Reading Michael Tolliver Lives by Armisted Maupin

Since the early 80s I've been reading and rereading the Tales of the City books by Armistead Maupin. Left on the formica topped dining room table in our group house that one housemate grew up with back in PA--we joked that she was born and, when we were very drunk, even conceived on the very table--I picked the first book and found it a page turner, as it was written as a serial in a newspaper. Lots of drugs, sex, witty characters.

We devoured the books because they were fun and, living in a group house in DC, reminded us of our paths in some ways.  People in DC are always from somewhere else (well, except for me, a native). They come for careers often, but sometimes just to get away from the provincial mores and intellects of their hometowns. Reading stories of the occupants of 28 Barbary Lane reminded us of our own departures from home and finding new friends in a new city. Over the years I read and reread them, particularly the first one.

Ten years after I read them for the first time, I started to accumulate the first editions, not because I'm a collector of first editions, but because it felt almost like an homage to the characters and what they represented. In another group house a decade later, I left them downstairs, where friends of housemates crashed on the couch, bored on weekend mornings, would pick them up and read them, laughing and becoming enraptured with the tales.

When the first miniseries came on TV, it was a delicious delight, much like the kids' delight at the Harry Potter movies, though the audience of the Tales books is a fraction of Harry's audience. To see favorite chapters filmed and enjoy characters portrayed with such fidelity to the book brought to full color the images conjured by the Tales of the City novels, much as the first Harry Potter movie gave avid readers a visual reference that will forever compete with the reader's own conjured images. Thus every viewing and reading brought back to life the characters in full bloom of their youthful decadence.  

Reading the books almost 30 years after they were written, the characters were still young exuberant folk enjoying the endless possibilities of life. Maupin's Michael Tolliver Lives gives updates to beloved characters' lives, like reading facebook profiles of old friends. There is no point spoiling specific character's fates: their life paths echo those of the reader's friends over time--growing closer, growing distant, or disappearing through tragic death. Thanks to repeated readings of earlier books, to learn of a character's death is like losing a friend. The gradual losing touch between characters echos one's loss of once essential friends through career, marriage, or lifestyle changes. To read of the fate of the San Francisco of the 80s through the changes of the decades since reminds one of the changes of one's own city.

As most Tales of the City readers have perhaps lead lives involving some exploration of themselves--otherwise they wouldn't be drawn to the books--the old books still bring back old adventuresome lives they themselves lived or identified with in spirit. To read Michael Tolliver Lives is to put those lives in the past and accept the lives they live now, however more stable they may seem. One still has memories of the past, good or bad, but has to live the life he/she has now.

Though many lives were more libertine then, publishing, like all media has become more open today. What would have been winkingly suggested in the Tales books in the past is made explicit with detail in MTL. One one hand it is gratifying to see the world become open to different experience. On the other it emphasizes the momentary sensory experience to the emotional experience and overall narrative.

There is a tendency to mourn the good old days, when the characters and perhaps the reader lived life to the fullest. But as in life, the characters' situations in life changed with circumstances of work and relationships. Despite changes in life, though, they still have their shared memories (to read the mentioning of a favorite scene from from earlier books has the same warm resonance as recalling a shared memory with a friend). But the same things are precious in the books, whether old and new: the connection between people and caring one gives and receives.

I had the pleasure of introducing Armistead Maupin for a reading at a bookstore of Night Listener a number of years ago. During the question and answer after the reading, he responded to a question about the appeal of his books saying it was about the experience described all through the Tales books of creating family, as Ms. Madrigal says, the logical vs biological family.  Some people are fine with the families they're born with, whereas others must find a new one.  Family is nothing if not about connection and caring, which the Tales of the CIty books show is possible for all and by all.