Chris Bohjalian, HOUR OF THE WITCH

[2:17]Zibby Owens: This is Zippy Owens and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen Vaccine Research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay. Now back to this amazing podcast. I am so thrilled that Ferdy brand is back being my sponsor again because as many of you know because I talk about them a lot and I post about them a lot, Ferdy is like my favorite clothing brand right now. It is fashionable enough that I always feel good wearing it, super comfortable, very forgiving, and just really cool. So I'm so excited they're my sponsor. You can get a discount with feritybrand.com/zippy and you'll get 20% off. Again, that's feritybrand.com/zippy. Get 20% off. And a few other things that you should know about Ferity aside from the fact that I'm living in their dresses for this summer is that they're a family run brand fueled by purpose and optimism. They make high quality, sustainably minded, feel good favorites that you'll be proud to wear. I certainly am. They believe in family, quality, sustainability, and community. Summer is in their DNA, and they've created many staples for the summer, sustainably minded with the highest of quality, comfort, and versatility, and all are made for life, which I can 100% attest to, and you should definitely go check it out. So again, fairetybrand.com/Zibby for 20% off. Go try it out. I did an Instagram live with Chris Vagillion about his new book, Hour of the Witch. I've already had him on my podcast about the Red Lotus, and I just love Chris and have had the best time with him. He also released The Flight Attendant, which has been made into an HBO Max television series and got lots of awards and all of that good stuff. If you don't know Chris, he's the number one New York Times bestselling author of 22 books, and his work has been translated into 35 languages and has become three movies and a TV series. Hour of the Witch is a historical thriller set in 1662 Boston, inspired by the first divorce in North America for domestic violence and America's original witch hunt. One of his favorite novels that I read was Midwives, which he's also adapting as a play or and premiered at the George Street Playhouse. He's done a million other things and is just basically amazing. Bear with him because his voice has gone through some hard times during COVID. So, listen up. Hi, Chris.

[5:11]Chris Bohjalian: Zibby, how are you? Good. How are you? It's a pleasure to speak with you. It's a pleasure to speak with you too. How are you doing? Hanging in there. Good. Thank you for doing the work of the angels. You have done so much the last fifteen months to keep us all sane.

[5:28]Zibby Owens: Thank you. Well you have done so much to keep us entertained and intellectually stimulated and all the rest as you do with all of your novels. Amazing.

[5:37]Chris Bohjalian: You're doing the work. I mean, you are doing the work of the angels. Know, you're changing publishing. You're changing how people read

[5:46]Zibby Owens: and how people stay sane. That's just such a gift. Oh, you're so nice. I was literally at lunch just talking to my husband. I was like, there's just something I'm missing. I feel like there's a better way to do this whole publishing thing. Like what am I missing to get books? Like, I just feel like structurally there's something wrong with, well, I don't know, I shouldn't probably divert attention away from your book, but I just feel like all these great books come out and then they like disappear so quickly and there's not enough room on the shelves and then another book comes in and I don't know it's like all this great work and it only gets a minute of attention you know. But you're giving it a minute. Okay well I'm doing what I can I guess? It's like movies. You know movies live and die

[6:30]Chris Bohjalian: pre COVID by the first weekend's box office books It's are like that

[6:36]Zibby Owens: true. It's just a shame when there's such good stuff. However, your backlist I feel like keeps getting a resurgence which is amazing. I mean books like Midwives like never fail from consciousness if you have like a big book right? It's always there but yeah I guess it's just the nature of the beast. There are some books that are legacy books. Mean I've written 22

[6:57]Chris Bohjalian: books and of those 22 books, five or six might be legacy books and five or six are train wrecks. I'm sure that's not true. Oh, it is. It's totally true.

[7:11]Zibby Owens: I I feel like your train wreck is still better than the average novel. So, you know, do with that what you will. And I feel like also because of The Flight Attendant, I've been like rooting for you with award season and all of the things that came with that launch too. I feel like now, I mean, not just now with other books too, but you like have your tender hooks into everything. It's amazing.

[7:32]Chris Bohjalian: Wasn't Kaylee great? Kaylee Quockel Cassie Bowden. She's just wonderful. And I can't wait to see what happens with the Red Lotus because you know, the team behind the Red Lotus is so talented. Oh, I can't wait. So when does that come And we might have big news about Hour of the Witch in the next two weeks.

[7:51]Zibby Owens: I bet you will. So tell us more about Hour of the Witch for anybody who's not here. Oh, but before that, somebody in the comments wants to know what do you consider a train wreck book of yours?

[8:03]Chris Bohjalian: Okay, I wrote the single worst first novel ever published, bar none. A killing in the real world. The only good thing about it is the James Patterson blurb.

[8:18]Zibby Owens: I can't, I'm sure that's not true. So what is a train wreck by the way? What is it? Is it, it can't be the writing, is it the structure? Like what is it you don't, what is it you're, that you don't think has stood to the test of time? It's an apprentice book.

[8:32]Chris Bohjalian: Actually some of my later books are bad for other reasons. But when a book doesn't work, it's because you either aren't emotionally invested in the characters, even when they're train wrecks. I mean there's a difference between a book that's a train wreck and a character that's a train wreck. We often root for hot messes. We often root for failed human beings but when a book doesn't work it doesn't work because we were not rooting for the character or it feels inauthentic. It doesn't feel real. It feels like somebody's moving pieces around the chessboard. There's nothing organic to it. Interesting.

[9:16]Zibby Owens: Okay. Well, and yet there's so many good books about chess.

[9:22]Chris Bohjalian: I love The Queen's Gambit and not a lot of people have read The Sandcastle Girls will. Laura Petrosian is named after the great Armenian chess master Iron Tigran Petrosian.

[9:38]Zibby Owens: Who knew? Who knew? Who knew? Wow, that's amazing. Well, not a lot of chess in Hour of the Witch, but still tell us a little more about this book and why, how do you even come up with topics after so many books? Like why go to this time period and this particular woman? How did you come up with her? I've been fascinated

[10:00]Chris Bohjalian: by Puritan theology since college. Imagine living in a world where Satan is as real as your neighbor. Imagine living in a world where everything you do makes you wonder, am I saved or am I damned? Now whenever we think of witchcraft in America we go right to Salem, 1692. But America's first witch hunt was thirty years earlier. Hartford was hanging witches in 1662. The governor of Massachusetts hanged his own sister in law's a witch in 1656. When you were hanged as a witch you were likely smart, opinionated and strong willed. You stood up to the Puritan male patriarchy and that's what interested me. I came across this tiny three line reference in Boston's judicial court of assistance to the first divorce in North America for domestic violence for cruelty. Elizabeth Nannie Naylor imagine being a woman and standing before these 14 men in black robes and saying I'm married to a beast. I want out and the laws are on my side. This was a I believe her moment three eighty years before a certain Supreme Court hearing and I fell in love with the notion that was the way in. I didn't necessarily know that it was going to move from a divorce trial to a witch trial. But I'm glad it did because it's fascinating. And what were you doing reading that to begin with? How did you happen upon that? I could turn, well actually I've got my phone so come with me. Okay, great. These are all books on Puritan theology. I had so many more, those were just the ones that I kept beside my writing desk. Through them I decided I need to know more. So I went to Boston and I went to the library and I started researching Puritan history where it all happened and there it is 1672 Elizabeth Nanny Naylor and we actually know more about her divorce than almost any of the other Puritan divorces for a variety of reasons. There were 31 divorces in Boston in the seventeenth century. Of those thirty one, 29 were for desertion, adultery, polygamy. One, and you will love this, it's just so ironic. What do you think of the Puritans? Was for impotence and one was for cruelty. Another fun thing about the Puritans I love, they had atrocious table manners. First of all, they drank beer like it's spring break in Miami. Secondly, they did have some plates but they were often eating out of trenchers long vertical bowls that two or three people would share and they didn't use forks.

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[16:50]Chris Bohjalian: The three tined fork that was coming into vogue in Europe looked too much like the devil's pitchfork and so the puritans called them the devil's tines and didn't use them. So here's what you got, A bunch of beer drinking people sharing trenchers, not using forks. And oh, by the way, eating lobster like baloney, because lobsters were everywhere you reached into the back bay and grabbed one. It sounds like a frat house. Yeah, except for the fact that adultery was a capital offense.

[17:33]Zibby Owens: Yeah, except for that. Otherwise, exactly the same. How did you even develop such a passion for Puritan history? Did is it the first thing you read? It just sparked your interest and you're like, I have to know more? Like, do you go off in these rabbit holes for other topics or is this like a mainstay?

[17:52]Chris Bohjalian: I go off on a lot of rabbit holes as you know. And I live with dread. I live with anxiety. This muscle tension dystonia you're witnessing in my voice, it's a COVID casualty. It's pandemic voice. And I will get over it eventually, but not yet. And the Puritans, well they lived with dread. You know they lived with Satan. They lived with the notion that it doesn't matter if I'm good, I still might be going to hell. And there's this catch 22. If you behave really well, if you do good works, if you begin to believe maybe I will go to heaven. That's the ultimate Calvinist catch 22. The sin of hubris and it means you're damned.

[18:41]Zibby Owens: Wow, this is the ultimate damned if you do, damned if you don't. Yeah. Wow. And

[18:47]Chris Bohjalian: here's the other thing that surprised me. There were so many strong women and for a culture that was responsible for so much horror. Beginning with the Native American genocide, there were people like Ann Bradstreet, America's first poet. Dost dream of things beyond the moon? Dost hope to dwell there soon? She was beautiful stuff. And when you look at her poetry, you see that the Puritans had internal lives as complicated as ours. Anne wrote beautiful poems about the death of a grandchild. Her deep passionate love for her husband, the demise of her library

[19:35]Zibby Owens: in a fire. Can we talk about the fact that you might be the best history teacher on the planet? And that if I had had you as a history teacher, then maybe my life would have taken a new course. Like, the way you infuse enthusiasm about a topic is amazing. So have you ever thought like that maybe at some point you'll like put down the computer keys and start teaching or amplify? No.

[20:01]Chris Bohjalian: No. But I do do this. Pre COVID, as a as a mitzvah, I would always teach at a low residency writing program three days a year. I did it at Rutgers, did it at Yale, I did it at Drexel, and literally it's three days of giving back to aspiring writers. And I love it. But I couldn't do it as a career. I don't even mean writing.

[20:28]Zibby Owens: I mean about all the things you research. Maybe you should just like record yourself talking about it and you know release it as a podcast of information because I feel like students would even like young kids if they could hear how excited you get. Oh

[20:44]Chris Bohjalian: okay, well actually I will tell you this at my daughter's elementary school years and years ago they said would you come in and talk about the first Thanksgiving?

[20:54]Zibby Owens: Exactly.

[20:55]Chris Bohjalian: That's And what I so you know I mean I didn't have to research fart it, entertain a bunch of eight year olds with the reality that your New England ancestors had really awful table manners. So this Thanksgiving, I want you to do three things. Get up from the kids table, take all of the grown ups forks and immediately start eating with your hands and say I'm a pilgrim. And you had a lot of really thankful parents for that. Oh the teachers were saying stop, stop him.

[21:33]Zibby Owens: By the way several people in the comments have now said that the Chris Pajillion podcast would be a great idea so you should start that. Thank you, I'd love to do that. Not that you haven't thought of it before but you know just in case you needed some encouragement from random fans on a Monday afternoon. Namaste. Well, I'm so excited about this book. And what are you working on now? You must have some what's your next book up your sleeve? Okay, my next book is done.

[22:00]Chris Bohjalian: That's the thing about a pandemic. I mean, I was in this weird bubble with my lovely bride, my dog, and my cats and trying not to just weep for the hundreds of thousands of people dying. I mean Zibby, what you endured is just inconceivable to me that you're so heroic. But I wrote a lot and so you will see in October 2022 A book inspired by two things my childhood and Quentin Tarantino's movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I love that movie. So the book you will see next year, The Lions of Hollywood. It's 1964 and an Elizabeth Taylor like starlet finally gets married, brings her entourage with her into the Serengeti on a honeymoon safari, nine Hollywood actors, screenwriters, directors, agents, managers and one by one it all goes to hell and they are eaten or murdered. Wow. I love it. It's so much fun. That sounds really good. You know it's Hollywood in 1964 and East Africa in 1964 and we've got lions and hyenas who are hungry, and Russians who are really angry. I mean, that's the great thing about Russia. It's just the gift that keeps on giving to an office.

[23:33]Zibby Owens: Wow. Well, for sure sounds like a movie by the way, but I'm sure you're on top of that as well. Wow. So great. So that one's done. And so are you thinking about another one? Now I'm just being nosy basically. I am. As many of you know I

[23:47]Chris Bohjalian: wrote a novel about the Armenian Genocide and when I lecture I do often lecture about the links between the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. So the book that I'm writing right now is set in Southeastern Turkey and the Pentagon in a post COVID future with a lot of links between the genocide, the Holocaust and well it seems to be my international thriller stock in trade. Some really awful Russian espionage.

[24:24]Zibby Owens: Wow. That also sounds amazing. I saw you were posting about all of the the fact that Biden has now made the Armenian genocide a sanction not sanctioned, an official thing. Genocide.

[24:38]Chris Bohjalian: That word matters. It matters so much. One of the great scholars, Stephanie at the University of Jerusalem in his book, Justifying Genocide wrote the Holocaust might have happened without the president of the Armenian Genocide. But the Armenian Genocide made the Holocaust more likely. Why? Because the young Nazis revered the young Turks. The commandant of Auschwitz was stationed in the Ottoman Empire in the first World War and before he was hanged in this quasi memoir he wrote, he talked about learning to kill civilians

[25:20]Zibby Owens: in the first world war. Wow, it's not a manual we want floating about particularly. Wow. Well, that also sounds like an amazing important book. And well, how great that you just never seem to run out of fantastic ideas and ideas that make us think and mourn and really just, you know, rethink how we perceive parts of the world. It's not And mourning

[25:46]Chris Bohjalian: is written right. I mean, my books are a lot about dread and when they work they're about heartbreak. You know I confessed to the New York Times the Sunday before last that I loved Harry Potter but I would have killed him at the end of book seven. You know I like books that break my heart. And the thing about Hour of the Witch is that it's about dread and it's about heartbreak, but I hope there's also a solid heroism to my heroine. I love Mary Deerfield and Hour of the Witch so much because like so many of her predecessors, whether they were Ann Bradstreet or all of the women who were hanged. She's smart, she's strong and she's opinionated and she basically says to the patriarchy, I've had enough.

[26:37]Zibby Owens: Well she is joined by many other women in today's world who are thinking and feeling similar. Oh it's weirdly timely for a book set in 1662.

[26:46]Chris Bohjalian: It's weirdly timely as a couple of readers have said to me, Wow, the crucible meets The Handmaid's Tale.

[26:56]Zibby Owens: Wow. Well, bravo to you again, Chris. Thank so for coming on. And it's always such a pleasure to chat with you and you have so many inspiring things. Now I want to like go to the library and research

[27:10]Chris Bohjalian: puritan culture a little more too. Yeah, because you don't do enough to make the world a better place as it is. I mean to all of you watching, I think we have to all give a big round of applause to Zibby Owens who is single handedly when we needed it most despite all of the hell in her own life said people matter, human beings matter, books matter and damn it to hell, together we will get through this. Thank you.

[27:41]Zibby Owens: Oh my god. You're gonna make me cry. Thank you. No. Thank you. That's really, really

[27:47]Chris Bohjalian: Thank you, Chris. Okay. Thanks, Zibby. Thank And thank you all for watching. Thank you all for watching. Go get Arrow. The witch. On sale tomorrow. On sale tomorrow. Woo hoo. Arrow Punch. Thanks. Bye bye. Thank you. Bye bye.

[28:01]Zibby Owens: Thanks so much to Ferity Brand for being my sponsor again. Go to feritybrand.com/zibby for 20% off. Enjoy. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.