28 Scene
TALES OF ARMISTEAD MAUPIN
Alex Klineberg catches up with Armistead to discuss Tales of the City, San Francisco, his latest projects and much more. He’ll be appearing in London and Brighton in October ) Armistead Maupin found fame in the
1970s as the author of Tales of the City. San Francisco, his adopted city, had become a gay mecca but it was something of a mystery: no one was really writing about it. Armistead was one of the first authors to bring LGBTQ+ characters into the literary mainstream. The books are very much of their time but they’ve never gone out of fashion. New readers keep on discovering the bohemian world of Anna Madrigal, Michael Tolliver and Mary Ann Singleton. The characters are so vivid they may as well be real people. What can we expect from your upcoming live events? “In London I’m being interviewed by Russell Tovey, and for the Brighton event I’m being interviewed by Graham Norton. So you tell me what to expect! I’m very excited. I l ove both of these guys and I think we’ll have some fun.” Although Armistead is the Bard of San Francisco, he’s lived in London for several years. “My husband lived in London 25 years ago and loved it. I’ve visited many times – I have English relatives. We just wanted a new adventure and London is a great city, there’s no denying it. Sometimes if you ask a Londoner they will deny it.” “We’ve done this before. We moved to Santa Fe about seven years ago for a new adventure. We didn’t last there for very long and moved back
to San Francisco. And then we decided to take the leap – it keeps life interesting.” Which character would you consider to be the key protagonist of Tales of the City? “If I had to name one it would be Anna Madrigal. The very process of writing it was about shifting my view from one character to the next, so each character gets their moment. It’s really up to the reader to decide.” The bohemian world of the Castro had become notorious but no one was really writing about it. When you chose this as your subject, did you feel like you had a unique story to tell? “That’s exactly what I felt. It proved to be right – all these years later the story has survived. I knew that if I was bold enough to do it I could make it work. My own publishers at Harper Collins told me to tone down the gay stuff. I didn’t and I think it paid off. When you know you have a good story to tell, you tell it. That’s what every writer must do.” The books are very funny. Did you always know Tales would be a comic story? “I knew it would be to a certain degree, but I didn’t see what was coming. I didn’t know that we would be in the middle of an epidemic and that I would have to write about that too; within the context of comedic work. “I recently went to see My Night With Reg, my first play since lockdown. It was fascinating to see the things we’ve forgotten about that time.
PIC CHRISTOPHER TURNER
What it felt like. The combination of humour and even lust, which did survive through AIDS although with serious modifications.”
“The dream I had that queer stories would become ordinary is coming true” Armistead met Rock Hudson in the early stages of his career. Did that encounter offer a glimpse of what the previous generations had lived through? “It was exactly that and I wanted Rock to find a way out. The night we met I said to him, ‘I want to write your biography. There’s no reason you can’t claim the dignity of your life.’ Even his partner said ‘Not until my mother dies!’ I thought, if I was fucking Rock Hudson my mother would be the first to know. And I did fuck him, in fact, and I did tell my mother. So there you go.” Was she impressed? “A little horrified but yes, she loved him. I did see us as being representative of two diametrically opposed versions of queer. I came out pretty early in my career. And there was someone who was locked in the closet and had been suffering for many years. Rock had a groove in his fingernail. It was a deformity he created by rubbing his forefinger against his thumb. To me that represented the torture he was feeling. He had a good time though. He was a happy gay man in some ways. He had the resources and he had the goods!”
