Discover Tales Of The City (Tales Of The City, #1) Authored By Armistead Maupin Format Printable Format

hetero/homo romantic nonsense set in San Fran in a time period which I am not really clear on but it might be the end of thes.
I think Nixon gets a mention, Or maybe it was Carter, Anyway it's not the summer of love and that's what is important as most of the characters in the book seem to spend a lot of time bemoaning the passing of 'and wondering what will become of them now that all the free love has gone away or at least become more illusive.
People are still producing their own home grown and having affairs though, so all is not lost,

Short chapters give lightening flash insights into the personal troubles and turmoils of all the principle characters, some of whom have as much substance as a light sea mist.
These word chunkettes were originally formed because the book was serialised in a newspaper before it was printed as a novel and the on demand instant gratification element of this comes through in the book.
The ending was a let down for me though a pretty major incident occurs and it's basically just laughed off by the main characters who then return to being selffluffing meddlesome pseudolibertines.


It is well written though and clearly set a bench mark precedent for Sex and City and possibly even Californication both of which deal with writers producing serialised works about the state of the nations sex lives while doing a bit of navel gazing and attempting to get laid themselves.
Note, if it is sex you are after then Hank Moody David Duchovny is much more successful at getting laid than Carrie Bradshaw Sarah Jessica Parker so if you're undecided on a box set and this is the clincher then go with Californication.
So glad I picked this book up! Such an easy but enjoyable read and the characters are brilliant! Can't wait to start the second in the series.
I had originally marked this as a reread, I know I owned this book at one time the cover with Laura Linney and Olympia Dukakis was immediately recognizable and I remember purchasing it after the brouhaha about the adaptation airing on PBS in the early's Jesus don't want gays on his teevee set.
But nothing in here jogged even a faint memory bell so I'm thinking now I never actually read this, I just bought the book in protest.
Im such a poser.

Anyway, NOW Ive read it,

The first entry in Maupin's nine volume series about a collection of San Francisco residents in the's, it was originally published as a newspaper serial I know, it seems like something quaintly Victorian now so each chapter is onlypages long.
Like an Altman film, the cast is large and quirky, Mary Ann Singleton, a young and naive secretary, impulsively extends her vacation to San Francisco into a permanent stay, She rents a room from eccentric, potgrowing landlady Anna Madrigal, who has a colorful tenant named Mona who works at an advertising firm who needs a secretary.
Mona has a friend named Michael, a recently dumped gay man, who moves in, And so it goes.

Maupin does a great job of weaving a cast of characters in everexpanding concentric circles, Toward the end, some of the stories went in directions that were a bit too farfetched for me the mysterious sad sack tenant Mr.
Williams, D'Orothea the model. It was a light and sweet and sometimes bittersweet read, and perfect for January, I ordered the next book from the library and could see myself actually finishing this series, There was this whole stereotype about gay dudes, back in the day, they were every girl's best friend, Oh man, girls loved to get themselves a gay best friend, He would swan about calling her outfits fierce and making bitchy jokes, He would listen to her complain about her love life, He would say things like

"Girrrrrrrl, he did NOT deserve you!" He himself would be neutered, The whole thing is frankly offensive it reduces gay men to campy tics, They exist only during brunch,


idk who this is I literally googled "stereotypical gay guy"

You can't exactly tell someone their actual life is offensive, and this is, more or less, Armistead Maupin's life, pulled apart and turned extremely soapy for this iconic gay book, the first in an endless series.
But he was under command, by the San Francisco newspaper that serialized it in thes, not to overgay it which could help explain its tiptoeing quality.
According to sitelinkmy friend Gray, some editor was keeping a chart of the characters to make sure, as Maupin puts it, "sitelinkthe homo characters didn't suddenly outnumber the hetero ones and thereby undermine the natural order of civilisation.
" Which is funny to think about because with the amount of fucking all these people are doing of each other and each other's others, you have to imagine that the character chart would look pretty much like this

Crazy wall!

So good luck, editor.
And besides, Maupin snuck in so much queer stuff, it's like a Where's Waldo where everyone's Waldo,  

It's a little bit sad and scary to read this book with hindsight, It's like one of those early scenes in movies where kids are skipping in slowmotion and you're like oh, man, this can't end well.
In's San Francisco everyone was tumbling into bed with everyone, but the AIDS crisis was looming, But first: brunch!


I've been here on Goodreads for about ten years now, and I have a few friends that have been here with me the whole time.
One in particular, sitelinkEl, wrote savagely funny and insightful reviews that deeply influenced me, Over our long friendship, we talked each other through good times and bad ones, and we talked endlessly, endlessly about books.
She died two weeks ago suddenly, accidentally, shockingly, I miss her. But as I finished this book, I looked it up and there she was again as always, way ahead of me.
sitelinkHere's her review. This is what she sounded like, Is it perfect No,

Are the character likeable No,

Why five Well, this book will now and forever be one of my all time favourite reads, I first read it aged, over the Summer holidays whilst my parents were away and I suddenly realised that it was okay to be different from the other boys at my school.


Everytime I read about Micheal or Mary Ann or any of the others it's like catching up with old friends and even though this must be myth time of reading their tales are always a delicious gossipy mixture that has you laughing, crying or just wanting to know more.
Not my way of living so I didn't relate,

Furthermore, I was totally alienated by the characters' lifestyles, Did anyone mature after high school Too many charaters, so easy to get lost, Shallow, selfabsorbed, or clueless I know I am going to be in the minority here, but this is the most overrated novel I have read in a very long time.
In fact, I did not even keep it after reading, but rather donated it to charity,
I had heard many good things about this text for years, and finally picked it up, Based on reviews, and what I had heard I was expecting a book in the vein of Dickens, with characters that leapt off the pages and spoke to the human condition.
Only one character, in my view, lived up to that expectation, The landlady of Barbary Lane, Mrs, Madrigal. The other characters felt one dimensional, and as a reader I was completely uninterested in their lives, This is a dangerous thing for a character driven novel to do,
"Tales of the City" felt like a soap opera to me, not at all the interesting character study so many have made it out to be.

My advice, read E, L. Doctorow instead for great realistic characters,
Or, if you want the San Francisco setting, then read Christopher Moore's vampire series set in San Fran, This series might not be considered "great literature", but at least you recognize the characters and see their humanity,
As for the "Tales of the City" volumes, . . my trip through those tales is cut short, I guess I was destined to “discover” Armistead Maupin in, Although, to be fair, hes hardly a secret hes been writing for four decades and has generations of loyal readers,

Back in the spring, I gave a favourable review to the documentary sitelinkThe Untold Tales Of Armistead Maupin.


A few months after that, the galleys to Maupins memoir, Logical Family, arrived on my desk, Id already read his standalone and excellent novel Maybe The Moon, but it seemed to me that in order to appreciate the memoir and avoid any spoilers revealed in it Id have to read at least the first of his famous Tales Of The City books.


So I began the nine novel cycle, And, as friends both IRL and on here had told me, the writing was so much breezy fun the literary equivalent of eating candy that I tore through the first book quickly.
After reading the memoir, I finished book two,

It took no time at all to get caught up in the adventures of the denizens of San FranciscosBarbary Lane: brighteyedsomething Mary Ann Singleton, newly arrived from Cleveland jaded bohemian Mona Ramsey Michael “Mouse” Tolliver, Monas gay best friend who soon becomes Mary Anns good friend after Mona disappears Brian Hawkins, an apparently “woke” exlawyer who now works as a waiter and is a notorious womanizer and of course their eccentric landlady, Anna Madrigal, who has, it turns out, chosen each one of her tenants very carefully.


Maupin has admitted that it took him time to discover the right pace and tone for the book, and to become a decent writer he also had constraints from the publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle, where the book originally appeared in serialized form.
As we're told in the documentary and the memoir, Maupin was told to keep a chart of the Tales of the City's gay and straight characters, to make sure the former didn't outnumber the latter.


True, some chapters feel loose and vignettelike, But once the plot gets going involving sex, lies and a secret dossier on one of characters its impossible to put down.
Maupin has lots of fun with his characters, whether theyre looking for love and relationships Mary Ann, Mouse, tired of their marriage and looking elsewhere for connection Mary Anns lecherous, bisexual boss, Beauchamp Day Beauchamps boss and fatherinlaw, Edgar Halcyon, who has a big secret and is also having an affair with one of the main characters.


Theres some savage satire in here, especially involving welltodo characters: a coterie of “Alist gays” the “ladies who lunch” society women who compete with each other to bring famous artists to the city and who hold patronizing consciousnessraising rap sessions about “serious” subjects like rape.


One of the characters, a former girlfriend of Monas, has a storyline that was far ahead of its time, as Maupin points out in his memoir.
I have to admit that when I read the big revelation, I laughed out loud, it was so brutally funny, And other social observations still ring true decades after Maupin wrote them, This series really was way ahead of its time,

But its not just satire or the Tales of the City's prescience that keeps us reading its the hopes and dreams of its characters and the friendships they form under the gabled roof of their unique abode its the sense of fun and excitement that you get in moving to a new city and meeting cool new people even if youve only moved there as a reader.


So go ahead and add me to the huge list of Armistead Maupin fans, Cant wait to read the other books in the series, .