Art by The Camera.
Speaking to me on Zoom on a Tuesday morning, award-winning poet and, now, novelist Andrew McMillan reflects on an important question: “I don’t know why more people don’t write about Barnsley.” Published in February this year, Pity traces the experiences of a South Yorkshire family across three generations, following their back-breaking labour in a coal mine, social precarity, and attempts at constructing social and individual identities.
Simon, member of the youngest generation, works as a drag queen. His name in drag? Puttana Short Dress — a reference, though not made explicit in the novel, to the tutoress Putana (literally translated from Italian as ‘whore’) in ‘Tis a Pity She’s a Whore. Throughout the novel, however, we follow Simon’s preparations for a performance not as Puttana but as Margaret Thatcher: “he’d put on a pointed hat, and he’d be Her.” Marrying strike chants with camp signification, bracketed by concerns about local reception, Simon’s performance — despite its potential for levity – reflects a central concern in Pity: what does it take to construct the history of a place, of a nation? And can that history be translated back to the public that it is written about? As McMillan reminds me in our discussion, the story of Thatcherite deindustrialisation is not just the story of the North East, but also the story of Britain.
As Simon prepares for his performance, we follow Ryan – Simon’s boyfriend – as he attempts to remember the couple’s first date. Using his position as a security officer at the shopping mall in which they met for the first time, Ryan scrolls through old CCTV footage to retrace their first meeting. This unlikely archive provides fractured footage of a couple that, having met through Grindr, attempt to navigate moments of intimacy in a public space. “We never actually just get a moment of them together,” McMillan explains; they are never “alone, just purely alone.” Throughout the novel moments of intimacy between the couple are always mediated by a lens or perceived audience: videos on Simon’s OnlyFans; two queens discussing Ryan’s appearance at one of Simon’s shows; or through the distant lens of security cameras.
In constructing the novel, McMillan himself had to wrestle with the challenge of intimacy and witness. Despite growing up in Barnsley, he recognises his position as an academic researcher that has spent almost the same amount of time living outside of the area as he has in it. At times during the research process, he felt like he was “kind of peering at the town like a Petri dish”. This is translated into the novel through the ‘Fieldnotes’ chapters. In these sections, we are introduced to a group of researchers that are attempting to construct a social history of the town; their methods include interviews, focus groups, and map-making sessions. Dully humorous, the researchers’ well-intentioned attempts to understand the town’s response to traumatic events and economic instability reflect the challenges of constructing a ‘truthful’ account of history.
“In places like Barnsley,” McMillan explains, “people have a sense that they know the history of that place.” By dint of geology, Barnsley’s industry – and, in turn, popular history – has been shaped by coal deposits. Formed of organic accretions in the carboniferous period, coal is not only a driver of economic prosperity but also a material of history: it both shapes and is shaped by the past. In Pity’s most successful moments, we are offered narrative vignettes – reflecting on the experience of, amongst others, Simon’s grandfather – describing the daily toil of extracting this history. Holding an intimidating presence, the coal haunts the tales of anonymous workers: in turn, it is said to sigh, tick, and, finally, crack. The history of Barnsley, therefore, is created not only by people and stories or facts, but also by the ground beneath their feet.
In Barnsley town hall, two men stand facing each other. One, a glassblower, rests on a grassy verge, propping himself up using the long steel rod of a blowpipe. The other balances on a pile of coal: helmet on, pickaxe in hand, and lantern tied to his neck. Together, they comprise the supporting figures of Barnsley’s coat of arms. Written at their feet, spanning the breadth of their gaze, the official motto of the South Yorkshire borough: ‘spectemur agendo’ (‘judge us by our actions’) – in Pity, Andrew McMillan attempts to do just that.
Pity by Andrew McMillan is published by Canongate, released February 2024. Andrew McMillan will speak at the Cambridge Literary Festival on 21st April 2024, alongside Sinéad Gleeson and Holly Pester. Tickets are available here.
By Troy Fielder.
The Camera 