. Do you still consider yourself a proud Welshman, or has your patriotism been dented by this experience?
Nationality is a chance of geography, circumstance and birth. I don’t, therefore, have much understanding of the notion of having pride in nationality. And now, legally speaking, I have two ‘nationalities’ – British and German – and neither acknowledge my Welsh heritage. Identity is complex. Feeling betrayed is complex too. More than being disappointed that Wales voted to leave the EU, I felt betrayed, and it’s this betrayal that pricks the nostalgia of ‘hiraeth’… and it’s this betrayal that I’m still trying to learn to forgive.
You have said previously that as a gay man growing up in Wales in the 1960s and 70s, you had no positive role models in your life and that this turned you towards solitary pursuits, such as hiking, reading, and studying. How much of a bearing do you think this insularity had on you becoming a writer?
I don’t believe what you’re referring to as insularity has any bearing on my ‘becoming’ a writer. I did indeed recognize that the dearth of stories which presented gay men in a positive light was much of the reason I swam in a sea of stories that said people like me were bad, mad and/or sad. I absorbed that negativity, and internalised it: homophobia is a miserable – even shocking legacy for a society to impart on its youngsters!
For a few years I complained about the lack of homegrown stories by gay men about gay men… but realising, a bit late in the day, that I could string words and sentences together, I decided to start writing the kind of stories that I hoped might present a different (gay) worldview. And back to your point about ‘insularity’… yes, maybe the fact that I enjoy my own company is what frees me to spend hours, days, weeks at the keyboard.
In The Journey Is Home, you discuss the shame and guilt you felt about your homosexuality when you were a young man, and your awful experiences of Electric Shock Aversion Therapy. How much easier do you think it is for men and women to ‘come out’ as gay now?
I hope you won’t think I’m being glib if I say that this all depends on geography, religion, and cultural/social norms. I still meet people today who have difficulty being reconciled with their homosexuality, who live double lives, who fear being outed, who want to be ‘normal’. Until those ‘mad/bad/sad’ narratives that keep swirling around are completely displaced by the narrative that says human sexuality is wonderfully complex and diverse, and that the complexity should be valued and the diversity celebrated, there will be men and women who despair when they discover who they are. There is, however, a supportive LGBTQ community – at least in most western societies – where people who are struggling can find solace and maybe even grow to like themselves.
How would you like your work to be viewed in, say, 50 years’ time?
When I was a student in Berkeley I attended a number of lectures by Elie Wiesel, and I will always remember him saying, “For the dead and for the living we bear witness. For not only are we responsible for the memories of the dead, we are also responsible for what we are doing with those memories.” There came a time when I asked myself what I was doing with the memory of being ‘treated’ with Electric Shock Aversion Therapy. It was another kind of shock when people I told about it didn’t believe it could have happened. In 1975? No… not possible!
I didn’t think about posterity as I wrote this memoir – I thought about my responsibility as a witness… my responsibility to that memory. I recently re-read Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir Night – first written in French in 1956 and released in English in 1960. It’s 65 years old – the same age as me – and I re-read it to remind me what it means to be a human being. Perhaps, in 2081, someone will read The Journey Is Home because it reminds us what it means to be human.
You did an MA in creative writing. There’s been a huge surge in the prevalence and popularity of such courses. How useful do you think they are to aspiring writers?
I did the course – I didn’t get the MA. That’s a long story! Anything that helps a writer understand their craft is a good thing. I’d had short stories and a novel published before I did a writing course, and throughout the course I had moments of revelation which helped me recognise and interpret my intuitiveness in writing.
You came to writing relatively late in life. What advice would you give to those who have only recently decided to start writing?
In no particular order: read aloud what you write. Write for yourself. Enjoy writing. Know that there will be times when your writing flows and times when it falters, so be gentle on yourself. Find a first reader whom you trust enough to tell you their truth. Don’t be in a hurry. Try to recognise when something you’ve written is badly written. Know that it is always the reader who completes what you have written – so once you’ve let your magnum opus go out into the world, let it be what it will be. Be a promiscuous reader.
The Journey Is Home is out now, published by Parthian. Price: £15. Info: here
words JOSHUA REES