Tales of the City 01 - Tales of the City

San Francisco, the Cancer Society’s annual all-breed dog walk is called “Tails of the City.” And my former neighbors on Russian Hill tell me that more and more tourists are scouring the area in search of Anna’s house. Some of them are even armed with guidebooks that identify Macondray Lane as the street “reputed to be the model for Armistead Maupin’s Barbary Lane.” (I especially enjoy the ring of “reputed,” since it seems to imply a rumor beyond confirmation, the author having long since departed this sphere, taking his secrets with him). For the record, the guidebooks are right, but don’t expect to find Number 28; the house featured in the PBS miniseries existed only on a Hollywood soundstage.
    When I began Tales back in 1976 I hoped for little more than a local success. I thought I was recording an elaborate inside joke about the way life worked in San Francisco and nowhere else. The more I toured the world, however, the more I realized how wrong I’d been. Readers in Edinburgh or Auckland or Helsinki would show up at book signings with members of their extended families in tow, often identifying them by their counterparts in Tales. “This is my Brian,” they would say, “and that’s our Mona. And that lady in the hat is our Mrs. Madrigal.” My “only-in-San-Francisco” characters could be translated effortlessly to their own lives.
    Some readers speak of Tales as if it’s a family album, a text to be reexamined in times of celebration, illness, or grief. (One woman left me wordless when she told me her brother had been buried with the book). Others report that Tales has become entangled in their own romantic lives—having received it from a suitor, say, or shared it with someone in bed, or lost custody of it in a messy divorce. The book became a medium through which they discovered kindred spirits, gave shape to their feelings, and recognized the value of their own lore. I know I’m not the only writer to have heard such testimony, but nothing in my experience prepared me for the reward of being so intimately connected with my readers.
    I’ve learned not to generalize about these folks. When Tales was first published in book form its audience was largely gay and male. Then, reader by reader, it built a following that grew to resemble the demographics of the novels itself, leaping barriers of age, race, gender, and sexual orientation. (“Believe it or not, my mother loves you” is a remark I hear time and again). The typical Tales fan is simply someone who revels in the act of being oneself—whatever that might be—and of letting others do the same.
    That’s why I cringe a little when some bookstores restrict this book and its sequels to the Gay & Lesbian section. Don’t get me wrong; I’m proud that I’ve been openly gay for over twenty years—and aware of the impact my homosexuality has had on my work—but my writing has always been intended for everyone. I want the message of Tales to reach the widest possible audience: teenagers and grandparents and people who think they’ve never known a gay person. To aim for anything less would be to betray the spirit of joyful inclusion that makes life what it is on Barbary Lane.

Armistead Maupin
    13 February 1996

San Francisco

About the Author
    A RMISTED M AUPIN is the author of Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You, and Maybe the Moon . In 1994 Tales of the City became a controversial but highly acclaimed miniseries on public television. More Tales of the City became s Showtime orginal miniseries in 1998. Maupin lines in San Francisco.
    Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

BY ARMISTEAD MAUPIN
    Novels
    Tales of the City
More Tales of the City
Further Tales of the City
Babycakes
Significant Others
Sure of You
Maybe the Moon
    Collections
28 Barbary Lane
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P RAISE FOR A RMISTEAD M AUPIN
    “I love Maupin’s novels for very much the same qualities that make me love the novels of Dickens.”
Christopher Isherwood
    “[Maupin] works his dialogue with a jeweller’s precision and a playwright’s deployment of dramatic irony.”
Edmund White, Times Literary Supplement “Armistead Maupin has this uncanny way of providing a different sort of mirror on life, which he then rotates to a particular angle, so that we can see the backs of our own heads—that wayward cowlick, the