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| Rafael Alvarez, photo by Jennifer Bishop |
Rafael Alvarez is the author of the new story collection Basilio Boullosa Stars in the Fountain of Highlandtown. His other books include the story collection The Fountain of Highlandtown, published 20 years ago, and Crabtown, USA. He spent many years as a reporter for The Baltimore Sun, and also wrote for the TV series The Wire. He lives in Baltimore.
Q: This new book marks the 20th anniversary of the
original Fountain of Highlandtown collection. What is the relationship between
the two?
A: The original Fountain of Highlandtown
(Woodholme House, 1997) was my first book, a short story collection, long
labored. The publisher, Gregg Wilhelm, another Baltimore boy, became aware of
my fiction when the title story won an award judged by James Alan McPherson
(1943-2016) and was published in the now-defunct Baltimore Sun Sunday
Magazine.
It was Wilhelm's first book as well. Together we
leaped into the world of letters, became friends and kept hard at our chosen
vocations.
Twenty years later, as sort of a curtain call to his time
with the CityLit Project (a literature advocacy non-profit, founded by
Wilhelm with its own imprint), Gregg suggested an anniversary edition.
I was very keen on this but didn't want to simply
re-publish old stories, many of which I don't much like anymore. So I
took the title story and its protagonist (my paint-splattered Eugene Gant)
and used it to present stories written over the past two decades that feature
Basilio the Painter of Seafood Signs.
Q: You write, “Now, two decades and many books down the
road, most of the stories in The Fountain of Highlandtown read to me like
small talk about stick figures. All but that first one, my lucky charm.” How
has your writing changed over the years?
A: After working this apprenticeship for 40 years, sometimes
I feel as though I am plumbing the deeper reaches of human experience
with language that was beyond me as recently as the day
before yesterday. But because my storytelling has become more digressive and
circular as I age -- one step forward, two steps back, "Hey! Look at
that!" -- I can look at the stories (especially once published when there's
nothing to be done about it) -- and think, "This is gibberish."
What Basilio Boullosa Stars in the Fountain of
Highlandtown displays (all in one place) are the hints and clues -- Easter
eggs in the Crabtown colors of orange and black -- hidden throughout work.
If you read the new book from beginning to end -- Basilio at
age six on through his death decades later -- and are able to keep track of
those clues, the stories vibrate more powerfully than when read
independently.
My intent is for the whole kit-and-kaboodle to be
amplified exponentially when the next book comes out and then the next,
everything built upon the stories that came before them: One monumental tale
from the margins of the histories of the Baltimore working class...
Q: What do you think your stories say about Baltimore and
its neighborhoods?
A: That the good ole days - even when they were not all that
wonderful -- will always be the good ole days.
Q: Who are some other Baltimore-based writers that you
admire?
A: Living? Antero Pietila, author of Not in My
Neighborhood, a super-researched study of institutional racism in Baltimore by-way-of real estate practices and covenants going back
to the early 20th century.
Deceased? Monsieur Poe d'Rue Amity and Carl Schoettler,
long-time Sunpapers' reporter who wrote with heart, intellect and elan.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: A novel -- a large panel in the Orlo and Leini epic --
titled Orlo the Chicken Necker [1931] -- which pivots on the
mystery of chance and a race between a motorcycle and a junkman's horse and
wagon at a gutted Catholic church in West Baltimore called St. Barnabas.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: On July 11, 2017, I commenced a do-it-yourself,
seat-of-the-pants book tour via Greyhound bus and an old leather suitcase
filled with my new book and a few of the old ones.
I read in Washington, D.C., Carrboro, N.C., Pawley's Island,
S.C., Atlanta, Nashville -- took a day off to visit Graceland in Memphis -- hopped
a train from Memphis to Chicago pretending to be Muddy Waters with a school
composition book in my satchel instead of a cherry red Telecaster -- took the
train from Bellow-ville to Ithaca for a reading promoted by the Cornell
University Press and then vacationed for a day or so on the Jersey Shore with
my son -- the cartoonist M. Jacob Alvarez - before returning to Baltimore in
early August.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Rafael Alvarez.
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