Best Of: Jon Bon Jovi / Fantasy Writer Leigh Bardugo

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Terry Gross

Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with fresh air weekend. Shout to the heart and you're too late, darling, you give love.

John Bon Jovi has sung his anthems in stadiums around the world after developing vocal problems. Two years ago, he had risky vocal surgery. Today, we talk about his recovery, his long career, and the things he looks back on and laughs at, like some of his stage clothes. Is there something you particularly regret being? Oh, the eighties.

Also, we hear from fantasy author Leigh Bardugo, best known for Hawaii a trilogy, Shadow and Bone. Bardugo's new adult novel, the Familiar, set during the Spanish Inquisition, is about a young woman who can perform miracles. And book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews a new collection of letters by Emily Dickinson that's coming up on FRESH AIr Weekend. This message comes from NPR sponsor the sympathizer podcast from HBO. Host Philip Nguyen joins the cast crew and author Viet Thanh as they discuss the making of this historic HBO original limited series.

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Terry Gross

This is fresh air weekend. I'm Terry Gross. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the first album by the band Bon Jovi. Since then, the band has sold more than 130 million albums. After decades of singing anthemic songs like living on a prayer, you give love a bad name and wanted dead or alive.

In sold out stadiums around the world, my guest John Bon Jovi started having vocal problems that got worse over time. He tried every kind of therapy, and when none of them was effective enough to make a significant difference, he did what he wanted to avoid. He had surgery. Although it didnt restore his voice to what it used to be, the surgery made it possible for him to sing again. Now, John Bon Jovi is the subject of a new documentary called thank you, good Night.

The Bon Jovi story. It alternates between a retrospective of his life and career and his reckoning with his vocal problems over the past few years. In celebration of the 40th anniversary, a new Bon Jovi album called Forever will be released in June. This year, in conjunction with the Grammys, Bon Jovi was named the music cares person of the year. The tribute concert included a performance by his New Jersey friend Bruce Springsteen, who Bon Jovi has known since he was a teenager.

Let's start with the best known track from his first album called Bon Jovi, which was released 40 years ago. The song is run away, home street. Where you live, girls talk about their social lives. We made a lipstick blast to complain such a seamless all your life, all your life, all your best when your daddy gonna talk to you? But you were living in another world trying to get a message through.

John Bon Jovi

No one heard us. I know what you say, you should have seen it in your eyes what was going around your head, oh, she's a little run away, daddy's girl. And fans, all those things they couldn't say, oh, she's a little run away.

Terry Gross

That's run away from Bon Jovi's first album, recorded 40 years ago. Jon Bon Jovi, welcome back to fresh air. Thank you. Congratulations on the anniversary and the documentary and the new album and the successful surgery. It's great to be here and it's great to talk to you again.

John Bon Jovi

I looked forward to this interview. Oh, me too. So let's go back 40 years ago when the song we just heard was released. What were you hoping for when you released your first album? And what did you expect from your future?

Boy, the future was bright, but nobody had any idea where it would lead us. I think that all you could ever have prayed for was that somebody would give you an opportunity. And for me, that opportunity came when I went to see a dj in 1983 and was fortunate enough that that new radio station did not have a receptionist. When I tapped on the window of the broadcast booth, the DJ made this sign of shush by putting his finger across his lips. And the program director came out.

He said, what can I help you with? And I told him I'd love him to hear some music. They asked me to wait until after the shift. He came out, he heard that song run away, and he said, you know, that's a hit song. And I said, I know.

And then they proceeded to tell me about a homegrown talent album that they wanted to support, and that song could be on that record. Little did I know that that was going to lead to a major record deal that I still have today some 40 years later. So 40 years ago, when you were starting your recording career, who did you think you would be in your sixties? Did you think you'd still be performing? Did you think you'd ever be in your sixties?

Terry Gross

Because when you're twenties, you don't think, you know, sixties seems like leaps and leaps away. You know, back in those days, I think as far ahead as I'd ever dreamt was the year 2000, because it was that magical science fiction number we as a race going to be in 2000. At that time, I was meant to be 38 years old. I thought, am I going to still have a record deal? Will I have a family?

John Bon Jovi

But I never dreamt about 2024 and a 40th anniversary. Who could have? Were you listening to any performers who are the age you are now? Hmm, sure. But they were my parents favorites.

Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Gene Autry. God, I love Gene Autry. So did I. Was somebody just asked, what was the first records I recall, and it was. Gene Autry, because I love Sinatra, too.

Yeah, but, so they weren't going to have been my choices, but they were my parents choices. But if you had considered 40 years ago, where would rock and roll be? You know, for men and women who were 60 and on, there weren't anybody to refer to. And now you can look, and the Rolling Stones are 80 plus and the E Street band are 70 plus, and you two and Bon Jovi are 60 plus and very active. So you're kind of at a turning point in your career because of your voice issues.

Terry Gross

How do you feel about your voice now? And you know, what the public are going to see as of this interview. And the docu series was shot one and two years ago, and I did have some major issues, things that weren't visible to me because any singer knows about something called nodules, and they look like a little pimple on the vocal cord, and they can easily cut those off and you recover from it. Mine was a little different, where one of my cords was actually atrophying and they had to put in an implant, a cortex implant outside of the cords to rebuild them. And so the process has been slower than I'd hoped for, but the progress and the process are really doing very well.

John Bon Jovi

I'm currently able to sing. For me now the bar is, can I do two and a half hours a night, four nights a week? How did your vocal cord, how did one of the fold atrophy? I think of atrophy happening because you're not using something, whereas for you, if anything, you were overusing it. I think that is the bottom line, is that I was overusing it.

Even though I'm trained and I have studied the craft for these 40 years, eventually, you know, the body gives out. Its not dissimilar than being an athlete. And I equate it to Tiger woods or Michael Jordan or Tom Brady. And when they had those major setbacks, they wondered, would they come back? And it took a lot, and it took medical professionals to figure out the right way to bring you back.

Patience is not a virtue well known for. So I lack in the patient's department, but every day I'm at it, you know, every day is some kind of therapy to try to get back to that two and a half hours a night. What's the work that you have to do? It began very slowly with just speech therapies. And then it's vocal therapy that starts, as any singer would understand, vocal warm ups.

But eventually it's gotten back into retraining the cords because of the compensation that I had to do. When you compensate for as long as I had to as a result of this cord deteriorating. And I couldn't understand how or why I've now had to untangle that mess. And that's sort of the process I'm in now. It's like if you're limping in your favor, one leg, correct?

Exactly that, yeah. What was the conversation you had in your own head about whether to retire from music or keep at it and try to keep finding solutions? I jokingly have said I would never become the fat Elvis. And I don't mean that with any disrespect, but I love what I do, and the audience deserve the best of me, and I can only give the best. I'm not willing to be out there walking through the motions or changing the keys of this.

I'm just not interested with that, said Tara. In truth, I can always write another record. I'm not worried about my ability to write another song. If I can hit B's and C's, which at 62 years old is sort of fair, I could have walked away. I just haven't had to come to that conclusion because, as I said, the process and the progress are steady.

Terry Gross

My guest is John Bon Jovi. There's a new four part documentary series called thank you. Good the Bon Jovi story that's streaming on Hulu. Well hear more of our conversation after a break. Im Terry gross, and this is fresh air weekend.

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Terry Gross

This is fresh air weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Jon Bon Jovi. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the band Bon Jovi's first album. They've since sold over 130 million albums and played to sold out stadiums around the world.

A new four part documentary about John Bon Jovi's life and career called thank you. Good. The Bon Jovi story is streaming on Hulu. What kind of balance have you wanted to have in your life between wanting to stay youthful and hold on to all the things you were able to do when you were in your twenties and started having a real career and being in the moment and in the body and mind of the person who you are now in your early sixties? Well, I think that my goal always was to evolve and not to ever have pretended to be 25 when I was even 35.

John Bon Jovi

When I was 25, I accepted, acknowledged and participated in all the mannerisms of a 25 year old kid figuring it out. But if I had come and tried to be on fresh air at 62, pretending to be 25, I think this interview would have been over by now.

Terry Gross

I'd be the judge of that. But you're probably right. I have a feeling that's the case. But, you know, I think part of having a career, as I've been blessed enough to have, is that our audience grew with us. Now, whether you got on or off the path with us at any given time is completely understandable, because life goes on, and maybe you're not even listening to rock and roll music the way you once did, but others have gotten on that ride at different junctures.

John Bon Jovi

And so whether it was 2000, when it's my life, or 2005, when we were the first rock band to ever win a number one country song, or what will happen now with this docu series in 2024 as a new generation is going to hear this music for the first time. And that's all well and good, but the new age and era in which we live allows for music to be discovered in a new way. And therefore, it's not even in a time capsule. It's just in there forever. Music.

You press a button and it's playing in your ears. You don't see the visuals. You don't associate it with anything. You just hear a song, and if the song's good, it's going to resonate with the next generation. The visuals.

Terry Gross

You mentioned in the documentary that you hated rock videos, and I was kind of glad to hear that. What always bothered me is that it was somebody's interpretation of the song, or not even just somebody's idea of, like, great surreal images. And it kind of was so distracting from what the song was saying. Yep. You know, it's hard enough to learn your craft and then to learn how to write a song.

John Bon Jovi

Then when they thrust upon you the opportunity to make these videos and or album covers, I can't tell you that. It came to me easily, and especially on those first couple records when you knew nothing about nothing, when they force fed you a director or an album artist, you just said yes. And it wasn't until the third album, the fourth album, and now my 18th album that you take control of these things. Is there something you particularly regret being? Oh, the eighties, Jeff, as I told you, is so blessed, Terry, that, you know, those baby pictures of me and those clothes are public, and that's my penance.

I'll accept it.

Terry Gross

So it was your third album that got really popular, and it had your most famous anthems on it, and it totally changed your life and the life of everyone in the band. One of the anthems on that album is you give love a bad name, which has a line shot in the heart, and you're to blame. You give love a bad name. On your first album that was released 40 years ago, you have a song called Shot in the heart. That's a completely different song, but it has that shot in the heart line.

And I keep wondering, like, how did you decide to recycle the line? And my theory is that shot in the heart is such a good line that you thought, not that many people know that song. I have to put it in a song that really works. You're pretty much pretty accurate there. Tell me.

John Bon Jovi

Shot through the heart. Yeah. Shot through the heart. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah.

I think that's pretty accurate there. You had to be honest. You know, the title you give love a bad name just sounded like a smash hit. And so I said that line, having said it once before, I guess, is proof that I came up with the line. But, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm guilty as charged.

I wasn't as prolific as I became, but early on, that was a line in a song on a little known album that we used again. So I'm gonna play a little bit of both songs just to compare them back to back. So we'll hear shot in the heart from Bon Jovi's first album 40 years ago. And then you give love a bad name from the third album.

To the heart as I lay there alone in the dark to the heart it's all part of the game that we call love oh, there's nowhere to run no one can save me the damage is done shout me my heart and you're too late you give up a plan I play my part and you play your game you give love a plan.

Terry Gross

Two songs by Bon Jovi that have the line shot in the heart. John, what did you learn about songwriting in between that first version of a song with the line shot in the heart and the second version, which was a huge hit? Yes, it was. Well, like with anything else, one would hope that you get better with time and experience. It was the third album that everything changed, and like everything else, you know, you started to figure it out.

John Bon Jovi

You know, you started to think about what other songs were on the charts, what you did with an audience, and why a song worked live, or why it didn't work live. And playing in a bar in New Jersey was one way to cut your teeth. But getting out there and playing to audiences don't even speak your language, you had to find other means to win over the hearts and minds of the audiences. So now that when I hear somebody say, I learned how to speak English, singing your songs, you better learn how to do it better. And that's really what's come with it.

Terry Gross

You started performing in bars in Asbury park, where you heard Springsteen in his really early days. And Southside Johnny. Can you compare who you were when you were performing at bars in Asbury park versus when you started performing in stadiums? Oh, boy. You know, Southside and Bruce.

John Bon Jovi

And then, of course, all the members of the E Street band and the Jukes were at least twelve ish years older. So they were not only role models, but they were friendly to the young kids. They were the influence, and they were telling you about their influence. So that was an integral thing, too, as they introduced me to not only their music, but the music that they listened to, which was then helpful for me to understand what the process was and why you wrote songs and how you wrote songs. But that was, although it was a huge part of my upbringing then, I was also influenced by what was contemporary rock and roll.

You know, Queen and Led Zeppelin and bad company and Elton John and all the things that were on the radio in the latter seventies. But those things just seem bigger than. Bigger than life. They were just posters on your wall. Whereas Southside Johnny and Bruce Springsteen, although they were making albums and were my childhood heroes, were 25 miles south of my house.

So on any given night in those bars, you're going to see one of those 17 men hanging around in the bar. And it was sort of like being that close to Santa Claus because something fictional that you made real, you could go and touch them, you could talk to them, you could watch them. Springsteen, when he performs, doesn't wear, like, costumes. You know, it's usually like, you know, jeans and a t shirt. So that is his costume.

Terry Gross

Oh, is that how you think of it? That's a logo. That's like saying Jimmy Buffett wearing shorts and flip flops. That was Jimmy. Right.

John Bon Jovi

But anyhow, go ahead. Yeah. So when you were performing in bars, you probably just wore, you know, jeans and a t shirt. T shirts and a jeans. Sure, sure.

Terry Gross

Yeah. Yeah. So I'd like you to compare, can I use the word Persona when you were performing in bars? Compare that to who you were on stage once you started performing in stadiums. And if you thought of yourself as having a Persona on stage once you started doing stadium concerts, well, having grown.

John Bon Jovi

Up in public, you were going to do things and try things and see what kind of shoes fit, and blue jeans and t shirts were what we were meant to be. But in honesty, in 1984 85, 86, when you're being told by the quote unquote, record company and the managers and the agents and the headliners that you were supporting, this will help you be more successful. In honesty, we were probably trying on shoes that didn't fit, and we were lumped in with a certain group of bands that I never bought their records and I wasn't necessarily fans of, but we were cutting our teeth on that international stage. There's a story I want you to tell that you tell in the documentary series, and you're playing it in Russia. Mm hmm.

The Soviet Union at the time, but. Yes. Yeah. And no one there knows Bon Jovi. No, no one in the audience.

Terry Gross

So you felt like, oh, and you didn't want to be upstaged by the other band that they did know that I think you were opening for them. Well, here's the story. Yeah. Our first manager had gotten himself in some trouble, and as a part of his plea, he had asked the courts if he were to put on a show in what was then the Soviet Union, and he took a bunch of babies. Is it like as an ambassador from the United States or something?

John Bon Jovi

Well, if you want a drug dealer to be an ambassador. Yeah, I know, but we went, and it was a bunch of the bands of the era, and we knew everybody, and we were at the height of the New Jersey record, which was the follow up to slippery when wet. So we were going to close the show and realizing once we got there that the Soviet Union did not have tower records, so therefore they didn't have living on a prayer and you give love a bad name or run away on the radio, and so you're playing and winning hearts the way you did when you were a completely unknown kid on the stage in New Jersey. And we followed a german band by the name of the Scorpions, who we had once opened for in 1984. And they were a relentless live band, phenomenal live band.

And to tell you the honest to goodness truth, they won the hearts of that crowd that day. And then we came on and followed them, and I started speaking English and telling the stories of the songs and performing, and we were falling flat. Okay, fine. We got our butts kicked the next night. Now that I had had a feel for what it was and all of the experience and all of the influence in my career, I said, I see the trick.

I got it. So I took a russian soldier backstage, took his uniform from him, traded him some blue jeans and some the Harley Davidson T shirts, to be honest. And I got his uniform and it said to the band, start this first song. Just keep playing the intro over and over again. I'm going to enter from the back of the entire stadium.

And I was dressed as a russian soldier. And in that documentary, you see the film where I throw the coat, I take off the gloves, I eventually take off the long coat and hat, jump up on the stage and perform the song. 30 years later, I went back and I played that same stadium, and I was telling the story to a member of the press. And I began this story, and he said, can I finish the story for you? And I said, wow, you know the story?

He said, I was there. And he said, it became folklore here. It's, you know how you won the hearts of the russian kids. Jan, it's been really great to talk with you. Thank you so much.

Terry Gross

And just congratulations on all that you've done. I appreciate that very much. And I really was looking forward to today, and it's great to speak with you again. The new documentary series about Bon Jovi is streaming on Hulu. The band's new album, Forever, will be released in June.

Our book critic, Marin Corrigan, has a review of a hefty new collection of letters by one of America's greatest poets. Here's Maureen's appreciation of the letters of Emily Dickinson. Among the great moments in literary history I wish I could have witnessed is that day sometime after May 15, 1886, when Lavinia Dickinson entered the bedroom of her newly deceased older sister and began opening drawers, out sprang poems, some 1800 of them. Given that Emily Dickinson had only published ten poems during her lifetime, this discovery was a shock. Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, begins one of those now famous poems.

Maureen Corrigan

Whatever Dickinson hoped for her poems, she could never have envisioned how they'd resonate with readers, nor how curious those readers would be about her life, much of it spent within her father's house in Amherst and in later years within that bedroom. Every so often, the reading public's image of Emily Dickinson shifts. For much of the 20th century, she was a Fae Stevie Nicks type figure. Check out, for instance, the 1976 film of Julie Harris's lauded one woman show. The Belle of Amherst, a feminist Emily Dickinson emerged during the second women's movement, when poems like I'm wife were celebrated for their avant garde anger and jumping to the present.

A new monumental volume of Dickinson's letters, the first in over 60 years, gives us an engaged Emily Dickinson, a woman in conversation with the world through gossip, as well as remarks about books, politics, and the signal of events of her age, particularly the Civil War. This new collection of the Letters of Emily Dickinson is published by Harvard's Belknap Press and edited by two Dickinson scholars, Kristan Miller and Donnell Mitchell. To accurately date some of Dickinson's letters, they've studied weather reports and seasonal blooming and harvest cycles in 19th century Amherst. Theyve also added some 300 previously uncollected letters to this volume, for a grand total of 1304 letters. The result is that the letters of Emily Dickinson reads like the closest thing, well, probably ever have to an intimate autobiography of the poet.

The first letter here is written by an eleven year old Dickinson to her brother Austin, away at school. It's a breathless kid sister marvel of run on sentences about yellow hens and skunks and poor cousin Zabina, who had a fit the other day and bit his tongue. The final letter, by an ailing 55 year old Dickinson, most likely the last she wrote before falling unconscious on May 13, 1886, was to her cousins Louisa and Frances Norcross. It reads, little cousins called back Emily. In between is a life filled with visitors chores and recipes for donuts and coconut cakes.

There's mention of the racist, minstrel stereotyped Jim Crow, as well as of public figures like Florence Nightingale and Walt Whitman. There are also allusions to the death toll of the ongoing Civil War. Dickinson's loyal dog Carlo walks with her, and frogs and even flies keep her company. Indeed, in an 1859 letter about one such winged companion, Bella, Amherst's charm alternates with cold blooded callousness. Dickinson writes to her cousin Louisa, I enjoy much with a fly during sister's absence, not one of your blue monsters, but a timid creature that hops from from pane to pane so very cheerfully and hums and thrums a sort of speck piano.

I'll kill him the day Lavinia comes home, for I shan't need him any more. Dickinson's singular voice comes into its own in the letters of the 1860s, which often blur into poems, cryptic, comic, and charged with awe. A simple thank you note to her soulmate and beloved sister in law, Susan Gilbert, Dickinson reads, dear sue, the supper was delicate and strange. I ate it with compunction, as I would eat a vision. 1304 letters and still they're not enough.

Scholars estimate that we only have about one 10th of the letters Dickinson ever wrote, and on that momentous day in 1886, Lavinia entered her sister's bedroom to find and successfully burn all the letters Dickinson herself had received from others during her lifetime. Such was the custom of the day, which makes this new volume of Dickinson's letters feel like both an intrusion and an outwitting of the silence of death, something I want to believe Dickinson would have relished. Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed the letters of Emily Dickinson. Coming up, we hear from best selling fantasy author Leigh Bardugo.

Terry Gross

She has a new novel for adults set during the Spanish Inquisition. It's about a young woman who can perform miracles. I'm Terry gross, and this is fresh air weekend. This message comes from NPR's sponsor, Teladog Health. There are lots of reasons for wanting to be healthy, family, work, living a fuller life.

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Listen to be my guest wherever you get your podcasts. Leigh Bardugo is one of today's most successful and popular authors, working in the fantasy genre, writing books for both the adult and ya markets. She became famous with her shadow and bone novels, which took place in a world inspired by 19th century Russia. They were adapted into a series for Netflix. Her latest novel, the Familiar, takes place in 16th century Spain.

Terry Gross

Bardugo spoke with our producer, Sam Brigger. Here's Sam. The heroine of the familiar is Lucia, a young woman with little prospects working in the kitchen of a not very important noble and his wife in Madrid. However, Lucia has a secret. She's able to perform small miracles, like when the cook burns the bread, she's able to unburn it.

Sam Brigger

Her secret is discovered by her employer, the haughty woman of the house, Dona Valentina who imagines she will be able to rise in society having such a woman working for her? But the story of Lucia's parlor trick, like miracles, travels fast, and members of King Philip II's court take notice. Perhaps they think she can serve a larger purpose in the pursuits of Spain's empire. But first she must prove her magical skills in a contest with other miracle workers, some of whom may be hucksters, some might be real, and in a society policed by the inquisition, she must prove that her abilities are the products of God's blessings and not the work of the devil, which would surely be the conclusion if it's revealed that she is of jewish descent, that she is one of the conversos, the Jews that in 1492, when faced with exile from Spain, converted to Catholicism to remain. Lucia faces mortal traps everywhere as she tries to find a place for herself in the oppressive world she's been born into and as she discovers love.

Leigh Bardugo is well known for her YA books, in the shadow and Bone and six of crows series, as well as her adult books, 9th House and Hellbent, which take place on a version of Yale's campus where she went to school, where magic is used to maintain the power and privilege of the school's secret societies, like skull and bones. Leigh Bardugo, welcome to fresh AIR. Thank you for having me. I'd like to start, if you're willing, with a reading from the new book, the familiar. This is after Dona Valentina thinks that something is up because she came into the kitchen, saw there was some burnt bread.

She got very angry, yelled at the cook, and then when she comes back, the bread is no longer burnt. She thinks maybe someone's pulling a trick on her, but she's not sure what's going on, and we're going to hear from Lucia's point of view here. When Lucia had seen the burnt bread, she hadn't thought much about passing her hand over it and singing the words. Her aunt had taught her. Aboul tar cazal, aboltar mazal.

Leigh Bardugo

A change of scene, a change of fortune. She sang them very softly. They were not quite spanish, just as Lucia was not quite spanish. But Dona Valentina would never have her in this house, even in the dark, hot, windowless kitchen, if she detected a whiff of jew. Lucia knew that she should be careful.

But it was difficult not to do something the easy way when everything else was so hard. She slept every night on the cellar floor on a roll of rags, she'd sewn together a sack of flour for her pillow. She woke before dawn and went out into the cold alley to relieve herself, then returned and stoked the fire before walking to the Plaza del Arabal to fetch water from the fountain, where she saw other scullions and washerwomen and wives said her good mornings, then filled her buckets and balanced them on her shoulders to make the trip back to Calle de dos Santos. She set the water to boil, picked the bugs out of the millet, and began the day's bread. If Agatha hadn't yet seen to it, it was the cook's job to visit the market.

John Bon Jovi

But since her son had fallen in. Love with that dashing lady playwright, it was Lucia who took. Took the little pouch of money and walked the stalls, trying to find the best price for lamb and heads of garlic and hazelnuts. She was bad at haggling, so sometimes, on the way back to Casa Ordonio, if she found herself alone on an empty street, she would give her basket a shake and sing on de iras amicos toparas. Wherever you go, may you find friends.

Leigh Bardugo

And where there had been six eggs, there would be a dozen. Thanks so much for reading that. You know, magic has been a prevailing interest in all of your books. Why do you think you're so drawn to the idea of magic? I think that magic is essentially just a metaphor.

John Bon Jovi

Right. It's just another kind of power. And I think, as I've written, the magic in my books has gotten smaller and the real world has overtaken it, because I think magic is at its most interesting when it is limited and when it exists for a metaphor for power. So in 9th House and Hellbent, there are very real secret societies at Yale that to one degree or another wield economic, social, political influence. Well, what if they wielded magical influence as well?

And what does it mean to put that kind of power into the hands of a bunch of undergrads? When I was writing this book, the familiar, I wanted to pose the question of what magic might look like to the church of the time and where the line between magic and miracle actually exists. Leah, I wanted to talk about the series that you've been working on. The first two books came out before the familiar. It's.

Sam Brigger

I guess I'm gonna call it the 9th house series. There's two of them so far, 9th House and Hellbent. And this is a really clever rewriting of Yale University, where you went to school. Yale is known for having these secret societies where a lot of the most famous alum were members. Perhaps the best known of these societies, the skull and bones, where the two Bush presidents were members.

But so you've imbued them with the ability to do magic. They all have specialties like skull and bones, prognosticates by reading human entrails. So how did this idea come to you? I mean, I think it began when I was an undergraduate. When I was an undergraduate, we still wrote letters, and our post office was off campus.

John Bon Jovi

And I remember walking back, reading a letter as a freshman, and I looked up from my letter, and to my right were the gates of the Grove street cemetery, which is really right in the middle of campus. And there's a huge. The gates are these sort of huge neo egyptian plinth that reads, the dead shall be raised. And to the left was a massive mausoleum on a street corner the size of an apartment building with black wrought iron fences around it, with black wrought iron snakes crawling up them. And later I would learn that this was book and snake, which is one of what are called the ancient eight.

The old landed societies that have tombs or really just clubhouses, windowless clubhouses on. The ground, but called tombs. Right? They are called tombs and sometimes crypts. Yes.

So these are societies who, in theory, are secret, but who build these giant, very showy crypts around campus. The scroll and key one is beautiful. It has a kind of moorish facade. Wolf's head is a giant english Tudor. Mansion that they want you to notice.

Their secret places 100%. Look at us. Don't look at us. And so I was obsessed with these when I was an undergraduate. I found them fascinating.

And so I think this story has been percolating for a long time. Your main character, Alex, is very much a fish out of water in this environment. She comes from California. She's a former drug addict and survived this terrible homicide. She sees ghosts and is able to use them temporarily to sort of gain strength.

Sam Brigger

She has a very cynical view of humanity, and she has a little empathy for the many privileged students she encounters at Yale. In fact, I really think sometimes the only thing that Alex likes about Yale's the architecture does she receive. I don't think that's fair. I'm gonna be real. I don't think that's fair.

John Bon Jovi

She loves her roommates. She likes her roommates. She loves mercy and Lauren. She likes the cafeteria. Yes, she loves the cafeteria.

She loves food. In fact, that was the one thing my editor made me trim down in the book, was he said, there are too many rapturous descriptions of food. But I had grown up eating frozen dinners and so when I went to, everybody else was talking about how bad the food was, and I thought I had, you know, I was rolling in clover. And she likes her classes. She loves the idea of learning for the sake of learning.

She just doesn't feel it's an option for her. Okay, fair. But let's say she has very ambivalent views of Yale. Does that reflect your experience when you went there? Yes.

I think without the wish fulfillment aspect of Yale and of a place like Yale, both the beauty of it and the promises it makes, a story like this doesn't work. Because if it wasn't, if there wasn't an allure to this, if there wasn't pleasure in these things, then why would we stay? Why even bother? So, that is an important part of the story, and that's certainly something I felt when I went to Yale. I felt as if I was surrounded by people who spoke a language I did not understand.

They had a vocabulary I did not understand. They had family experiences I did not understand. And so I constantly felt like an imposter when I was there. And that is certainly something that Alex is contending with. You said that before you went to college, you thought of your life as small in California.

Yeah. I mean, I think for most young people, life is small because we don't have a lot of autonomy. You know, for me, there was home and there was school and there was the mall, and I was a big nerd, so there weren't a lot of parties. It was me hanging out with my friend Lizzie and watching horror movies and eating sour candy on the weekends. I was not.

I was not an edgy kid. I was a lonely kid. And I will say that I wondered when I was young if I might be a sociopath, because I didn't feel a deep connection to my friend group. I thought maybe, and I read a lot, so I knew what I had read Anne of Green Gables. I knew what friendship was supposed to be like, and so I thought, maybe there's something fundamentally wrong with me that I cannot connect to the people around me when the truth was they were wonderful people, but they were not the people who were going to be my tribe, my army, and those were the people.

I just had to meet more human beings. I went to a tiny school, and I was not somebody who was brave enough to step out of my bubble very often. Do you remember the first time where you sort of felt a strong connection to someone? Yeah. My dear friend Hedwig.

Yes, her name is Hedwig. She lived upstairs for me. She wasn't one of my roommates, but I remember when we met feeling a kind of instant kinship. And I remember thinking, oh, she actually gets my sense of humor. This is somebody who doesn't just tolerate me or think I'm quirky.

This is someone who will celebrate this and whose quirkiness I can celebrate in turn. So, Lee, you grew up in Los Angeles? Yes. Well, you've described yourself as a goth kid, so I'm guessing sunny Southern California wasn't necessarily a good fit for you. No, I live in Los Angeles now, but I never intended to come back.

When I went to college, I wanted to get as far away as I possibly could.

I I think, like a lot of young people, felt alien. And, you know, I had gone to this very small school with a lot of smart kids at it. And then my mom remarried and we moved and I started junior high and a very prolonged, awkward phase. And all of a sudden I was at this school where everyone was tan and blonde and loved the beach and hacky sack and volleyball was the most important thing. Books and schoolwork and theater and music were not, they werent interesting to a lot of people in the way that they were to me.

And so I needed to find my crew, my crew of fellow listeners of the cure and Morsi in order to find any kind of sense of stability or safety. But that is also when I fell in love with fantasy and science fiction. And I have a very clear memory. I mean, I was utterly miserable in the 7th and 8th grade. I was completely lost.

And I remember walking into our school library and some beautiful librarian had set out a table of books of science fiction and fantasy classics that said, discover new worlds. And boy, did I need that. I needed to know there was more than the world I lived in. And I fell into those. And that's when I started writing kind of, I guess, what would now be described as self insert fan fiction about, you know, very, you know, beautiful and tough and brainy blonde girls, you know, saving the world.

But that was what I needed. I needed to know there were worlds where being clever and smart and prepared and giving a damn were more important than being cheerful or cute or popular, because I was none of those things. Well, you describe writing at that point as, like, a survival mechanism, right? Yes. So you're trying to survive junior high.

Sam Brigger

Is that what you were trying to survive? I mean, people will mock teenagers for their sense of drama, right? Like, oh, it's not the end of the world. It kind of came, oh, it's a. Terrible time there's absolutely nothing good about being a teenager.

John Bon Jovi

Absolutely not. And it is a perilous time. There are a lot of ways your life can go wrong in those years where you can make bad decisions or undermine your future or experience heartbreak or. Violence or all kinds of things, you. Are so vulnerable at that time.

And it's one of the reasons my heart breaks for young people on social who are growing up with a constant sense of approval and judgment that is so much wider than just the, you know, the jerks who happen to be. In your class now. There's a whole world of jerks to judge you or approve of you. I it was a just. It felt like a deeply perilous time, and I was, you know, loneliness is a real.

It's really a kind of poison. And I felt it so deeply. And in books, I wasn't lonely. I wasn't afraid. And if I was afraid, well, then the monster would be bested at the end.

That was very valuable to me. And when I meet young people who use my books as comfort reads, you know, or who say to me, this got me through my 9th grade year, I just think that is the greatest compliment I can receive as an author. If you can escape for a while in one of my books, that is a gift to me to hear that. So was reading and writing kind of magical to you? Oh, very much so.

I mean, I would ditch class to go to the library. That's the kind of kid I was, to just fall into fiction for a little bit, to discover a book on the shelves or to just sit there writing longhand. You know, what were really dreadful, you know, dreadful stories, but they were where I was strong and brave and beautiful, and I had friends. Like, I was creating my own reality in those moments, and it was very powerful. It was a very powerful refuge.

Sam Brigger

Clothing can 14 can be like a kind of armor. Your clothing can feel protective and maybe even more so if you're a self described goth kid. Did you have clothes like that that were like your armor? I definitely did. You know, we didn't really have hot topic at that time, but I was or not one near me, but that was definitely my aesthetic.

John Bon Jovi

We would go to Melrose every weekend, and I was a nerd, though, still, you know, I was nervous about things like cutting my hair, and, you know, I found punk boys very entrancing but also terrifying. And so I wasn't the kind of kid who was going out to clubs and was living that life, but I wanted desperately to be. And then when I went to college, my mom actually called it my preppy drag phase because I completely transformed myself into someone else because I was still trying to figure out kind of how to live in the world. And for a while it was, you know, J. Crew sweaters and white collared shirts.

Sam Brigger

Well, I think everyone goes through those stages, don't they? I think we have to. And one of the greatest gifts aging has given me is that now I actually dress a lot like I did when I was 14. I can just afford nicer black garments and more copious amounts of jewelry from blood milk because I now have found my way back to the person that I was before the world kind of kicked my individuality out of me. Well, Leigh Bardugo, thanks so much for coming on fresh air.

John Bon Jovi

Thank you for having me. This was great. Leigh Bardugo spoke with fresh air producer Sam Brigger. Bardugo's new novel is called the Familiar.

Terry Gross

Fresh air Weekend is produced by Theresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salat, Phyllis Myers, Roberto Shorrock, Ann Marie Boldonado, Sam Brueger, Lauren Krenzel, Thea Challoner, Susan Yakundi and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly Sivi Nesper.

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Best Of: Jon Bon Jovi / Fantasy Writer Leigh Bardugo

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