Logical Family: A Memoir

Armistead Maupin is a surprisingly divisive figure: people like or dislike his books for obvious political reasons, of course, but also for the same sort of reasons that readers disagree about Dickens: he is a writer who produced most of his work as serials under heavy time-pressure, relying on a superb natural storytelling ability, deliberately terrible jokes, topical references and sometimes rather too facile sentimentality. If you first came across Tales of the city at a time when there was no positive, funny light fiction featuring LGBT characters (as I did), you might be inclined to regard it as wonderful; if you saw it on TV and then went back to read the books you might just as easily dismiss it as too glossy, romantic and show more American. I think he's one of the great modern authors of light fiction, up there with Wodehouse and Alexander McCall Smith, but I know a lot of my (gay) friends just don't see the point of him at all...

It's possibly a bit more interesting if you know something about Maupin's background - he comes from a very conservative family in Raleigh, North Carolina, where his ancestors included a slave-owning Confederate general, and his father sounds like the sort of lawyer who would happily have appeared for the prosecution in To kill a mockingbird. Maupin - although he was well aware of his sexuality from an early age - started out in life trying to fulfil the hopes of his family: he served as a junior naval officer in Vietnam, his first employer in his chosen civilian profession of journalism was Jesse Helms, and he volunteered for a veterans' "aid" project in Vietnam set up by Nixon's spin-doctors to try to discredit the anti-war movement (there's a gloriously creepy photo of him shaking hands with Nixon). It wasn't until he moved to San Francisco in the early 70s that he came out as a gay man and realised that the political movements he had been supporting were precisely those which were oppressing him and making it impossible for him to live his true identity.

A large part of Maupin's reasons for publishing this memoir now, in the Age of Trump, seems to be to take us through this painful process of awakening again and remind us of how easy it is to fall unreflectingly into accepting the (sometimes hateful) ideas that we see around us in the communities where we grow up.

Of course, this isn't the first time that Maupin has discussed his background: he's often used his relationship with his family and "the South" in his fiction, and he's always been open about his background in the press. In 1998, the British novelist Patrick Gale produced a very nice little biography of Maupin commissioned by Absolute Press for their excellent "Outlines" series of LGBT lives. By Gale's own account, they spent a hilarious few days together going over Maupin's past life in a series of interviews, which Gale eventually condensed into the 150-page format the series called for.

Having read that, I wasn't expecting to learn anything radically new from Maupin's own recollections of his early life: not surprisingly, what he says about himself in Logical family largely covers the same ground. Maupin reserves the right, in an "Author's Note" in the new book, to "plagiarise myself", and does so copiously: a lot of the jokes and phrasing are very close to the wording that Gale transcribed from their interviews nearly twenty years ago. But of course, there's a lot more background detail, and a few slight changes of emphasis - I felt that Maupin's father was presented as less of an ogre, more of a slightly tragic buffoon who committed himself to an indefensible value-system and was subsequently unable to go back even when he knew that what he was saying was absurd, for instance. And Maupin's time in the navy is seen less as a foolish aberration and more as a youthful adventure that taught him things about comradeship, subversion, and how male communities work.

Maupin wonders from time to time whether his professional storytelling instinct is leading him to "improve" on incidents in his past - there's a wonderful side-note about a discussion with the historian Douglas Brinkley, who, having been told the anecdote about Maupin's conversation with Nixon in the Oval Office, checks it out on Nixon's notorious tapes ("the tapes", Maupin calls them) and discovers that it was even funnier - in a creepy kind of way - than Maupin tells it.

There is also rather more here about his reactions to the killing of Harvey Milk, whom he seems to have known quite well. This is one event that Maupin obviously felt he was too close to to be able to bring it into his fiction - I was always a little puzzled about why he used the (more obscure, to most of us) Jonestown massacre in a plot without any mention of Milk. (I don't think the cover designer of this book can have noticed the comment about Milk disregarding a death-threat because it was written in crayon, though...)

An interesting, funny, and very well written memoir, as you would expect - probably something to read for the pleasure of the text rather than for the information it brings. show less

A must-read if you're a Maupin fan, but this memoir should have a lot of appeal for readers who aren't familiar with his Tales of the City series. The first half of the book is a surprisingly openhearted portrait of Maupin's dysfunctional upper-crust Raleigh family, and of Maupin's young adulthood as a insecure, sheltered neoconservative estranged from his own sexuality. The second half chronicles his creative and personal life in San Francisco, where Maupin assembles a new identity and chosen family and witnesses the rollercoaster of San Francisco history in the 70s and 80s.

This book is unabashedly, gloriously namedropp-y (the clickbait title would be, "You'll Never Guess Which North Carolina Conservative was Armistead Maupin's First show more Boss"). Yet Maupin delivers a book with as much substance as gossip, a romping narrative that has a lot to say about Southern, and American, identity.

The audiobook is read by the author, and beautifully so. I'll have to keep an eye out for book signings in this area; I'd love to meet him. Now if only I can find a time machine that can take me back to 1970s San Francisco.... show less

If you've known and followed Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City books (and the TV serials made from them), then you probably already have read about, or heard about, some of his life stories that he covers in this book.

Even so, to have the chance to hear him tell these stories in his own words, in his own voice, was quite special. Maupin has an uplifting and affirming way of writing, that is so accessible and so pleasant to read. It that style coupled with his sincerity and honesty that captured readers from the initial serialized stories in the San Francisco Chronicle, and that made all of his Tales books such a joy to read. Like many gay men of my age these books hold a special place in my heart and bring back many memories of my show more own coming out and my life journey since.

That sincere, honest, pleasant style carries through here to the stories of his own life. I can't recommend this one enough - best in audiobook format. show less

Mostly funny anecdotes. A little self-indulgent. But I mostly enjoyed reading it.

I'm not certain if the gory details of how racist his parents and family were, and how he was when growing up (into his twenties), are productive? Slurs abound. Like, Armistead, I think you're trying to be honest and transparent about where you came from and what you used to believe, but did you ever have a black character in Tales or no? And the (literal) bed built by the enslaved people your ancestors owned, you still sleep comfortably in it?

Beautifully written autobiography that not only covers how he came to write the “Tales of the City” serial but a stunningly honest portrayal of a conservative southern boy becoming an outspoken gay icon. There are poetic passages that cement his standing as a treasured author.

Beautifully written. I loved its reminders of the importance of human connection, and loving people as they are without asking them to be the way you think they should be. I’ve had the good fortune of meeting Maupin several times on his book tours, and he’s a brilliant, kind, humble human being, well-deserving of the recognition given for the way he has changed our culture.

I loved Armistead MAupin's Tales of the City series,and I'm happy to say that I loved his memoir of growing up in a conservative southern family and finding his own way to the truth of his life in San Francisco just as much. It's funny, sad, heartwarming and, ultimately, optimistic about the human condition. We need more people like him gracing out planet.