To live in Boston during the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s was to live through major changes in the city. One of the biggest changes was "The Big Dig," which at the time was one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the country. The project changed the landscape and vibe of Boston, and Adam Abramowitz, captured these changes in his first novel, a thriller called “Bosstown.” Now, Adam is back with a sequel, titled “A Town Called Malice.” The transcript below has been edited for clarity.
Henry Santoro: You are a local guy, born and raised in these neighborhoods, these streets. You know them probably as well as anybody.
Adam Abramowitz: Yeah I was raised in Allston. I snuck into Brookline High School, because they didn't keep track of things back then, and then moved to the South End, where I stayed for many, many years.
Santoro: Let's start with the title to the book, "A Town Called Malice." It was a major hit by The Jam, written by the great Paul Weller, I know that song well. What is it about that song that spoke to you, [so much so] that you made it the title?
Abramowitz: Well, what's amazing to me is the first time I ever went to The Channel in South Boston — a great club that's no longer there, as you know — that song was playing. I love that song, and as soon as I stepped in, I just thought, 'Oh my God, I've reached nirvana. I've reached the place I need to be.' Years later, when I was thinking of a sequel title to "Bosstown," not only did it have the word "town" in it, but it fit the mood of the book perfectly.
Santoro: Much of Boston's hipness back then was, in fact, centered around the club scene. Where in it did you work?
Abramowitz: I worked at Manray, I was a bartender at Manyay, and worked the door there in a pair of regrettable multicolored tights. That was a great club in Cambridge.
Santoro: They had the fetish nights and bondage nights, leather nights.
Abramowitz: And with a tunnel underneath so you can claim you're straight and then sneak into the gay joint, and nobody would know. It was it was a good time.
Santoro: Tell us about Zesty Meyers, the protagonist.
Abramowitz: So when I wrote the book I had a couple of friends read it and they called me up and they're like, 'Hey, Zesty, great book you wrote.' So I was a bike messenger for a number of years in Boston. Zesty was actually a real character. He’s a glass blower, an artist who I just knew casually in town but I always loved that name. Unfortunately, some book reviewers thought that it was a drag queen type of name, and they actually put it into a review, 'Why does every counter-cultural figure have to have a strange name?' But it's a real thing.
Santoro: I always maintain that bike messengers know the city better than anyone. They know the side streets, they know the back alleys, and they know the shortcuts to everywhere.
Abramowitz: They do. They also know the insides of places that a lot of people don't see. They make those quick kind of visits. Most of the time they don't even know what they're delivering. So they get the inside out view of Boston — what's behind closed doors, who's meeting who. So they actually carry around not just the package, but a lot of the inside information.
Santoro: It's the reemergence of an old rock star who's been underground for a lot of years in "A Town Called Malice" that really lights a fire under Zesty, and there's a murder involved.
Abramowitz: There’s a murder 30 years past that was never solved. And that rock star ... comes back and basically confesses to the crime, but not everything is as it seems. And Zesty’s father — who has Alzheimer's at this point — might have had a role in that killing. And Zesty’s trying to figure out just how deep his family has gone.
Santoro: Well, Zesty’s dad — otherwise known as Poker King — was sort of this underground Mafioso type.
Abramowitz: So he ran poker games all over the city, actually, in the clubs that we were talking about.
Santoro: Illegal games?
Abramowitz: Yes, illegal games after hours. So The Rat, Chet's Last Call, all these places were part of his existence. So he ran these poker games and it was kind of considered like neutral territory. It brought together a lot of the underworld figures. It was a place where beefs were not settled, but negotiations were held. So he had a role, but he wasn't a mobster himself, Zesty’s dad.
Santoro: He was pretty connected in City Hall. April 4, 1968, the day that Martin Luther King was assassinated, it was also a key moment for race relations here in Boston. And you work that right into the book.
Abramowitz: That was a really crazy time for Boston. I don't know if a lot of people know that when King was assassinated and other cities like Newark started burning, the king of rock 'n roll, James Brown, was scheduled to play the Boston Garden. And back then, if you bought a ticket, you come, it’s nothing over the airwaves. Sure enough, they had started massing at Boston Garden. There was an issue whether or not to have the concert. James refused to play out of sympathy to MLK. Mayor Kevin White had to go behind the scenes with Barney Frank — who was his right hand man at the time — and come up with the money to pay Brown to go on. And they did get the money from a sort of consortium of Boston bankers.
Santoro: It was a concert that quelled what could have been and totally out of control situation in Boston.
Abramowitz: Yeah, if you could imagine them not being led into the Boston Garden at that time, already grief stricken by MLK's assassination, and how angry they were. But Mayor White got those doors open and they had the concert. And it's true, the city survived.
Santoro: You write not only about real events in places in the book such as The Globe, ... Nick's Comedy Stop on Warren Street, Mary Chung — the greatest Chinese restaurant in the world on Mass Ave at Central Square — but also you also use real names that in many cases are names of people that you went to school with.
Abramowitz: It's true. I really want to give a shout out to the people who influenced me, and there were a lot of people who put up with me. I just kind of wanted to use them just to give them a little nod and a wink.
Santoro: Were you a wise guy?
Abramowitz: I was a little bit of a wise guy. And I just thought that the real places, the real names, the real locations, I wanted people to know that Boston — as great a city as it is now — it's not the same city as it was then. And the people who live there, I wanted to shout out because we shared that change.
Santoro: I get the feeling that even though you don't live in Boston anymore — you teach writing in New York and spend some time in the western part of the state — it bothers you that life here will never be like that again.
Abramowitz: You're right. It's hard for me to admit. Boston kicked my ass, there's just no two ways about it. It sent me packing. It's almost like a girlfriend that you just never get over. I always come back and just say, “How could I have made this work? What could I have done to make this work for me?” It's hard to look at Boston, and just see how different it is. And it's not that I begrudge anybody living here. It's a great city, it's a world class city. I just kind of want them to know that this town of yours is built on a lot of rock and roll and a lot of hard work from people that you've probably never heard of.
Santoro: A lot of blue collar.
Abramowitz: A lot of blue collar. And that's another thing that I'm missing from Boston. The neighborhoods — as segregated and balkanized as they were — there was something to that blue collar ethos. There was a certain respect for each other, even as conflict arose.
Santoro: You’re pals with comedian Sarah Silverman — who wrote a tremendous blurb for the book by the way. What's the connection?
Abramowitz: So my brother married Sarah's older sister, Rabbi Susan Silverman. So in the business we call that an easy get. I was very grateful for her. It was a great blurb.
Santoro: So do you celebrate Passover with with the Silvermans?
Abramowitz: Not this year, but I've been to Israel with Sarah, we had a good time. Even there she's recognized, baseball hat and sunglasses and all. But yeah, we spent some time together. It's great to be around comics, actually. I've spent a lot of time around comics.
Santoro: And the comedy club scene in Boston was just as legendary as the nightclub scene.
Abramowitz: Absolutely. Steven Wright, Jay Leno, I literally used to fall off my seat listening to them.
