CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT:
Interview with Paul Bartolo

Rappahannock Review Fiction Editors: Your prose, dense and deeply visual, invokes an impressive cadence as well. How did you go about structuring your writing to reflect these aspects?

Paul Bartolo: I actually struggle with that. I often feel that in order to get the image onto the page, I have to strip it of my own interpretation. Then the stripping becomes part of the narrative, which is maybe why it appears dense.

I don’t like seeing too much of myself in the prose. Maybe that becomes the structure. The whole thing wants to erase itself, but can’t fully.

RR: Leonard also calls upon a lot of grounding, real-world aspects to solidify both description and narrative. How much research did it take to achieve this level of realism?

PB: I knew someone very much like Leonard. Sadly, he died. We used to hang out in our twenties. Everything was about the films, how we spoke, how we dressed. We wanted to be Mickey Rourke or Robert De Niro after work on the weekend.

In reality, we were just lads going to work every day on the Tube. Some of us still lived with our parents. So the detail isn’t really researched so much as remembered.

RR: Is Leonard reflective of your broader writing style or is it a foray into new tactics and techniques?

PB: Yes, I would say [it is reflective of my style], even if the subject matter differs quite a bit. I’m using the same process. Once the prose is stripped, I find I’m still declaring something. Then I feel I have to dismantle that with a kind of opposing logic. The next part tends to build itself out of what’s left. Whatever comes next is linked, but different.

Eventually, the process reduces itself until there’s only one thing left. The end.

RR: Who was your target audience for Leonard?

PB: Anyone who might enjoy it or find some resonance in it. I didn’t set out with a specific demographic. If anything, I was trying to do the opposite, to make it as untargeted as possible.

RR: If you could spend a day with either Leonard or Vanessa, who would you choose and why?

PB: That’s a hard one. Leonard is safe. Vanessa is risky. So it depends on how brave I’m feeling.

If I chose Vanessa, I’d want guarantees. Mainly that she’d show up. She might even promise that she would, perhaps only to get me off the line so she could take another call.

A younger me, Vanessa. Now, Leonard.