Review by New York Times Review
READING THE MEMOIR of a writer you know from other kinds of books can be a glimpse into the inner workings of a mind you admire, and, as in the case of Armistead Maupin's "Logical Family," it can unveil how a fiction-maker deals with the requirement to confront the truth. Here Maupin undertakes to recount his own story without the mask of the novel or the short story. He is telling us what matters, what really happened, how he was formed. There are two Maupins at work in these pages. One is charming, effervescent, lyrical, hilarious, a name-dropper. The other is insecure, withdrawn, and a mite tone-deaf to the world around him. That they both inhabit the book indicates the real complexity of the man himself, but the dichotomy remains unexamined. Much of "Logical Family" is wry and sharply drawn. We learn a good deal about Maupin's seven decades: his family background, Navy career, Southern sexual frustrations and subsequent San Francisco awakening. And his fame, of course. There are guest appearances by luminaries, including encounters with Jesse Helms, Harvey Milk, Christopher Isherwood, Richard Nixon, Rock Hudson and many more. There is a good deal of what one expects from Maupin, wit and heartache rolled up into a tidy package, so that any anecdote can bring an ache of longing and a belly laugh all in the same paragraph. There is also vivid, sharp writing, as when he speaks of his grandmother as "this stately little partridge of a woman" or describes a sunset in Vietnam as "a fine blue pencil line across the landscape, the rice paddies a patchwork of shimmering green-gold mirrors." These stylistic high moments occur most frequently when the book hits its stride, about halfway through, about the time that Maupin moves to San Francisco and, after some struggle, begins to write "Tales of the City," which began as a daily newspaper serial and later became a string of novels. That Maupin is thrilled with his success is understandable; he earned it after a lot of meandering, and he justly celebrates it. But this tips the balance of the book toward the kind of celebrity memoir that is hard to take seriously, to the detriment of the earlier chapters, which hint at something deeper. In those early chapters we meet the insecure Maupin, child of patrician Southerners, conservative adolescent, Vietnam War veteran and supporter, a person so distant from his later self that one wonders how the second person emerged from the first. The memoir misses an opportunity to examine its most complicated material. Maupin's inability or unwillingness to probe the contradictory nature of his early decades - working as a reporter at a television station run by Jesse Helms, walking out of a church with his family when the church threatened to integrate - leaves a gap that wants bridging. He is, after all, a man who proved himself a fierce activist for the cause of L.G.B.T. rights but at the same time writes without hesitation about accepting the gift of a sleigh bed - from his mother as she is dying of cancer - built, as he notes without flinching, "by slaves in our family." It would have been the making of a powerful book to have Maupin probe the space beneath moments like these, or to talk about his genuine metamorphosis from right-wing child of a racist father to prince of gay literature and liberation. But Maupin never takes advantage of the many opportunities he has to delve more deeply into this part of his past. Instead, the easy, breezy quality of the book leaves us with the feeling that we've hardly seen a clear interior. It will, and should, please people who admire him and his work already. The book is undeniably entertaining. But one can't be faulted for wanting more. JLM GRIMSLEY'S most recent book is "How I Shed My Skin: Unlearning the Racist Lessons of a Southern Childhood."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 4, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
Born in the American South and, at first, submitting to that region's traditionally conservative political and social mind-sets, beloved novelist Maupin, as if attracted by sonar detection, spent years as a young man seeking his logical family: the gay community in all its variety of individual and geographical dispersal. He subsequently wrote many novels about gay life, including, first and foremost, his cult-favorite sequence, Tales of the City, which brought to sympathetic light the denizens of an apartment house in San Francisco, overseen by landlady Anna Madrigal, among the first transsexual major characters in American fiction. In this endearing memoir, Maupin recalls the colorful path he followed as he carved out a place within his logical family, including military service in Vietnam and a San Francisco journalist career, during which his Tales of the City characters and situations were created. It is easy to understand Maupin's reputation for geniality, given his openheartedness as a person and his honesty as a writer; and that will make this delightful chronicle attractive to a wide range of readers, whether they're familiar with his fiction or not. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: As publicity mounts, Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award-winning Maupin's fans will be in hot pursuit.--Hooper, Brad Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Novelist Maupin traces his journey from a conservative North Carolina upbringing to the emerging gay liberation scene of his beloved adopted hometown of San Francisco during the pivotal 1970s. As narrator of the audio edition, Maupin's vocal styling has a special combination of whimsy and warmth. His impish tone and animated delivery come across as irreverent but not mean-spirited. This delivery shines in the tale of Maupin's encounter, as a Naval officer in Vietnam, with a lizard species nicknamed for its vulgar-sounding cry and his awkward attempt to recount this ribald anecdote years later to child star turned diplomat Shirley Temple Black. In passages devoted to more serious matters-the AIDS crisis and his own family's support for homophobic political causes, for instance-Maupin does not shy away from allowing emotion into his voice. Yet the sorrow and regret remain tempered by a sense of ease and confidence, making for a thoroughly enthralling listening experience. A Harper hardcover. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
It was in Maupin's Tales of the City that he coined the term logical family as a phrase to describe the people we find and choose to love, unlike our biological family. There could be no more appropriate title for Maupin's own tale, which relates his coming of age from a rigidly conservative Southern childhood to one of the most notable writers of the 20th century. Maupin writes vibrantly of his youth, his navy tours in Vietnam, his work on Tales of the City, and his acceptance of his sexuality and friendships within the LGBTQ community. But central to this memoir is the painful conflict that can come when one has both a logical and a biological family, for Maupin's growth into himself is always balanced against his lingering emotional ties to his hidebound father and beloved mother. VERDICT Maupin's long career as a storyteller serves him well with his own biographical material, and he leavens the varied events of his life with just the right amounts of humor, thoughtfulness, and poignancy.-Kathleen McCallister, Tulane Univ., New Orleans © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Friends, lovers, and a few celebrities form the author's logical, though not biological, family.Fans of Maupin's stories of gay life in San Francisco (The Days of Anna Madrigal, 2014, etc.) will find some familiar themes in this warm memoir. The son of a racist, homophobic conservative, the author grew up hiding his homosexuality, knowing the "revulsion, shame, disbelief," and rejection that he would face. Yearning to win his father's love, he became a staunch conservative himself; as a college student in the 1960s, he "railed against Socialists and peaceniks," defended segregation, and enthusiastically spoke out against "radical social agitators." He went to law school to follow in his father's footsteps but was so bored that he dropped out only to pursue another of his father's dreams: to see him in the military. Maupin recalls with affection his stint in Vietnam, where he became chief of staff to a sympathetic commander. His father, "who always said that God created a war for every generation of men in our family," felt proud. His parents worried about his determination to be a writer, just as they worried about their son's "lifestyle" choice, which they could not confront. Maupin's professional breakthrough came when the San Francisco Chronicle commissioned him to write a five-day-a-week series of stories featuring a motley, eccentric, and appealing collection of characters, gay and straight, young and old, living in the author's adopted city. The first installment of "Tales of the City" appeared on May 24, 1976, and changed his life. "The public was hooked on Tales' before the year was out," he recalls. Collections of the stories were published and eventually turned into a miniseries starring Laura Linney (a cherished member of Maupin's logical family). Loving remembrances aboundnot least of his compassionate motheras the author celebrates the many people who enriched his life; most famous among them are Christopher Isherwood, Ian McKellen, and Rock Hudson, with whom Maupin became "buddies with occasional benefits." Engaging reminiscences from an ebullient storyteller. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
