Armistead Maupin first introduced readers to the colorful cast of 28 Barbary Lane in the 1970s with a groundbreaking newspaper serial that went on to become a series of six internationally bestselling novels and a Peabody Award-winning miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney. With Mary Ann in Autumn, Maupin adds a poignant new chapter to the Tales of the City series that focuses on the woman who started it all—Mary Ann Singleton.
Speaking from his cozy attic office on what he describes as a "beautiful, blue day in San Francisco," Maupin discusses his return to the multi-character plotlines and dark comic themes of his earlier work, what its like collaborating with the Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears, and why he's an avid, but cautious Facebook user ( Hint: Facebook plays an integral, but terrifying, part in the new novel ) .
Windy City Times: The new Tales of the City novel, Mary Ann in Autumn, finds the character back in San Francisco some 20 years later. Do you think of Laura Linney when you're writing the character of Mary Ann Singleton at this point?
Armistead Maupin: [ Laughs ] As a matter of fact, I do. For years, I heard my own voice [ as Mary Ann ] when I picked up one of the old Tales of the City books. But now, all I hear is Laura's voice and it does make it a lot easier to write. I just imagine her voice for any given scene. In fact, the new book is dedicated to her.
WCT: Mary Ann is residing in Michael Tolliver's backyard cottage. How has the dynamic between these two characters evolved or changed over the years?
Armistead Maupin: Mary Ann's rather rude and rapid departure in 1989 has left some old wounds that she has to deal with, and she has issues of own at the moment that are bringing her back to the city. I can tell you that I am returning to the more gothic flavor of earlier books, and that there is a central mystery to this story related to something that took place within the first dozen pages of the last novel in the series, Sure of You. In other words, what I wrote some 21 years ago is coming to fruition in Mary Ann in Autumn. People who have read Mary Ann in Autumn, might enjoy going back to the first dozen pages of Sure of You.
WCT: Mary Ann uses Facebook, and connections with a few old friends, to re-engage with life. Talk about your decision to incorporate the social networking site into your novel. Are you a big user of Facebook?
Armistead Maupin: I always try to draw on my own life, and I've found Facebook to be rather fascinating. I saw in Facebook a great plot device for delivering information to the reader; Facebook is the way Mary Ann's past comes to bite her in the ass.
Yes, I am a big user of Facebook, although I am a Johnny-come-lately. Mary Ann's own fears about becoming addicted to it reflect my own fears. I started using Facebook as a way to promote my work, but then it became sort of fun to connect with people and chat. I don't fool myself into believing all these people are my friends! [ Laughs ] In fact, some of them have proven quite the opposite.
WCT: How do you mean?
Armistead Maupin: Well, you can get a loose cannon in there every once in awhile. But one of things I enjoy about Facebook is that, by and large, everyone is civil with each other, and I find that it is a nice antidote to the comment boards on blogs. I get really depressed sometimes when I am reading the gay blogs, like Joe.My.God or Towleroad, and I read some of the racist, misogynistic and even homophobic remarks. We're all supposed to be brothers and sisters.
WCT: A moment ago, you mentioned that you borrow from your own life as part of the writing process. There is a plotline in Michael Tolliver Lives about a guy who "made up his mind upon turning forty to eat pussy at the next available opportunity," and a female friend decides to assist him, so she freshens up with a cinnamon-flavored douche, resulting in the character feeling a complete aversion to breakfast rolls from that point forward. I've read that incident actually happened to someone you know.
Armistead Maupin: Yes, that is all true—assuming he was telling me the truth. [ Laughs ] I thought it was so funny that I wanted to include it in the book. I do that all the time, I listen to what people have to say, and I use it, if I can. Sometimes I warn them first, I usually say it right on the spot. Usually they are tremendously flattered, unless it is another writer, and then they usually say 'you can't use that it's mine!' I never compromise or invade anyone's life, though.
WCT: After the intimate first-person narrative of Michael Tolliver Lives, Mary Ann in Autumn marks your return to multi-character plotlines, and the darkly comic themes of your earlier work. Can you talk about this shift in narrative?
Armistead Maupin: I thought it would be fun to return to a multi-character plot line, because it allows for great suspense. The elements of suspense are much greater when there are shifts in points of view in a novel. Michael Tolliver Lives was written in a first person narrative, and I was torn about what to title the book. I told my publisher it wasn't a Tales book, but then the critics said it was, and yet some readers were disappointed because they didn't get a shift in viewpoint. Well, both things were true with that book—I was attempting a different tactic by writing in the first person and I was still writing about all the same people.
I do what I feel like doing at the time. Maybe the Moon, Night Listener and Michael Tolliver Lives were all first person, but with Mary Ann in Autumn I was ready to get back to the omnipresent third person narrative. And by that, I simply mean that I write through the mind of a character.
WCT: I want to ask you about the Tales of the City musical, which is currently being workshopped at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, with Tony award-winning actress Betty Buckley as Barbary Lane's landlady, Anna Madrigal. The workshop is not open to the public, but I'm guessing you've had a chance to see it.
Armistead Maupin: I have, and it was completely thrilling. They are a wonderful bunch of kids, well, I shouldn't say kids because many are major Broadway figures, but to me they are kids. Everything about [ the musical ] thrills me, the music, the point of view, the casting. Betty Buckley as Anna Madrigal is overwhelmingly wonderful to me.
WCT: Will Betty Buckley play the role when the show opens to the public next June?
Armistead Maupin: We don't know anything at this point, but that is how they do it. They commit for the workshop, and then we take it from there, but she has given every indication that she wants to do it when the show opens next year. She has such a warmth, and she certainly has the pipes.
WCT: How is it working with the charming and sexy Jake Shears?
Armistead Maupin: I love working with Jake and not just because he is a cute rock star, but because he is a hell of a decent guy—and a very smart one to boot. The other day we spent 10 minutes talking about the new Michael Cunningham novel.
They are all great—there aren't a lot of rampaging egos here. People are working for the story itself and it is already showing in many ways. I trust the story in their hands. Jeff [ Whitty ] knows exactly how to write in the voice of the characters. Sometimes I read the dialogue and I have to think "Did I write that originally or did he make that up?"
WCT: In an interview for Butt magazine, Mr. Shears said he wanted the Tales of the City musical to be a "really classic, beautiful Broadway musical" and that he thinks "… there's a big stigma attached to musicals. There's this backlash against this Broadway sound and everyone's trying to make Broadway musicals that don't sound like Broadway musicals," said Shears. "And that's ridiculous." Do you agree with Mr. Shears—and does the Tales of the City musical, indeed, sound like a…proper classic Broadway musical in your mind?
Armistead Maupin: I applaud that Jake is saying that. I hear him and I applaud it. I wonder why a Broadway musical would want to be anything else, it's such a unique form. But, listen, there is room for everything out there. I went to see American Idiot and I really enjoyed it.
From the beginning, Jake stressed this is not a rock musical per se, although it does have numbers that are pop/rock. I'm not especially smart when it comes to musical terminology, but I can tell you that the music has some honky-tonk numbers, some gorgeous ballads, and that there are songs that are practically arias! Jake and John Garden—another member of the Sister Scissors—have managed to inhabit the emotional landscape of all the characters. When Mona freaks out, there is a song straight out of Janis Joplin. There is a raunchy whorehouse number called "Ride 'Em hard and Put 'Em Down Wet," and songs on pregnancy and lots and lots of yearning. My books are full of yearning. [ Laughs ] I was looking at the script the other night and I thought, I must be the neediest man on the planet, because all the things that scared me back then, still scare me now, like figuring out what you want out of love and life and family.
WCT: Speaking of living in fear, I want to ask you about the epidemic of gay teen suicides brought on by harassment and bullying. What do you have to say to gay and lesbian teens, particularly those that are being harassed?
Armistead Maupin: I would say to them, "Hang in there because you are beautiful and perfect and exactly what you should be, and that nothing will be gained from running away from it." I have such profound sympathy for these young people. In my day, there wasn't this organized campaign against homosexuality. I knew that homosexuality was frowned upon, that I shouldn't be gay, but there weren't really preachers and politicians that were publically stating, on such a large scale, that I shouldn't be something when I was growing up.
Everything happened for me after I came out, everything—my artistic blossoming, my success, being loved the way I wanted to. I love Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" initiative, and I have basically been saying the same thing in my writing since 1976: If you own your life, it can be beautiful, if you let others terrorize you, you will never become who you should be, and that's for everyone, not just gays and lesbian youth.
WCT: When did you come out to your family, Armistead?
Armistead Maupin: When I first came out to my mother, I was not very young; I was 30 or thereabouts. She said, "It's fine now that you are young and having fun, but what will you do when you are an old man?" And today, if she were alive, I would tell her, as an old man [ laughs ] , I am happier than I have ever been and that I have the love of my life, and a purpose, and that I have a successful career and that I wouldn't change a thing. I have been blessed with all of that because I chose not to let others tell me who I should be.
Mary Ann in Autumn is now out in bookstores.
