Tales of the City

my god, this was SO much fun.

camp, cheeky, sexy and full of drama. the characters all have weird names and there's a LOT of them but they all start to intersect and interact (and interfere) with each other's lives in a way that is totally delicious. i adored it and think it's kind of in the spirit of like queer as folk or the l word only better.

full of twists, turns, lightning-fast dialogue and such a beautiful love letter to san francisco.

a total delight!

Re-reading this makes you feel seriously old! At one stage in my life I practically knew the Tales of the city books by heart: I haven't looked at them for ages, but reading Mary Ann in autumn prompted me to dig them out again (and fire up my vintage VCR to watch the TV adaptation again as well).

The thing you forget, especially if you have the TV series in mind, is that this isn't seventies nostalgia. It is The Seventies. Tales of the city came out in book form in 1978, the same year as Dancer from the dance and Faggots. While New York was inventing "gay writing", Maupin was writing about lesbian, gay and transsexual characters as though there was nothing about their sexuality that was the least bit more profound, spiritual, absurd, or show more grotesque than there was about the strange things that heterosexuals get up to. He was normalising the whole sodom-and-gomorah world of seventies San Francisco for his readers by writing about it in a superb pastiche romantic comedy style, heavily laced with references to the most down-to-earth bits of fifties American popular culture. And he got away with it! It's basically the same trick they use in The Simpsons: if you make the audience laugh, give them a bit of sentiment towards the end, and never bore them or pretend that you know better than they do, then you can discuss almost any subject.

It's a trick, but it takes a lot of skill, and in Maupin's case it would never have worked without his amazingly sharp dialogue. All those references to Hitchcock, Tennessee Williams and Noël Coward aren't there by accident: Maupin clearly has a very sharp eye for what works on stage and screen, and uses it to pare down his text to the absolute minimum. Brilliant stuff: he's definitely up there with writers like Kipling, Raymond Chandler and P.G. Wodehouse at the very top end of popular fiction. show less

Maupin introduces us to a large ensemble cast of quirky, complex, and lovable (well, mostly) characters from all walks of life, building what feels like a very realistic microcosm of San Francisco in the mid-1970s. The story is a bit choppy due to extremely short chapter lengths -- this work was originally published as a newspaper serial -- but that same issue also becomes something of a strength, since it forces the author to be economical with his words. Description is minimal but precise, and characterization is accomplished mostly through sharp, often funny and just as frequently heartbreaking dialogue. Some of the coincidental meetings and frankly bizarre plot developments are a little far-fetched, but the breezy tone keeps you show more turning the pages. I love these characters, who are as real in my mind as any I've ever encountered. show less

Having done the unthinkable, and watched not one but two sets of the television show based on Armistead Maupin’s classic novels of San Francisco, it was about time that I actually read the tales that made Barberry Lane so famous. Like the adaptation, I was charmed by the quietness of Maupin’s writing style; his characters are lively, and their stories contain many comedic moments, but the overarching tone remains one imbued with a sense of gravitas. He could have easily tapped into the excitement of the disco-infused queer bars or the melo-drama of the numerous love triangles that emerge, but instead each scene maintains a sense of calm as we watch Mary Ann and her cast of friends from a certain distance. This style definitely kept show more me engaged throughout the tv shows, and it made the book a breeze to read, but I’m not sure I feel the same drive to continue reading. We get solid endings for some of the characters (and having jumped ahead to the latest Netflix show we’re privy to additional details), but by the final pages it is clear that Maupin is leaving himself plenty of room to carry on the stories in a number of exciting directions. For readers who got to explore his new San Francisco as it was being published, I can see their appetites being substantial for more, but in hindsight the stories sit as more of a testament to their time than as an enduring classic - though some consider Maupin’s place as one of the great queer American writers to be exactly that. I don’t disagree, since his work is lovely and paints a distinctly unique picture of queer life in America, I’m just not sure that his stories are able to leave the same impression on me as those who came later. Still an interesting read, and well worth picking up. show less

Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin is the first volume in a group of novels that consist of stories written originally in a serialized form that appeared as installments in the San Francisco Chronicle. In this volume, the stories were inspired by his observations of life in the city during the mid 1970’s and feature a group of people who are loosely interconnected, but the star of the book is the city of San Francisco.

There is a marvellous mix of characters from gay to straight, old to young, male to female. They are sympathetic, vibrant and realistic. Their stories run the range of emotions from playful to sentimental, humorous to touching. The author effortlessly carried me back to the 1970’s with a simple whiff of Charlie show more perfume, a mention of a movie called “Young Frankenstein” and a stray pamphlet encouraging one to vote for Jimmy Carter.

Like a small time capsule, Tales From the City captures that short period in San Francisco when the hippies had moved on and AIDS and HIV had yet to appear. Maupin captures the rhythms of the city that he writes about and with it’s authentic setting and whimsical stories, I enjoyed this book immensely. show less

This is a real trip. A trip back in time to a certain place. Maupin takes very normal people and reveals why they are wonderful. Their humanness shines. It was almost impossible to put down. I wonder if many of the 1970/San Francisco references would go over the heads of the current generation? The author took subject matter and people who could have had very dreary stories written about them, and instead gave them a heart-warming tale with honesty. A sort of "At Home in Mitford" for alternative lifestyle folks. I enjoyed this to the end and would happily read more by this author.

I still love it--I've loved it since it was lent to me in 1988--but some of it hasn't aged particularly well. That's okay with me; one of its best qualities is its very firm place in time, and the subsequent books carry that on. But I wonder if new readers will get out of it the same things I do just because I remember the 70s pretty well.

One thing I noticed this time is that Mary Ann is set up from the very beginning to be exactly who she turns out to be in Sure of You, which I haven't read since it was first published because... well... I hated who she turned out to be. I didn't remember until I got there how it ended, but now I remember that the last time I read it this bothered me too--does Mary Ann feel absolutely no show more responsibility to tell the authorities and get some help for Lexy (the little girl), even if it means she'll have to answer uncomfortable questions? Ugh. Even for the one of the Me Generation in the Me Decade, that seems pretty callous.

Anyway, even by the time I read it in 1988, it was pretty difficult to imagine moving to San Francisco and finding a place of your own. The people I knew who were moving out there then had multiple roommates and *still* paid more rent than I could even imagine affording. So even by the time I first read it, it had a nostalgic feel. Now, of course, it feels like (and is) a gentle, distant past that will never come around again. But I love to visit it from time to time in these books. show less