Armistead Maupin

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Armistead Maupin
Armistead Maupin (left) and his husband Christopher Turner at the Sundance Film Festival, 2006
Armistead Maupin (left) and his husband Christopher Turner at the Sundance Film Festival, 2006
Born May 13, 1944 (1944-05-13) (age 64)
Washington, D.C., USA
Residence San Francisco, California, USA
Citizenship American

Armistead Jones Maupin Jr.[1] (born May 13, 1944 (1944-05-13) (age 64)) is an American writer best known for his Tales of the City series of novels based in San Francisco.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Maupin, a descendent of American Revolutionary War general Gabriel Maupin,[2] was born to a conservative, Christian family in Washington, D.C., but moved early on to North Carolina where he was raised.[3] He says he has had storytelling instincts since he was eight years old.[4] He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he got into journalism through writing for The Daily Tar Heel.[5] After earning his undergraduate degree, Maupin enrolled in law school, but later dropped out. He worked at a television station in Raleigh managed by conservative television personality and later U.S. Senator Jesse Helms, who nominated him for a patriotic award, which he won. Maupin says he was a typical conservative and even a segregationist at this time and looked up to Helms, whom he knew and who was a family friend, as a sort of "hero figure." He later changed his views dramatically—"I've changed and he hasn't"—and condemned Helms at a gay pride parade on the steps of the North Carolina State Capitol.[4][3][5] He is a veteran of the United States Navy; he served several tours of duty including one in the Vietnam War.

Maupin's work on a Charleston newspaper was followed with an offer of a post at the San Francisco bureau of the Associated Press in 1971.[6][7] He says he knew he was gay since childhood,[4][5] but didn't have sex until he was 26 and only decided to come out publicly in 1974.[8][9][10][3] The same year, he began what would become the Tales of the City series as a serial in a local newspaper, The Pacific Sun, moving to the San Francisco Chronicle after the former newspaper folded.[11]

His former partner of twelve years, Terry Anderson, was once a gay rights activist (Maupin himself has done much work in this area),[12][13] and co-authored the screenplay for The Night Listener. He lived with Anderson in San Francisco and New Zealand.[14] Ian McKellen is a friend and former lover [15] and Christopher Isherwood was a mentor, friend, and influence as a writer.[16][17] Maupin is now married to Christopher Turner, a website producer and photographer who he came across on an internet dating website and then "chased him down Castro Street, saying, "Didn’t I see you on Daddyhunt.com?""[18][19] Armistead and Christopher were married in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on February 18, 2007, though he says that they had called each other "husband" for two years prior.[20] He enjoys doing public readings of his own works and has recorded them all as audiobooks.[4]

[edit] Works

[edit] Tales of the City

Main article: Tales of the City

Tales of the City is a series of novels, the first portions of which were initially published as a newspaper serial starting on August 8, 1974, in a Marin County newspaper, The Pacific Sun, picked up in 1976 by the San Francisco Chronicle, and later reworked into the series of books published by HarperCollins (then Harper and Row). The first of Maupin's novels, entitled Tales of the City, was published in 1978. Five more followed in the 80s, ending with the last book, Sure of You, in 1989.[11] A seventh novel published in 2007, Michael Tolliver Lives, continues the story of some of the characters. In Babycakes, published in 1983, he was one of the first writers to address the subject of AIDS.[10] Of the autobiographical nature of the characters, he says "I’ve always been all of the characters in one way or another".[20]

The Tales of the City books have been translated into ten languages (French: Les Chroniques de San Francisco; German: Stadtgeschichten) and there are more than six million copies in print.

[edit] Television miniseries

Main article: Tales of the City (miniseries)

The first three books in the series have also been converted into three television miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney, the first airing on the American television network PBS and the latter two on the American cable television channel Showtime.[21]

[edit] Musical projects

He collaborated on Anna Madrigal Remembers, a musical work written by Jake Heggie and performed by choir Chanticleer and mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade on 6 August 1999, for which Maupin provided a new libretto. He also participated in a concert series with Seattle Men's Chorus entitled Tunes From Tales (Music for Mouse), which included readings from his books and music from the era.[22]

[edit] Maybe the Moon and The Night Listener

Main articles: Maybe the Moon, The Night Listener (novel), and The Night Listener (film)

Maupin has written two novels, Maybe The Moon and The Night Listener, which are not part of the Tales series.

Maybe The Moon is a story Maupin describes as 'partly autobiographical', despite the main character being a female heterosexual Jewish dwarf. The character was also based on his friend Tamara De Treaux, who was the actor for E.T.[23][24]

The Night Listener is a roman à clef, inspired by Maupin's real-life experiences surrounding the Anthony Godby Johnson hoax.[25][26][27][18] He says that he aimed to create a solid psychological thriller, while being able to put autobiographical elements in it.[4] The issues he addresses include his break-up with his long-term partner and his relationship with his father. The book very lightly references the Tales world via Gabriel Noone's assistant, who is one of DeDe Halcyon-Day's twins from Tales. It was serialised on the internet, on salon.com, prior to its print publication.[4] The Night Listener has been adapted into a movie that was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in late January 2006 and released by Miramax the following August.[18]

[edit] Michael Tolliver Lives: a continuation of Tales?

Main article: Michael Tolliver Lives

Maupin has stated on his website that another Tales of the City novel is unlikely.[28] Though he has explicitly stated that Michael Tolliver Lives is "not a continuation of Tales of the City," the novel is written from the first-person perspective of Tales character Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver, now in his fifties and living as an HIV-positive man.[29]

It also features appearances by familiar Tales characters, such as Anna Madrigal.[30] Maupin said: "I was interested in pursuing the life of an aging gay man, and Michael was the perfect vehicle ... However, as soon as I started writing, I found that, one by one, all the other characters stepped forward and asked to be present. It felt natural, so I went with it." [10] He calls it "a smaller, more personal novel than I've written in the past." [29] The book was released on June 12, 2007, declared 'Michael Tolliver Day' by the mayor of San Francisco.[31] [32]

His next project is another Tales volume: "Whatever I have to offer seems to come through those characters ... And I see no reason to abandon them."[10]

[edit] On being a 'gay writer'

“ One of the things that I saw different about what I was doing was that I was allowing a little air into the situation by actually placing gay people in the context of the world at large. Most gay fiction that I was reading when I was coming out in the early 70s made me claustrophobic because it only dealt with the life of the gay bar and everybody in it was gay. Often gay and male and there weren't even any lesbians in the picture. That didn't make me feel the way I wanted to feel about life and it didn't correspond with the life that I was living in San Francisco which was wonderfully mixed up in terms of the people that came and went in my life and that was part of the enormous exhilaration of it. It felt revolutionary. ”
 
— Armistead Maupin[4]
“ I've always been proud of the fact that I've been openly gay longer than just about anybody writing today [...] but I never intended for that declaration to mean that I was narrowing my focus in any way, or joining a niche [...] now publishing has decided there's money in this, or at least a market [...] now a formalised thing has sprung up which I think is extremely detrimental to anybody beginning to write today. [...] It's possible to write a novel now which has gay themes, which has any truth you want to speak, that can be sold to a mainstream publisher and sold in a mainstream bookstore, so the notion of people who've narrowed their focus to only write books for a gay audience for gay people about gay people is stifling to me; in some ways, it's another form of the closet, as far as I'm concerned. I think Jerry Falwell must be very happy with those little cubby-holes at the back of book stores that say 'gay and lesbian' - it's a warning sign, they can keep their kids away from that section. I'd like people to stumble on my works in the literature section of Barnes and Noble and have their lives changed because of it.

It's complicated. I don't want to feel any less queer, but I think for us to march along in a dutiful little herd called 'gay and lesbian literature' and have little seminars that we hold together is pointless at this point, it makes no sense to me at all. [...] I cringe when I get 'gay writer' each time. Why the modifier? I'm a writer. It's like calling Amy Tan a Chinese-American writer every time you mention her name, or Alice Walker a black writer. We're all discussing the human condition. Some of us have revolutionised writing by bringing in subject-matter that nobody's heard about before. But we don't want that to narrow the definition of who we are as an artist. [...] I don't mind being cross-shelved. I'm very proud of being in the gay and lesbian section, but I don't want to be told that I can't sit up in the front of the book store with the straight, white writers.

 ”
 
— Armistead Maupin[4]

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Tales of the City

[edit] Other novels

[edit] Awards

  • 2007, Barbary Coast Award, presented by Litquake Literary Festival, San Francisco[34]
  • 2006, Best Gay Read Award, presented by the Big Gay Read Literature Festival, in the UK[35]
  • 2001, Gay, Lesbian, & Bisexual Book Award[36]
  • 1999, Capital Award, presented by GLADD Media Awards[37]

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ Pronounced 'Mawpin' as read in English rather than rhyming with the French 'Gauguin'. 'Armistead Maupin' happens to be an anagram of 'Is a Man I Dreamt Up' (Armistead Maupin Is a Man I Dreamt Up was the title of a 1990 BBC documentary on him), though neither the name nor Maupin himself was invented. He recalls: 'One person even wrote: "I know for a fact that you don't exist. You're really a lesbian collective in Marin County." (Sometimes I feel like a lesbian collective in Marin County, but I'm not.)' See: Oft Asked Questions.
  2. ^ Armistead Maupin. imdb. Retrieved on 2007-10-10.
  3. ^ a b c 'Growing up Gay in old Raleigh -- in The Independent of Raleigh, North Carolina, June 1988 - autobiographical memoir
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Armistead Maupin. Interview with Bill Goldstein. New York Times. 24 Oct 2000. (Interview [.RAM]). Retrieved on 2007-06-18.
  5. ^ a b c A Conversation with Author Armistead Maupin - on KUOW radio, 2007-06-19
  6. ^ My First Glimpse of The City - in Guest Informant, 1998-1999. Maupin recalls his first experiences of San Francisco.
  7. ^ He has said of San Francisco that he had "no sense of it being a gay mecca" and has called it "this amazing city that embraced me, that had made me aware of my true self", and has said "what really floored me was that the straight folks in San Francisco were so civilised about homosexuality." (in the New York Times interview)
  8. ^ For Armistead Maupin, There Are Still Tales to Tell - Interview in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He agreed to be identified as a homosexual in a "Ten Most Eligible Bachelors" article in San Francisco magazine.
  9. ^ Letter to Mama - Michael Tolliver's coming out letter, a response in the book to his parents' participation in Anita Bryant's real-life anti-gay Save Our Children campaign. Maupin used the letter to serve the same purpose for his own parents, who followed the Tales serial.
  10. ^ a b c d "Tolliver's Travels" - Entertainment Weekly, 7 June 2007
  11. ^ a b Tales of the City graphic timeline
  12. ^ Remarks for the Closing Ceremonies of the Gay Games IV, Yankee Stadium, June 25, 1994
  13. ^ Armistead Maupin at the National AIDS Memorial Grove, located in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park
  14. ^ Audio interview about Maupin's New Zealand home
  15. ^ Audio interview with Armistead Maupin on NPR, 2000-11-11
  16. ^ "The First Couple: Don Bachardy and Christopher Isherwood" - Armistead Maupin interviews Christopher Isherwood for The Village Voice, Volume 30, Number 16
  17. ^ Foreword to 'The Isherwood Century'
  18. ^ a b c Armistead Maupin: The quick-witted author mined his own experience for The Night Listener - in Time Out New York.
  19. ^ Five Questions For Christopher Turner: Daddy-hunt site entrepreneur knows of which he posts - Interview with Christopher Turner in the San Francisco Chronicle
  20. ^ a b Scott, Kemble (2007-04-23). Armistead Maupin’s Family Ties. Publishers Weekly. Retrieved on 2007-05-20.
  21. ^ A Tale of the Seventies TV Guide, January 1994. Article by Maupin about the difficult process of getting the Tales series into TV production.
  22. ^ Seattle Men's Chorus welcomes Armistead Maupin to Benaroya Hall
  23. ^ Behind the scenes: THE OUTSIDER - San Francisco Focus Magazine], October 1992. Interview with Maupin about his friendship with Tamara De Treaux.
  24. ^ Reviews of Maybe the Moon and synopsis
  25. ^ Interview at planetout.com
  26. ^ Audio interview about The Night Listener - on WHYY, October 3, 2000
  27. ^ 'Suddenly Home' - a story featuring the fictional characters in Noone at Night
  28. ^ Literarybent.com - Oft Asked Questions
  29. ^ a b "Armistead Maupin talks!" - Advocate.com
  30. ^ "Sex and the city" - Interview in The Observer
  31. ^ "Latest Maupin tale tells of 'closet of age'" - The Guardian
  32. ^ "Reader, he married him" - Review in The Guardian
  33. ^ Audio interview at the time of publication of Significant Others with Don Swaim
  34. ^ Gilmore, Sue. "Maupin Up for Another Award", San Jose Mercury News, 2007-08-05. Retrieved on 2007-10-10. 
  35. ^ Ward, David. "Chronicler of San Francisco wins best gay read award", Guardian, 2006-05-11. Retrieved on 2007-10-10. 
  36. ^ Armistead Maupin - The Night Listener: Product Features. dealtime.com. Retrieved on 2007-10-10.
  37. ^ Armistead Maupin. imdb. Retrieved on 2007-10-10.

[edit] Further reading

  • Gale, Patrick. Armistead Maupin. Bath, Somerset, England: Absolute Press, 1999. ISBN 189979137X

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Works by Armistead Maupin
Tales of the City novels:
Other novels:
Screenplays:
Film & TV adaptations: