Chris Bohjalian, THE AMATEUR
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked.
[0:02]I'm Zibi Owens.
[0:04]I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show
[0:07]and learned endless amounts about storytelling,
[0:10]reinvention, and life itself.
[0:11]Because when you talk about books,
[0:13]you're really talking about life.
[0:15]So get ready to hear from today's best authors,
[0:18]the best-selling and the not-yet-discovered.
[0:20]Come find your next great read and the story behind it.
[0:24]Enjoy!
[0:27]Chris Pajillion is back on the podcast
[0:28]to talk about the amateur.
[0:30]Chris Pajillion is the number one
[0:32]New York Times best-selling author of 26 books,
[0:35]including his most recent, The Amateur,
[0:37]as well as The Lioness Hour of the Witch,
[0:40]Midwives, and The Flight Attendant,
[0:42]which has been made into a max-limited series,
[0:44]starring Kaylee Cuoco.
[0:47]His novels, secrets of Eden,
[0:49]Midwives, and past the bleachers were made into movies,
[0:52]and his work has been translated into more than 35 languages.
[0:55]He's also a playwright and lives in Vermont.
[0:58]Welcome, Chris.
[0:58]Thank you so much for coming back.
[1:00]I'm totally back to talk about
[1:02]The Amateur and Novel Congratulations.
[1:04]Debbie, thank you, and it is wonderful to see you
[1:07]if only virtually right now.
[1:09]You too, you too.
[1:11]Okay, Yale dreams deferred, and so much else
[1:14]in this totally riveting novel.
[1:17]Congratulations, why don't you tell listeners
[1:19]what The Amateur is really about.
[1:23]The Amateur is about how one moment
[1:26]can completely derail your life.
[1:29]We all have those before and after moments
[1:33]when we look back on what life was like before
[1:37]and what it is like now.
[1:38]And in this case, it's 1978,
[1:42]and it has swank country club outside of New York system,
[1:45]New York City, LPGA Aspirant, Mira Winston,
[1:50]planning to go to Yale in less than four weeks,
[1:53]drives a golf ball through the little practice
[1:56]at the country club instantly,
[1:59]killing a classmate in Caddon,
[2:02]and instead of going to Yale and instead of going to the LPGA,
[2:07]and remember it's 1978, suddenly she's going
[2:10]to the lower east side, punk clubs and doing way too many
[2:14]drugs and her life begins to unravel,
[2:17]and what everyone just assumed was a tragic, horrifying
[2:23]accident dewails her life in ways she never expected
[2:28]and so suddenly she is on trial for involuntary manslaughter.
[2:34]And her trial reveals all of the Peyton Place-esque mysteries
[2:41]that surround this beautiful little suburb of New York City.
[2:47]Wow.
[2:48]Well, Chris, I remember and this isn't from looking back.
[2:52]The state in my head, since we last spoke,
[2:55]you talked about how dread is the emotion that is in a lot
[3:00]of your books.
[3:00]And I keep thinking about that because how specific and wonderful
[3:04]to have that emotion that evokes so much in all of us,
[3:07]like immediately when we think of it.
[3:09]And there is so much dread in this book,
[3:11]the feeling of what happens when Mira first realizes
[3:15]that it wasn't a joke that she really did affect this boy's life
[3:19]forever in his family.
[3:21]The dread of her family finding out certain things
[3:25]that she's kept hidden, her deliances with older men
[3:29]in different parts of her life.
[3:30]I mean, there is so much dread.
[3:32]Talk about how you use that emotion to really draw
[3:35]in the readers in this book.
[3:37]Yeah.
[3:38]Dread is what fuels my fiction.
[3:42]Hopefully you care deeply about the characters
[3:44]as flawed or damaged or in some cases,
[3:48]not especially likable, but you care about them
[3:51]because you understand who they are.
[3:53]And you fret for their decisions.
[3:56]Dread is everything in the amateur.
[4:00]But I hope in a way that keeps you turning the pages.
[4:04]But from the very beginning, I understood the role
[4:07]dread was going to play.
[4:08]For the first time ever, my novel has a table of contents.
[4:14]And you see the dread right away.
[4:16]They're three parts.
[4:17]Part one, there won't be a trial.
[4:20]There will never be a trial.
[4:22]Part two, the season of depositions.
[4:25]Part three, the trial.
[4:28]So as a reader, you know right away that Mira's hope
[4:32]that this will all be OK is unfounded.
[4:37]What's also interesting to me is how much of me
[4:40]is in both Mira Winston and the dead catty, Kenny Foster.
[4:45]I wrote this book in an alchemical frenzy of 90 days.
[4:49]And I think it worked that way because the narrator, Mira Winston,
[4:54]once upon a time, this great golf prodigy
[4:58]is now a novelist with 26 books behind her.
[5:02]What about an alcoholic flight attendant?
[5:05]What about a midwife on trial and the dead catty?
[5:09]I catted for my summers in high school.
[5:13]And I loved that job.
[5:16]You know, your tan, your buffed between the loops.
[5:20]You get to read books.
[5:21]I loved everything about it.
[5:23]But it was hard work.
[5:24]And I understood what it showed about the class divide in America.
[5:29]And so I wrote this book in a frenzy channeling
[5:33]so much autobiographic minutia, including the way Mira Winston
[5:38]and the novelist limbs in this world of magical thinking
[5:43]and guilt.
[5:44]Guilt over things that she did, guilt for things
[5:48]that she is blameless for, guilt that she doesn't deserve.
[5:51]But nonetheless, guilt that infuses all of her actions.
[5:57]And what do you feel guilty about?
[5:59]You know, I'd love to tell you.
[6:00]But that's not my story to tell, unfortunately.
[6:03]And I made a decision early on that while I was going
[6:05]to pull those demons out of therapy and into a book,
[6:10]it wasn't fair to the other people involved
[6:12]to shout it from the rafters on a publicity tour.
[6:16]Would you forgive me?
[6:17]Yes, I would forgive you.
[6:18]I didn't know there was even a specific something.
[6:20]But there we go.
[6:22]Of course, everybody is.
[6:24]You can't ruin your life for the sake of a book.
[6:27]Well, it's not my life.
[6:28]My life is fine.
[6:29]Thank you.
[6:30]I don't want to dredge up the demons of that dog
[6:33]the other people.
[6:35]I had lunch with one of them the other day.
[6:38]And I considered dropping the bombshell that I got this book
[6:44]coming out.
[6:45]And some of it might be kind of triggering for you.
[6:48]Interesting.
[6:50]And I made the decision, you know, it's a novel.
[6:52]So I didn't.
[6:53]Interesting.
[6:55]You also speaking of biographical details.
[6:58]You even included with Mira, the fact
[7:01]that your voice was affected during COVID.
[7:04]And in the book, you talk about how it was long COVID that
[7:07]affected it and that you had an interaction with a clerk
[7:12]at a store who had a scratchy voice.
[7:15]Talk about that and did that happen?
[7:17]Yes, that did happen.
[7:18]And then I can't share completely.
[7:21]Yes.
[7:22]In February of 2020, I was on my way to see a show.
[7:28]And I knew there was this virus out there.
[7:33]I mean, I knew very much it was out there because I had
[7:35]my own play midwives.
[7:37]It just opened at the Arthur Lawrence Theater at the George
[7:39]Street Playhouse.
[7:40]And by late February, a lot of the cast had gotten sick.
[7:44]We didn't know what it was.
[7:45]There's spouses had gotten sick.
[7:47]So far, I had not gotten sick.
[7:49]But I have this book called The Red Lotus coming out
[7:51]in a book tour coming up.
[7:52]And I don't want to get sick.
[7:55]I'm not worried about my safety.
[7:57]I'm worried about maybe being a contagion that makes other
[8:01]people sick on a book tour or maybe being stranded, quarantined
[8:06]far from home because I get the virus on a book tour.
[8:09]So I don't want to get sick.
[8:10]So I'm driving to this show.
[8:14]And I stop in at a convenience store to get a red bull.
[8:17]I take this stuff intravenously.
[8:20]And the person behind the counter has a really soft,
[8:24]scratchy voice.
[8:27]Think, think the fairy tale beauty in the beast.
[8:31]And I am the prince.
[8:33]And she is the, you know, the witch who comes trying to sell
[8:37]the rose or whatever.
[8:38]And I said to this woman behind the counter,
[8:41]I have to ask about your voice.
[8:44]Are you sick?
[8:45]And she looks at me and says throat cancer.
[8:49]I was.
[8:51]And I felt horrible and apologized.
[8:54]But I still felt just like the prince and beauty in the
[8:57]beast.
[8:58]And so when I got COVID a few weeks later and was rendered
[9:03]mute.
[9:04]And I was mute from late March until the least late fall of
[9:09]2020.
[9:10]And still I have to work my voice every day like a opera star
[9:14]for it to function.
[9:15]I thought often about what an incredible horrible human
[9:18]being I was at that convenience store.
[9:22]Here someone is working at a convenience store and is dealing
[9:26]with whatever.
[9:27]And my first reaction is my own selfish book tour.
[9:31]So I ask, are you sick?
[9:34]And yeah, I put that in the book.
[9:35]You have to forgive yourself.
[9:37]It was a crazy time as well.
[9:39]I mean, everybody was afraid of getting sick.
[9:40]I mean, the, the, the frenzy around the whole thing.
[9:45]I see your point obviously, but I feel like at this point
[9:49]you can be forgiven.
[9:50]I am doing it for you forgiveness.
[9:52]Thank you, Zibi.
[9:53]I appreciate that.
[9:54]I really, really do.
[9:55]And I, and I know intellectually that I didn't lose my voice
[9:59]because.
[10:00]as of that moment.
[10:01]But I think of it a lot.
[10:04]What has it been like having to struggle to speak
[10:06]when you're giving voice to characters all the time?
[10:10]Okay, well, first of all, it never affected my writing.
[10:13]We are in the midst of this remarkable post-pandemic
[10:17]literary renaissance.
[10:19]I mean, and I've never been more productive
[10:22]than since the pandemic.
[10:24]The red lotus was published in March of 2020,
[10:26]but since then I published Hour of the Witch in 2021,
[10:30]the lion is in 2022.
[10:32]The Princess of Las Vegas in 2024.
[10:35]My new play, The Club, opened in 2024.
[10:39]The Jaggle's mistress was 2025 in the amateurs,
[10:41]2026, and I'm not alone.
[10:45]And again, and the slight attendant was made into a show.
[10:48]The flight attendant was made into a TV show,
[10:51]but all props to that belong to really hardworking
[10:55]and brilliant people like director Susanna Fogel,
[10:58]showrunner Steve Yockey and Kayleigh Cuoco herself.
[11:02]And I do want to give them a big shout out
[11:03]because they had to stop production in March of 2020.
[11:08]And HBO Max really, really needed them.
[11:10]And somehow they got it together
[11:12]and were among the very first TV show,
[11:14]she resumed production in August of 2020
[11:17]with COVID protocols that were off the charts smart,
[11:22]which is how they were able to finish season one in time
[11:24]for Thanksgiving of 2020 and get started on season two.
[11:28]So all props to them.
[11:30]But we really are seeing great, so many great books.
[11:33]I mean, look what you have accomplished.
[11:35]What, you know, the books that you yourself are publishing.
[11:38]I mean, we're seeing remarkable new books
[11:40]that were born in the pandemic by my own editor
[11:42]and great friend, Jenny Jackson,
[11:44]and books like Changing All Stars and Tom Lake
[11:49]and Romantic Comedy.
[11:51]And they're just human copperhead.
[11:53]They're just so many.
[11:54]They just keep coming.
[11:55]Yep. So true. Amazing.
[12:00]In the book, there's a scene with Mira and a professor
[12:04]where she shows him a draft of a novel
[12:08]that he feels is way too personal
[12:11]and not even really fiction.
[12:13]And he gets incredibly upset.
[12:15]And her hopes and dreams are kind of squashed right away.
[12:20]Rejection, of course, is par for the course.
[12:22]It was a novelist and something.
[12:24]As all writers have to contend with.
[12:26]And I was wondering if you have had a below like that
[12:29]where you showed your work to someone
[12:31]and didn't get the feedback that you were hoping for.
[12:35]Multiple times.
[12:36]But here is the one that I was thinking of when I wrote
[12:39]that scene.
[12:41]My sophomore year in college,
[12:43]the writer and residence and novelist of Great Renown
[12:46]was teaching a seminar in the spring
[12:48]on how to write the short story.
[12:50]And I've been writing short stories for a long time
[12:52]and really wanted to be in that course.
[12:56]To determine who would be among the few
[12:58]the proud that shows and you were to submit a short story
[13:01]before the December holidays,
[13:02]she would read them over the break
[13:04]and let you know in early January if you were in.
[13:07]I submitted my story when home
[13:09]returned to the campus in early January
[13:10]and they're waiting for me and my campus.
[13:13]P.O. Box was in note,
[13:14]summoning me to the brick monolith at Haus English Department
[13:18]like 4.30 in the afternoon, the next day.
[13:20]I went to school in Western Massachusetts
[13:22]and in early January at 4.30 in the afternoon,
[13:25]the sun is set because the sun sets and the Berkshires
[13:28]are like lunchtime.
[13:30]So it's dark.
[13:31]It's dusky and there she is in her office
[13:35]at 4.30 in the afternoon with a shawl around her
[13:38]and she looks up at me in the doorway and she says,
[13:40]ah, you must be crisp.
[13:43]I'm not going to try to pronounce your last name.
[13:45]Come in.
[13:46]So I did.
[13:47]And they're sitting on this great expansive mahogany
[13:51]that was her desk was my short story
[13:54]and she saw that I saw it.
[13:56]And she slid it across the desk
[13:58]as if it were road killing said,
[14:00]well, Chris, I've got three words for you
[14:04]and I knew this wasn't going to be good.
[14:06]She said, be a banker and so of course,
[14:11]I was not in that creative writing course,
[14:13]which is why do this day I have never taken
[14:15]a creative writing course
[14:16]and why I never even tried to get an MFA
[14:18]and creative writing it at a place like Iowa or NYU?
[14:22]Oh my gosh.
[14:23]And you have that in the book too, the be a banker take away.
[14:27]Oh my gosh, that's insane and so mean.
[14:30]There's so much of my life in this book.
[14:34]Wow.
[14:35]Well, there's also just a lot of, you know,
[14:38]quote unquote bad behavior in the book.
[14:40]I feel like Mira just can't get out of her own way.
[14:43]She's just, you're just like,
[14:45]no, why would you do that at that moment?
[14:47]And like, why would you choose to do this drug at this time
[14:52]and just like all the decisions she's making,
[14:54]you're just like shaking your head of being like Mira, no.
[14:58]Tell me a little bit about that,
[15:00]especially as you were leaving so much by autobiographically
[15:03]and then there's so much in the book that's like, oh no.
[15:06]Yeah, Mira is one of my favorite characters
[15:11]not merely because so much of me is in her,
[15:13]but because she's damaged and we're all damaged in some way.
[15:18]And some of us act out our fragility in ways
[15:22]that are toxic, not merely to ourselves, but to others.
[15:25]And this is not a spoiler because it's revealed early on,
[15:30]but Mira has been sleeping with one of her father's golf buddies
[15:34]since she was 15 years old.
[15:38]She's nearly raped by a senior in high school
[15:41]when she's a sophomore.
[15:43]And how does she respond to all of this?
[15:45]Well, two ways.
[15:48]First of all, by blaming herself,
[15:51]taking on guilt for things that isn't that aren't her fault.
[15:55]And secondly, by being that ferocious competitor
[15:59]that she is on the golf course.
[16:01]So at one point, yeah, she takes one of her father's irons
[16:06]from his golf bag and smashes in the windshield
[16:09]of the car, of the boy who had tried to rape her.
[16:14]One day at college, visiting her older brother at college
[16:17]at Princeton, she sets a door on fire.
[16:20]Did that!
[16:20]I mastered the art as a freshman of covering
[16:26]resisted dorm room doors with rubbing alcohol, knocking
[16:31]on them, and then tossing a match upon them
[16:34]so that when you open the door, the door is on fire
[16:37]for a split second, scaring the hell out of you.
[16:42]Did I do drugs it in opportune times?
[16:45]No doubt I did.
[16:50]So is this book a way of putting your own mistake,
[16:55]so to speak, in the past?
[16:57]Or is it an exploration of the choices that we make
[17:03]or all of the above or something else?
[17:06]There's your multiple choice quiz of the episode.
[17:09]It's a great question.
[17:10]All of your questions are really good.
[17:12]I've got a really good therapist,
[17:13]so I never would use my fictionist therapy,
[17:16]but I did realize in the summer of 2024
[17:19]that there is a great story in this composite cast of characters
[17:27]I wanted to create.
[17:29]And beginning with my play the club in 2024,
[17:32]I've been pulling more and more on my life in my work.
[17:37]You can see that even in my next book, The Wedding Cake.
[17:41]What I hope the amateur is, is a ripping good page
[17:45]turner about people making some really interesting choices
[17:50]between 1978 and 1981.
[17:54]I find it so interesting that my adolescence
[17:56]is now historical fiction.
[17:59]I don't know, I feel the same way.
[18:02]It's like, wait, what do you mean?
[18:03]There's historical fiction in like the 80s?
[18:05]This is crazy.
[18:06]It's really crazy.
[18:08]Wait, tell me about The Wedding Cake.
[18:10]Ah, well The Wedding Cake you will see in March of 2028.
[18:13]It is set in 1984 on a Saturday in October
[18:17]when a magnificent Brooklyn bakery accidentally
[18:21]confuses two wedding cakes and delivers the wedding cake
[18:26]that was meant for a delightfully young couple,
[18:30]a plumber and an aspiring stock broker in Brooklyn
[18:34]that goes to the Colony Club in New York City on Park Avenue
[18:38]and the cake that was supposed to go to the Colony Club
[18:41]on Park Avenue goes out to Brooklyn.
[18:43]And these are very, very different cakes.
[18:44]And the reason why it matters is because of that Colony Club
[18:47]wedding are a lot of important political people
[18:50]and in The Wedding Cake Topper is a radio controlled bomb.
[18:56]Wow.
[18:57]And that was inspired because when my wife and I were married,
[19:01]my wife created out of these little porcelain cats,
[19:04]this beautiful wedding cake topper
[19:06]because we loved cats and we had a very specific wedding cake.
[19:09]And we will never know who got our wedding cake
[19:11]because we got someone else's wedding cake.
[19:14]No.
[19:15]And I was thinking of some lovelies,
[19:18]a great wedding.
[19:19]It was a beautiful Colony Club wedding.
[19:21]It was perfect, except for the detail that we didn't get
[19:25]the right wedding cake.
[19:27]The photographer forgot to put film in the camera,
[19:30]not kidding at the end.
[19:32]Oh my gosh.
[19:33]And Lester Landon's band had no idea what to do
[19:37]with Ricky Lee Jones and some of the other songs,
[19:40]Madonna songs we picked out to dance to.
[19:44]And yet, you've ended up with a fabulous lay-flow marriage
[19:47]that there you go, doesn't matter.
[19:48]It doesn't matter at all.
[19:50]No, and you know, they have such a great era
[19:52]in its own way that when I look at photos
[19:55]that people didn't take it, the wedding,
[19:57]there is my lovely brother, they're my lovely-
[20:00]brighten me, getting into a car to go from the colony club
[20:05]to LaGuardia Airport to fly to Logan
[20:08]for the start of our honeymoon.
[20:10]And what have we got in our hands in the cab
[20:13]to open bottles of champagne and to colony club glasses
[20:18]that the airline let us bring through security
[20:21]whatever security was back then and onto the plane.
[20:24]Wow.
[20:25]So yeah, we were drinking champagne from the
[20:28]the colony club and shed colony club wine glasses
[20:32]at the airport and on the plane because it was a really
[20:34]different era.
[20:35]I mean, if nothing else, I'm taking away
[20:37]that you are a huge part of your back in the day,
[20:39]perhaps even now, but who knew who knows?
[20:42]I kind of was.
[20:43]Yes.
[20:45]You've been in the publishing industry for so long
[20:48]because your career has been magnificent and full
[20:51]of so many blockbusters for so long.
[20:53]Like what are you, what do you think of publishing today
[20:56]and bestseller lists and the way that books are marketed
[21:01]and fragmentation and like do you have a general sense
[21:05]of like what do you think?
[21:07]Well, Kim, your people are reading books.
[21:11]We know that.
[21:12]We also know that the few people who still read books
[21:15]read a lot of books and are passionate about literature.
[21:20]We know that there are so many alternatives to books
[21:24]for entertainment and so many alternatives to books for news.
[21:30]And we know that so many book reviews no longer exist.
[21:35]So finding those few people who read so many books
[21:39]is a really interesting task for publishers,
[21:43]which, you know, first hand is both a publisher
[21:45]as a writer, as a bookstore owner.
[21:48]How do you find those people who read between 50
[21:53]and 200 books a year, given the fact
[21:56]that most of the country reads maybe one or two.
[22:02]It's a great time to be a writer.
[22:04]It's a complicated time to market your books,
[22:07]which is why I'm so grateful to, well, you for instance,
[22:11]because you don't simply publish books.
[22:13]You don't simply write about books.
[22:15]You don't simply have a podcast about books.
[22:17]You don't have a bookstore.
[22:18]You are one of those angels
[22:22]who get the word out about books.
[22:26]People, you know, like you and Oprah and Jenna
[22:31]and Reese and Ron Charles,
[22:33]it's a really small list of important people
[22:38]who let us know what is out there and what to choose from.
[22:43]And I mean, you probably see it
[22:44]when people walk into your bookstore.
[22:46]It's fun.
[22:47]When you go to a bookstore,
[22:49]you see books that you might not have discovered otherwise
[22:53]because, you know, one of your booksellers
[22:56]or you yourself said, you know,
[22:57]I really want people to find this book.
[22:59]So you know, you make sure that it's in a good spot
[23:02]and when people are walking around the tables
[23:04]and walls of books, they see things
[23:06]they wouldn't otherwise have seen.
[23:08]So it's a mixed bag.
[23:09]Great books are being published.
[23:11]They're wonderful readers out there.
[23:13]It's just more complicated connecting us all.
[23:16]So interesting.
[23:17]And thank you.
[23:18]I'm flattered to be in the category
[23:19]of those great book influencers.
[23:22]So thank you.
[23:23]Thank you.
[23:24]Thanks.
[23:25]Last question.
[23:27]What chapter do you think you're in in your life?
[23:30]Some of them worry that my best by date is years ago.
[23:34]And I'm the chunkiest milk in the refrigerator.
[23:37]I mean, there's so many great young writers out there
[23:39]doing amazing things and how many books
[23:43]can you read by one person, my God?
[23:45]I mean, how many people have read all of Joyce Carol Oates's
[23:48]books or all of John Irving's books?
[23:51]I sometimes think I would have had a better career
[23:54]if I were Donna Tarte and wrote three really great books
[23:59]or Tony Morrison or Leo Tolstore who wrote considerably
[24:03]fewer books.
[24:04]But the reality is that I love writing
[24:07]other than hanging around with my wife
[24:09]or watching my daughter on stage or hanging around
[24:11]my daughter or writing my biker, running in the woods
[24:14]with my dog, there's nothing that gives me more pleasure
[24:19]than writing.
[24:20]And so I can't imagine not writing saying, oh,
[24:24]I had a book last year.
[24:26]I can't have a book for three more years.
[24:28]So I'm just going to do what.
[24:31]I have no idea what I would do with my life
[24:32]if I didn't write.
[24:35]So I have no idea what the next act is.
[24:37]But I hope rather like someone like Philip Roth,
[24:40]or John Irving, or Margaret Atwood,
[24:44]I write until either dementia or the grim reaper comes from me.
[24:50]Wow.
[24:51]Well, you are not still milk.
[24:53]You are the freshest thing writing about this young,
[24:57]vibrant, troubled protagonist who is engrossing
[25:03]and just draws us into the page like all your other books.
[25:06]So I would not worry about that.
[25:08]Thank you so much for coming on.
[25:10]And oh, Zigbee, thank you.
[25:12]You're amazing.
[25:13]Oh, thank you, too.
[25:14]Truly.
[25:15]All right.
[25:16]Thank you, Chris.
[25:17]Best of luck with the amateur.
[25:19]And you do.
[25:20]OK.
[25:21]All right, take care.
[25:22]Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibi,
[25:25]formerly momstone have time to read books.
[25:27]If you loved the show, tell a friend,
[25:30]leave a review, follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens,
[25:33]and spread the word.
[25:35]Thanks so much.
[25:36]Oh, and bye the books.