We are past the halfway mark in Armistead Maupin's vivid and charming memoir before he explains how his "Tales of the City" came into being.
As "Tales" fans know, the stories about an ever-expanding odd lot of San Francisco residents began as a newspaper serial and became a nine-volume print bestseller and a PBS miniseries.
Long before that came a North Carolina childhood, a run as a young conservative, service in Vietnam — experiences seemingly at odds with the writer who became a literary celebrity and gay-rights spokester.
Maupin's true-life tale bears stylistic trademarks that made his fiction popular: a knack for memorable characters, a humorous outlook even in the face of serious topics (wars, AIDS, life in the closet) and a heart-on-sleeve willingness to jerk a few tears and sprinkle plenty of fairy dust.
He peppers the long arc of his 72 years with the snappy skill of a seasoned, deadline-driven vignettist.
He grew up in Raleigh, N.C. His mother doted on him. His father, a snobby, bourbon-swilling lawyer who freely used the "n" word in his profane, right-wing tirades, was classified euphemistically as "unreconstructed," as opposed to merely racist.
When he was young, Maupin loved antiques, reading and movies and was clumsy at sports. In short, a budding gay man, but one who remained on the down-low for years. "I knew I was mentally ill," Maupin recalls of the fact that "by the time I was 13 I had begun to have dreams about kissing grown-up gas-station attendants."
Maupin emerged in college as a "bold, conservative freedom fighter" partly to please (appease?) his father. In columns he wrote for the school paper, Maupin derided peaceniks and lefties. He defended segregation.
