Armistead Maupin ~ Tales Of The City (1978)
From: HarperCollins Publishers
Now On Kindle!
“Hi! I’m Nancy Drew! You must be the Hardy Boys!”
It’s hard not to love this book for so many reasons. There is no subtle self hating intellectually overbearing homosexual expose of debauchery going on here as with so much of Gay Lit written around the time this book got published. It’s not trying too hard to take itself seriously or trying to impress you too hard with any weighty tragic matters. It’s basically a rambling humorous tale out of the mind of a Gay newspaper columnist who wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle for ages having a bit of fun weaving “real events” and “real local nut jobs” and some of the “local legends” all with the typical San Francisco knack for being sordid but also hilariously out there at the same time and turning it all into his great novel.
God bless Armistead Maupin for opening up a small window at the right time and place and letting people laugh at the whack job “straight folks” while also giving readers a strong sense of the growing Gay culture of seventies San Francisco making it all the more magical at a time that it pretty much had become the center of the Gay universe no matter how much New York hates that fact.
Grade A for some Classic Gay Lit even.
Tags: Armistead Maupin, Gay Fiction, Grade A
Sunita wrote,
Oh wow, I might have to break my Agency boycott for this.
I spent my teens reading the column in the Chron. I didn’t know any out gay people and it demystified a group of people for me. Such a wonderful series, teaching without ever being preachy or overbearing.
Link | November 6th, 2011 at 4:45 pm
kel wrote,
My Dad grew up in SF and read and loved the columns in the Chron. When the PBS miniseries came out, he and I watched together, and he’d point out the characters that were based on real people he knew of.
Link | November 6th, 2011 at 5:29 pm