What's the gossip on Armistead Maupin, Datalounge?

Asshole and racist.

R1, care to elaborate on that?

I presume that R1 is simply being "R1 the cunt" in the usual Datalounge tradition.

Insatiable bottom.

He’s pretty much an open book: has said the reason why he’s still here and not dead from AIDS is that he was never into fucking. Only blew guys at the South of Market glory holes back in the 70s and 80s. I’ve liked some of his work but ultimately I’ve always thought he was overrated.

R1, racist? Never heard that one before.

Have you seen the documentary on him?

Rumor was in SF that he has a big dick. That nugget popped up in a Herb Caen a million years ago. If you don't know who Caen was, look it up.

I knew a contractor who worked for him and was not best pleased.

Always a fat ass, but a very amusing fat ass.

He is in the Rock Hudson documentary.

Pretty boring as a writer.

Love the Tales books and his book about the little person inside the ET costume. Hung with him socially a few times and, well, never meet your heroes I guess.

I want to know about the racism.

R11, continue.

Big dicked elitist.

The first part of that is fine by me.

Really believes his own hype, and it's not that pleasant.

He’s over 50.

DL doesn’t care.

50? He's at least 70.

he's 79

He has a MAGAT brother:

Armistead's memoir Logical Family recounts his upbringing in a conservative family and his subsequent move to San Francisco. He recalls that his family were not happy with what he had written. “I don’t communicate with my brother now but that has a lot more to do with Donald Trump than it has to do with anything my brother ever said about me. I have noticed that his homophobia is worse now that he’s pledged allegiance to Trump. I’ve not been exempt from that any more than anybody else has.“

If I recall correctly, he prefers much, much younger men, and advocates for websites that focus on hookups between the generations.

He’s allegedly a close friend of Laura Linney….however I suspect she keeps her distance these days because whenever someone does a profile on her…they quote him and he usually spills more than I’m sure she would be keen with.

What was the deal with Terry, his first husband? If I remember correctly, Terry burned through their money and that's why they sold their SF place? Or did current husband blow the money running Pantheon Bear and Hot Older Male?

Terry also allegedly had frightening anger issues.

Don't know about his personality, but TALES in its first several volumes was groundbreaking, charming, and wildly entertaining. Since I'll never be at a dinner party with him, I don't care if he's an asshole.

Artist are not infrequently a-holes.

Artistssssssss*

When it was a column in the Chronicle and briefly, the Examiner, it was the reason you bought the paper.

He's a doll. The shit here is just the usual homophobic trolls.

His dick isn't that big, or it wasn't when I saw it. Above average and thick, but hardly anything San Francisco would talk about.

Although he's been in the Santa Fe area for over 10 years.

I loved his book Night Listener about the radio personality. I also really liked the movie version.

Disappointed to hear that he has racist tendencies, if that’s true.

My grandfather lived across the street from him when he lived on Edgewood in SF and I met and talked to him as a neighbor a couple of times. Nice enough.

The Tales books were good up to the Mary Ann finally kills Norman book. The one full of tranny kids was tiresome. Or was that the same book?

Armistead’s father, a legendary lawyer and fox hunter in Raleigh, was a member of the North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati and was President General of the National Society in the early 70s. Because of that he was named a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor and was head of the National Battlefield Commission in the 80s.

Because the Society is a hereditary organization, and presumably because Armistead wasn’t interested, his younger brother, Tony, mentioned at R20 is now a member and was President of the North Carolina Society for the last of the two Trump years, if I remember correctly.

I’ve known of Tony for over twenty years. As a young man I worked in the same line of business and though he was a good guy, even if he did seem a little bit light in the loafers for a married guy.

Well his tenure as President of the Society really changed my mind. You could clearly tell from his “Letter from the President” in the quarterly newsletter that he was a Trumper and, if anything, that Trump’s administration wasn’t going far enough. I was shocked, as generally the Society shies away from any open political stance, and the whole tenor was just much coarser than what I’d come to expect from the country club conservative set.

I meant to add that don’t know if Armistead is a racist but if he is he comes by it naturally. I know his family and who all they have mingled with and the Maupins were big Democrats and fans of Jesse Helms until the mid-Seventies when all the old Democrats switched to the GOP because of racism and elected Helms. Armistead’s father was a big supporter of Reagan when he ran here at that time as well.

I never heard AM had a big dick, but he was the one that slept with Rock Hudson, alluded to it for years without coming out and saying it, and said Rock was hung like a horse.

I was surprised to learn there's yet ANOTHER Tales book coming out next spring. I thought the last one was, well, the last one, and that one went up to present day, if I am not mistaken.....but this book is set in the 1990s, 20 or so years after the original.

Most of you are assholes too, yet I still hang around here. It’s ok if AM is an asshole. His storytelling is very diverting.

[quote]I was surprised to learn there's yet ANOTHER Tales book coming out next spring.

Tales of the Shitty

Back when I was young and hot, he hit on me at an Eagle SF beer bust. I wasn't interested cause.. euw. old.

I really wonder if he inherited a lot of money. I know he was estranged from his father, but I know for a fact that the stepmother didn’t get much at all, so it had to go to someone.

North Carolina native here. I had limited dealings with Tony Maupin about 30 years ago. Had purchased tickets through his Maupin Travel but there were problems with the tickets. I tried to get the situation resolved and Tony refused to deal with it. Hurled a few insults my way.

Does he know DL pariah Kevin Sessums?

He's fat. Why would anyone be interested?

Even a Maupin thread gets a Trump post. Kudos to you! I'm surprised it took 20 posts. You're slipping.

Why are posters taking it so personally when other posters are reporting that Maupin is an asshole? OP [italic]asked[/italic] what he's like. Did you want other people who have met him to lie just because you admire his fiction?

I've met many successful fiction writers in my life as part of my job, and I have rarely met any one of them who was not a difficult person. It just comes with the territory. That doesn't mean that I dislike or disrespect their works. All it means is that in person they were not easy people.

Don't take everything so damned personally. You're on a gossip site.

I've saved all 6 original volumes of TALES OF THE CITY which I devoured as each one was published. I do hope to reread them all in my elder years (soon!).

I can't say I've loved any of his succeeding books though I haven't read them all.

[quote] I've saved all 6 original volumes of TALES OF THE CITY which I devoured as each one was published. I do hope to reread them all in my elder years (soon!).

The first one was published in 1978.

So if you read it when it was published, do you somehow think you're not yet in your elder years?

I met Stephen Freid who wrote the biography of Gia Carangi, Philadelphia born model who died of AIDS. Maybe he was having a bad day but he was a total asshole.

Harlan Ellison was another famous author/asshole.

Since that's apparently what this thread has morphed into...

R43 He was fat but has been much thinner in recent years.

He's forgotten he was fat and wrote some nasty prose about bears in one of his books.

He can diet all he wants but he'll always be a bit fat bitch inside.....

I met Maupin in the late 1990s. I worked for a major bookseller and we supplied the books for an event where he and others spoke and then did a signing.

I don't know if I would say he was an out and out asshole but he generally treated most of the people around him as if they didn't exist. He became personable and animated only for (a) female friends or new acquaintances he found interesting, like the "little person" woman who attended and asked for his autograph. And of course (b) when several college guys (all 19-20) attended the event as part of their English class. One of them looked a lot like Chris Klein and boy, he was pouring the charm on thick for that guy.

(I met Wendy Wasserstein at the same event and she was the kindest person - I cannot say enough wonderful things about her and it's deeply sad she's no longer with us.)

She's an old fat kween. One of us.

I saw him at The Monster near Christopher Street a few years ago. He was sitting at the bar with another guy. I didn't try to speak with him as I really didn't have anything to say to him.

r47, you caught me on 2 points! First one, I didn't begin the series of books until the mid 80s (when I think they were all published as a new hardcover set with those pretty periwinkle blue covers; and second, I'm already 74. But hope to live another 25 years and reread all the books in my nineties.

I read them all in the early 90s, when I was a young whippersnapper.

Uh, maybe don't wait, R54.

Big MAGAt. Trump loves his books.

[quote]Although he's been in the Santa Fe area for over 10 years

He apparently moved to London with his hurband, Chris Turner, in 2019:

*husband, sorry

Meh. He got lucky.

R28 we bought it just as much for Herb and The Sporting Green.

He may be an elder statesmen, but he's like many gay men, who only has time for A gays, muscle boys and fabulousness.

Tales was pretty great in its initial run, but it was a soap, and he hasn't been able to replicate anything outside of that world since. He deserves a flower or two but he's not a literary god....a bit overrated.

And yes, I think the "AM is hung" thing was a mixup, that he revealed Rock was hung in one of the Tales books (though he referred to Rock as "______").

Loved his books but didn’t like the evolution of Mary Ann as she became so ambitious. “Sure of You” was a hard, sad read.

The first handful of TALES books were groundbreaking—charming, addictive, terrific. Since they were first serialized for a SF newspaper, a friend there sent me the columns in large batches and I couldn't wait to catch up. (I was in NYC.) The early TV adaptations were good, too. Unfortunately, as he returned to the same well, diminishing returns set in and the well got drier and drier. But I'll still be grateful to him for the pleasures of the universe he created.

[quote] "Asshole and racist."

Care to elaborate on that, R1?

I think the present husband was - or still is - the creator and operator of DaddyHunt.

Seems like that would generate a lot of income, considering how it's been licensed, including to TV.

I think I remember reading that their relationship was the genesis.

I loved the books until he turned those characters into cliches and assholes.