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Armistead Maupin (1944 - )
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 The
Night Listener by
Armistead Maupin
Many years ago, when
the first volume of Tales
of the City was going to press, Christopher Isherwood
compared its author's narrative gifts to those of Charles Dickens.
This has proven to be the blurb of a lifetime, an ever-renewable
currency appearing on almost all of Armistead Maupin's subsequent
books. Yet it has held up well--Dickens's gentle satire and broad
good humor live on in Maupin more than in any other
English-speaking writer. The Night Listener is his most
ambitious work to date. While not strictly autobiographical, the
story does teasingly suggest correspondences to the author's own
life in a way that will delight and frustrate his many fans. The
main character, Gabriel Noone, is a professional storyteller who
broadcasts roughly autobiographical sketches for a long-running
PBS series, "Noone at Night," stories about people
"caught in the supreme joke of modern life who were forced to
survive by making families of their friends." When the novel
opens, Gabriel is still reeling from the announcement that his
much younger, longtime partner Jess (a.k.a. Jamie in the "Noone
at Night" stories, and a.k.a. Terry Anderson, Maupin's
real-life, much-younger partner, for those who like to track
associations) wants to move into his own apartment and start
dating other men. With the success of his HIV cocktail, Jess has
exceeded his own life expectancy. Having prepared himself so well
to die, he now needs to learn how to live again. To Gabriel's
distress, Jess's new life involves leather, multiple piercings,
and books on men's drumming circles.
When an editor sends Gabriel yet another book to
blurb, he reluctantly opens the package to find a long, rending
memoir by Pete Lomax, an HIV-positive 13-year-old survivor of
incest, rape, and sexual slavery. The book is called The
Blacking Factory, after the miserable London bottling factory
where Dickens spent part of his poverty-stricken childhood. As
Gabriel reflects:
Pete thinks we all have a blacking factory, some
awful moment, early on, when we surrender our childish hearts as
surely as we lose our baby teeth. And the outcome can't be
called. Some of us end up like Dickens; others like Jeffrey
Dahmer. It's not a question of good or evil, Pete believes. Just
the random brutality of the universe and our native ability to
withstand it.
After Pete escaped from his parents and was adopted
by a therapist named Donna Lomax, his slow recovery was helped
along by his memoir-writing and by frequent doses of "Noone
at Night."
Touched by Pete's devotion to his stories, as
well as the boy's obvious need for a father figure, Gabriel finds
himself drawn into an intense relationship with his young fan,
involving long, late-night phone calls that begin to worry
Gabriel's friends. And, other than their mutual need, how much
does he really know about Pete, anyway? As Gabriel begins to
question his own motives, as well as those of the boy, The
Night Listener transforms itself from an absorbing but
quotidian story of loss and midlife angst into a dark and
suspenseful page-turner with a playful metaphysical aspect and an
un-Dickensian sexual candor. --Regina Marler
 Tales
of the City (Tales of the City Series, V. 1) by
Armistead Maupin
Since 1976, Maupin's Tales
of the City has etched itself upon the hearts and minds of its
readers, both straight and gay. From a groundbreaking newspaper
serial in the San Francisco Chronicle to a bestselling
novel to a critically acclaimed PBS series, Tales (all six
of them) contains the universe--if not in a grain of sand, then in
one apartment house.
Tales of the City:
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A resource for fans of Armistead Maupin's 'Tales
of the City.' It includes a character guide, forum and online
store, with information on the miniseries and Maupin.
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Excerpt:
Armistead Maupin was born in Washington, D.C. in
1944 but grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. A graduate of the
University of North Carolina, he served as a Naval officer in the
Mediterranean and with the River Patrol Force in Vietnam. He
subsequently returned to Southeast Asia as a civilian volunteer to
build housing for disabled Vietnamese veterans. For this effort,
President Richard Nixon invited him to the Oval Office of the
White House...
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by Brad L. Graham, special to the Post-Dispatch
Every story has to begin somewhere. Armistead
Maupin's Tales of the City began in the produce section of
a San Francisco Safeway.
It was 1974 and Maupin, working for a Marin
County newspaper, had heard that Wednesdays were "singles
nights" when masses of young people descended on the store,
pushing half-empty carts and cruising for romance. It struck him
as a good story.
He found romance all right. A night spent
interviewing "dudes in puka shells" and "young
women in rhinestone, brushed-denim pants suits" was the
beginning of a quirky, wonderful relationship, a long-standing
love affair with the city of San Francisco itself that Maupin has
shared with millions of readers around the world.
To explain the scene, Maupin created a fictional
shopper and called her Mary Ann Singleton, a young innocent fresh
from Cleveland. Hesitant but hopeful, Mary Ann joined the fray at
the Safeway, only to discover that when she meets the man of her
dreams, he's actually already shopping with the man of his
dreams...
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By Armistead Maupin
Excerpt:
Some dogs, I'm told, like to stick around when
their owners are making love. They'll sit stone still and watch
the proceedings with deadpan intensity, as if collecting evidence
for some evil congressional subcommittee. Not Willie. As soon as
human passion rears its ugly head -- and he has an uncanny eye for
the precise moment -- he flings himself off the bed and skulks
away to another room. This is jealousy, I suppose, mingled with
mortification, though I'd like to believe there's an element of
courtesy involved as well. In any event, he comes rocketing back
only seconds after the deed is done, reclaiming his rightful place
between us with breathless little yelps of relief and celebration.
You'd think we'd just returned from a month in Europe.
Kissing is another matter entirely...
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Names Index:
A B
C D
E F
G H
I J
K L
M N
O P
Q R
S T
U V
W X
Y Z
| Authors
Index | Scholars
Index |
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