Armistead

[daddytodd]

Ron & I went to an Armistead Maupin reading on Saturday night. He was fresh in town after hitting Winnemucca to do some research for his forthcoming "final" (when have we heard THAT before...?) Tales of the City novel.

So, he read a chapter from the work in progress. Hilarious.

At the suggestion of the sponsors of the event, they auctioned off the print-out he read. I managed to be the high bidder. I can't wait till the book comes out, and compare the work-in-progress version to the final version.

During the Q&A, I asked "Your characters seem so real & vivid, it's hard not to think of them as being based on real people. So, who is the "real" Mary Ann, and what did she do to piss you off?"

Armistead explained that he thinks of Mary Ann as embodying elements of himself that he's not particularly proud of, so, really, she's him. It was not what I was expecting to hear, but it made a lot of sense.

It was a wonderful evening.

Comments

[allanh.livejournal.com]

In previous live readings, I'm pretty sure that Armistead said that Mary Ann is based in part on the naive country boy that he was when he first started working as a society reporter at a local newspaper. I distinctly remember one article where he said he would crawl into the office after a VERY late night/early morning at some society bash, and regale all of the women in the office with stories of who did what to whom and for how long at these society parties. Tres amusant. Part of Mary Ann is probably also one (or more) of the KGO Channel 7 news anchors from the mid/late 70's, who were known for starting the "happy talk" news format, all of them very perky with huge Farrah Fawcett blown-dry do's.

[daddytodd.livejournal.com]

Well, I had always thought Mouse=Armistead, but I suppose it's naive to think that a writer can't fragment himself across multiple characters. Mary Ann turned out to be so unpleasant as the series progressed... Maupin did say that he gets mad when people call her a bitch. I guess now I understand why ;-)