Annie Leibovitz Armistead Maupin will
appear at UCLA’s Schoenburg Hall.
By Phoebe Bronstein
Daily Bruin Contributor
Author Armistead Maupin’s life has lead him as far from
his southern roots as one could imagine.
From a conservative Republican to an outspoken member of the gay
community, Maupin continues to push the limits to explore and
redefine himself and modern society.
Maupin will be at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall tonight at 8 p.m.
to discuss his life and works with acclaimed performance artist and
writer Tim Miller.
Miller, like Maupin, is an outspoken member of the gay community
whose work deals with gay identity in modern society.
Miller’s work in the nude came under criticism from the
former Bush administration as well as from the conservative senator
Jesse Helms.
“I presume (Miller) isn’t going to interview me in
the buff because I would insist on equal time and nobody wants to
see that,” Maupin said.
Growing up in North Carolina, in what Maupin describes as a
misogynistic and racist community, it seemed only natural to follow
his family’s expectations and become a lawyer.
He ignored his passion for writing and enrolled in law school at
the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Nevertheless, fate
stepped in; Maupin flunked out of law school, which he considers
the first step toward his freedom.
Still attempting to stick with family tradition, Maupin took a
summer job working for senator Jesse Helms, and in 1972, he finally
moved to San Francisco.
“It was 1972, so the summer of love was only five years
old and I was on the verge of coming out of the closet, and San
Francisco made it completely easy for that to happen,” Maupin
said.
Thus this city of tolerance became Maupin’s launching
point for the rest of his life. His controversial career as a
writer, for which he is now famous, began about 30 years ago after
his move to San Francisco.
Maupin’s “Tales of the City,” a daily serial
that found success in the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1970s,
became part of the sexual revolution. The life of its central
character, Michael Tolliver, very much mirrored Maupin’s own
life. Eventually, Maupin decided to come out to his parents;
however, the method he chose was far from conventional.
“In the second novel in the series, Michael Tolliver, the
gay character, writes a letter to his parents that is provoked by
the Anita Bryant anti-gay crusade in Florida,” Maupin said.
“And that letter effectively served as my own letter to my
parents.”
According to Maupin, the series was able to spark the
imagination of its readers, with the exception of the religious
right, because it describes sexual affection between men and a
rather liberal amount of drug use.
“For 25 years now, I’ve insisted on writing in such
a way that I place gay sex and romance on the same level as
heterosexual sex and romance, and there’s always someone
around who’s offended by that,” says Maupin.
This ground-breaking writing during the 1970s became part of the
cultural movement that spawned a broader acceptance and more
progressive attitude toward sexuality in America.
His recent best-selling novel, “The Night Listener”
grows from Maupin’s natural urge to tell stories. Though he
says this book is a novel, it is also more autobiographical than
his previous works.
Sticking with Maupin’s serial tradition, the protagonist
in the novel, Gabriel Noone, has a nightly radio show. And like
Maupin’s “Tales of the City,” it tells a
semi-autobiographical story of a gay man and life’s trials
and tribulations. However, unlike “Tales,”
Maupin’s new work is a mystery containing more dramatic and
heart-wrenching content.
“I wanted to tell a kind of mystery story, something that
I think of as a thriller of the heart,” Maupin said.
LITERATURE: Tickets to “An Evening of
Conversation with Armistead Maupin Hosted by Tim Miller” are
available at the UCLA central ticket office. For more information
call (310) 825-2101.