Writer Armistead Maupin Discusses His New Novel.

DATE October 3, 2000 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Armistead Maupin discusses his new book "The Night
Listener"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Armistead Maupin is best-know for his "Tales of the City," which started as
a
story serialized to newspapers and was expanded into several best-selling
novels and two TV miniseries, one of which won a Peabody Award. The stories
were set in San Francisco and revolved around a group of gay and straight
friends of different generations. Maupin's new work is a
semi-autobiographical novel called "The Night Listener." The main character,
Gabriel Noone, writes stories very similar to Maupin's "Tales of the City,"
but Noone serializes his stories on the radio, in fact, on NPR. Noone's
life
has changed as one person leaves him and another enters his life. The
person
entering his life is Pete, a 13-year-old fan who has written a
not-yet-published memoir about being abused by his parents. The person
leaving Noone is his longtime lover Jess, a character based in part on
Maupin's former lover, Terry Anderson, to whom the new novel is dedicated.
Let's start with a short reading.

Mr. ARMISTEAD MAUPIN (Author, "The Night Listener"): (Reading) `I wasn't
myself the afternoon that Pete appeared. Or maybe more severely myself than
I
had ever been. Jess had left me two weeks earlier and I was raw with the
realization of it. I have never known sorrow to be such a physical thing,
an
actual presence that weighed on my limbs like something wet and woolen. I
couldn't write or wouldn't at any rate. Unable to face the grueling
self-scrutiny that fiction demands. I would feed the dog, walk him, check
the
mail, feed myself, do the dishes, lie on the sofa for hours watching
television. Everything seems pertinent to my pain. The silliest coffee
commercial could plunge me into profound Jacobean gloom.

`There was no way around the self-doubt or the panic or the anger. My
marriage had exploded in mid-air, strewing itself across the landscape. And
all I could do was search the rubble for some sign of a probable cause, some
telltale black box. The things I knew for sure had become a litany I
recited
to friends on the telephone. Jess had taken an apartment on Buena Vista
Park.
He wanted space he said, a place to be alone. He had spent a decade
expecting
to die, and now he planned to think about living. He could actually do
that,
he realized, without having to call it denial. He would meditate and read
and
focus on himself for once. He couldn't say for sure when he'd be back or if
he'd ever be back or if I even want him when it was over.

`I was not to take this personally he said. It had nothing to do with me.
Then after stuffing his saddle bags full of protease inhibitors, he pecked
me
solemnly on the lips and mounted the red motorcycle he had taught himself to
ride six months earlier. I'd never trusted that machine. Now as I watched
it
roar off down the hill, I realized why. It had always seemed made for this
moment.'

GROSS: Thanks, Armistead. That's Armistead Maupin reading from his new
novel, "The Night Listener." I think that pretty well sets the scene as the
main character's lover has walked out on him. A boy enters his life. Who
is
he?

Mr. MAUPIN: He's a boy who lives in the snowy depths of Wisconsin who is a
fan of Gabriel Noone. Gabriel Noone himself is a radio storyteller, a man
who
tells stories on NPR, as it happens, late at night, and has a bit of a cult
following around the country. And this little boy, who's 13 years old, has
fixated on the storyteller in such a way as to think of him in paternal
terms.
He hears this voice and relates to him. The child has a horrific past of
sexual abuse. And he connects with this storyteller in such a way that the
two of them are able to unload their hearts to each other, as it were.

GROSS: Their connection is really on the telephone 'cause they're in
different places.

Mr. MAUPIN: That's right.

GROSS: And Gabriel is somebody who never really wanted to be a father
figure,
but he's becoming a father figure to this young boy. What are the most
pleasant surprises for Gabriel about becoming a father figure?

Mr. MAUPIN: I began to pursue this particular story line because at the age
of 50 or so, I began to realize that I was actually having paternalistic
feelings about other people in my life. I really can truly say that I
myself,
like Gabriel Noone, have never wanted to have a child. I've never missed
that
because of the life I've led as a gay man. But I do have feelings that
approach paternalism that I felt towards, in particular, a godson that Terry
and I have up in Inverness County--up in Inverness, Marin County, that we've
both known since he was seven years old and remarkably mature kid that has
had
amazing conversations with me. When Terry and I broke up, it was Nick--Nick
was the one that we needed to explain ourselves to. And there have been
other
people in my life--gay men--younger gay men who--towards whom I feel this
different kind of love that I've never really expressed, because I haven't
been old enough to express it, or I haven't had children.

GROSS: Now one thing that Gabriel, your character, runs up against is that
he
starts thinking that this boy he's communicating with on the phone might not
actually exist.

Mr. MAUPIN: Yes. I hope we won't go too much beyond this in the
discussion.

GROSS: That's about where I was going to end.

Mr. MAUPIN: Yeah. I want this thing to be a ride for people. "The Night
Listener" kind of grew out of a feeling that I've had for many years, that I
wanted to write something that accomplished what "Vertigo" did for me when I
was 14 years old, the age of Pete, as it happens. I was so overwhelmed by
this film that was about passion and obsession and love and loss, this deep

loss, sense of loss that was all wrapped up in a mystery story, that for
years
I thought I would really love to accomplish the same thing, a sort of
thriller
of the heart that compels people to read, because a mystery is unfolding but
digs rather deeply into the human condition and reveals things about the
soul
of the writer, and hopefully the souls of the readers.

GROSS: Now Gabriel, your main character, does this radio serial. Did you
make him a radio person so that Gabriel would be an invisible presence in
people's lives, just as this boy is a kind of invisible presence in
Gabriel's
life?

Mr. MAUPIN: I did. That's very observant of you. That occurred to me into
the--well into the writing of it, that this was really about voices. It was
about the way in which voices soothe us and seduce us and allow our
fantasies
to grow.

When I was a kid and listened to radio serials back in the early '50s in
North
Carolina, they stimulated my imagination in a way that it hasn't been

stimulated since, because television and film basically are about staring
into
boxes. But voices can do anything. They can go anywhere and be anything,
and
we can construct whole worlds around them, because we have to, because
there's
nothing else there. You must have found this yourself, with people
imagining
things about you, just from hearing your voice on the radio.

GROSS: Yes, and they're always surprised when they meet me, because I look
nothing like the way they've constructed me in their minds.

Mr. MAUPIN: And it's something that can work very well in the context of a
suspense novel, because novels are about words, and we build those voices in
our heads as we read, and we build the faces for those faceless people as we
read.

GROSS: Did writing this book get you listening to the radio any differently
than you usually do?

Mr. MAUPIN: No. It really didn't. It got me to thinking about what it
would be like to perform on the radio. I realize that I've always written
in
order to imagine my future. If there's something that's not happening in my
life that I would like to have happening, I sometimes imagine myself in that
situation before it occurs. I imagined myself as coming out to my parents
in
"More Tales of the City" in a letter that a fictional character wrote to his
parents, and that, in turn, created a situation that enabled me to come out
to
my own parents.

The same thing happened with this novel in terms of my relationship to my
own
father. There is a character in "The Night Listener" who is based on, I
think
I can say safely, my own father, although I put him into completely
fictitious
circumstances, and after he'd read the novel, he called me up about six
weeks
ago, and told me how proud he was, how much he loved me. He completely
opened
up his heart to me in a way that he has not done, and what it did for me was
to make me do the same thing.

We were giggling on the phone to each other the other night like teen-agers.
It was amazing--these two old farts who'd finally reconciled with each other
and were able to accept each other as who we were. So that's what's
happened.

GROSS: What do you think he saw in this novel that hadn't struck him in
your
earlier work that made him open up to you like that?

Mr. MAUPIN: Well, I talk about the way I felt about losing my mother, which
was something that he and I have never talked about, and discussed the
moment
of that loss, and how it affected us both. The novel goes into the suicide
of
Gabriel's grandfather, which is something that was never discussed in the
family--I have a similar situation in my own family. My father said to me
rather touchingly, `I want you to know it wasn't as hard on me as you
thought
it was. I dealt with it. We just didn't talk about those things in those
days.'

So I've always used writing as a way of emptying my own heart to the people
I
love, and I do it through fiction. It's not non-fiction. I mean, it's
really
futile to say what's true and what isn't true about this novel, because it
changes from sentence to sentence. But what I do try to make true is the
emotions, and I have found from long experience that when I write about real
experience, I reach people more directly, because there's a ring of truth to
it that cannot be duplicated in any other way.

On the other hand, I am a completely instinctive storyteller. I want things
to have a shape, to build. I want there to be that eerie moment where
everyone shudders and says, `Oh, no! I can't believe he did that.' That's
my
instinct. That's what I'm happiest doing.

I read a piece recently by Christopher Isherwood in which he talked about
how
he had those two instincts, and they were constantly colliding, and
constantly
getting him in trouble, because people say, `Well, this is true. It must be
true. It must have happened to you.' No, you funnel things through your
own
emotions in order to make it seem true. And once you've accomplished that,
you've reached your purpose.

GROSS: My guest is Armistead Maupin. His new novel is called "The Night
Listener." More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Armistead Maupin is my guest. He's best-known for his "Tales of the
City" series. His new novel is called "The Night Listener."

You know, one of the things, obviously, that gives your novel the ring of
having some autobiography behind it is the fact that Gabriel, your main
character, is a storyteller, and his stories are serialized on the radio,
much
as your "Tales of the City" stories were serialized in newspapers.

Mr. MAUPIN: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And he describes his stories in a way that perfectly describes
"Tales
of the City."

Mr. MAUPIN: Hmm.

GROSS: He says, `My characters were a motley, but lovable bunch, people
caught in the supreme joke of modern life who were forced to survive by
making
families of their friends.'

Mr. MAUPIN: Hmm.

GROSS: Perfect description of "Tales of the City."

Mr. MAUPIN: Yeah, I'm having some fun there, obviously. I'd be a very coy
creature, indeed, if I didn't confess that I'm talking about myself there.

GROSS: Is that how you'd always describe "Tales," or did you kind of
crystalize that description for this book?

Mr. MAUPIN: No, I'd pretty much described it that way for a while. I had a
pretty strong sense of what I was doing with "Tales." And I must say I've
come to approach Gabriel Noone even more than when I began to write the

piece
because "The Night Listener" was the first novel ever to be serialized on
the
Internet in audio form prior to its publication. Salon.com has been running
it as a serial. It's also available as an unabridged CD. And so, in
essence,
I became Gabriel Noone in the actual recording of the novel, so that was
kind
of a thrill for me.

As you can tell, this whole novel is about the blurring between truth and
fiction, and what are we to believe in the end? How do we tell stories to
save our own lives? Because we all do it. Not just storytellers, every
person on the planet anecdotalizes his own life in order to explain himself
to
himself and to other people. And this is about how are we to believe those
stories. Who are we to trust? Gabriel Noone tells you from the very
beginning that he's an unreliable narrator. He says, `I'm a fabulist by
trade. I've spent my life looting my life for fiction, and I only save the
shiny stuff.' Well, that's a description of what I do. My memory of my life
is not accurate. I have only memories of stories that I have constructed
out
of my life. And the people who know me know this about me. I've tried to
be
fastidiously honest about who I am throughout my career, and to open up my
heart as much as possible. But when it comes to storytelling, I'm really
not
to be trusted.

GROSS: Now in the book, Gabriel's long-term lover has just left him. Jess,
his lover of about 10 years, has had AIDS for several years. But after he
starts taking the AIDS cocktail, when it appears his life will be longer
than
he expected, he leaves Gabriel. Why does he leave?

Mr. MAUPIN: Well, I couldn't even begin to analyze that beyond what's
written
in the book. But I think what I was trying to capture there was a very real
phenomenon that has happened because of protease inhibitors, people who
thought they did not have a life suddenly have one. And there are enormous
options that are open to them, and they want to be able to exercise those

options.

I can't speak for Terry--I mean, I won't speak for Terry. I probably could.
I know his so well, and we still love each other so much, but I know that he
felt that--Terry felt when he left that he needed the chance to find out who
he was separate from me now that he knew he was going to live. And because
I
was so socked into this cozy domesticity and used it to make myself feel
secure and safe about myself, things--you know, my own sense of who I was
fell
apart.

The amazing part about this story is that that first chapter, the one I just
read from, I was writing while I was in the midst of that pain. And the one
person who was encouraging me to write it was Terry. He said, `This is what
you do. Put it down on paper. Say what you feel. I don't care what you
say,
just put it down.' And then when the novel began to happen at Terry's
encouragement, he was always the one who came back to me and said--as he has
said for many, many years--`Oh, you're just at that point where you think
it's
no good, but you've got to keep writing.' And, of course, he's been the one
to promote and to--I mean, we remain business partners and family in the
most
extraordinary, loving kind of way. I can say with real honesty that we have
more love and respect for each other than--even then we had when we were
romantically involved. It's been four years since we split, and it gets
better every year because we know it's permanent now.

GROSS: You know, your character, Gabriel, is so upset when his lover, Jess,
leaves, and realizes that he'd been imagining that Jess would have died in
his
arms. And that, in fact, he'd been planning, even romanticizing, Jess'
death
to conceal the horror of losing him. Is that something you realized you'd
been doing, too?

Mr. MAUPIN: Yes, absolutely. I did realize that. And that was one of the
hardest things to write about. We all have to find ways to contain what
pain
we think is on the horizon for us. And for me, it was the thought of losing
Terry. It was enormous. And there had been models of this--you know, Paul
Monette's extraordinary account of the death of his lover, Roger, in
"Borrowed
Time." The people who were writing non-fiction at that time were really
capturing something extraordinary, the love between two men, where one of
them--or maybe both of them, has a limited amount of life left. So in some
way, I was embracing it long before I needed to. I mean, wasn't that the
great, profound, sort of cosmic joke of protease inhibitors? This thing
that
people assumed was final and for so long proved not to be.

You know, people used to say to me that they were certain that I stopped
writing "Tales of the City" because Michael Tolliver had been described as
being HIV-positive, and they knew that I couldn't write anymore because he
would be surely be dead by now. And that used to really bother me because
Michael tested positive at the same time Terry tested positive. It's why I
made Michael positive. And Terry was still alive, and Terry is still alive
after all these years. And this terrible thing that we assumed would happen
did not happen. So there's a message even in that: that you can't count on
anything. You can't count on death, and you can't count on life.

GROSS: Do you think there's the sense within a relationship when you expect
that someone won't be able to survive for very long, that that means neither
one of you will have the opportunity to betray each other so that there's
this
kind of trust that maybe goes beyond what regular relationships have because
time is so limited and you expect never to be betrayed?

Mr. MAUPIN: There may be. I don't think that's a fair assumption to make
about any relationship. I mean, the possibility of one person dying
shouldn't
really change the nature of the relationship. I suppose that the safest
thing
I could say about is that when you think that somebody is going to die, you
don't spend a lot of time being bored with each other.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. MAUPIN: And in some ways, that was an amazing feature of that
knowledge.
We packed our lives full of things to do. We took trips. We went to Lesbos
with our friend, Steve Beery, who died six years ago. We bought a farmhouse
in New Zealand to have the experience of it, to know what it felt like to
live
out in the country and to be separate from the world. We found out, and
sold
the farmhouse. But...

GROSS: What didn't you like about that?

Mr. MAUPIN: The commute was a killer, you know. It was a very--you know,
it
was a 14-hour plane flight, and it got to be rather existential. We were
shipping hundreds of books to New Zealand and, you know, really setting down
roots there in a very odd way, given that we felt Terry had a very limited
amount of time. But I'm so glad we did it. And it's a lesson to be
remembered about life now. We still have to seize the moment even when we
think we have--we're pretty sure we have more moments than we counted on.

GROSS: Armistead Maupin will be back in the second half of the show. His
new
novel is called "The Night Listener." I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH
AIR.

(Credits)

GROSS: This is NPR, National Public Radio.

Coming up, staying friends and business partners after no longer being
lovers.
We talk with Armistead Maupin about the relationship that inspired part of
his
new novel. And Maureen Corrigan reviews "When We Were Orphans," the new
novel
by the author of "The Remains of the Day."

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with Armistead Maupin.
He's
best known for his "Tales of the City," which started as a newspaper serial
and was expanded into a series of novels and two TV miniseries. His new
semi-autobiographical novel is called "The Night Listener." It's about a
writer who serializes his stories on the radio. His life is changed when
his
long-term lover leaves him, and a mysterious 13-year-old fan enters his
life.

This novel seems to me, in part, to be about the main character's
insecurities. And maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I figure perhaps
they're some of your insecurities as well. For instance, the writer in your
novel says `If Jess could walk out on the myth he'd help create, the real me
must be someone truly unlovable.' And like the lover in your novel, Terry,
who was your lover for many years and remains your business partner, really
helped you in all the business aspects of writing.

Mr. MAUPIN: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: Marketing the books; setting up the Web site; getting the deals,
plus,
you know...

Mr. MAUPIN: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...reading the fiction and commenting on it and giving you
feedback--I
mean all of that. So is that, like, an insecurity that you feel you shared
with your ...(unintelligible) or...

Mr. MAUPIN: Well, yeah, to a certain degree. We go all sorts of dark
places
when we're breaking up with someone. There's no question about that. And I
think that was my way of reminding myself not to believe in that myth. I
think the hard part was losing the reality of my life temporarily, in terms
of not having that daily reinforcement from Terry. To this day I value most
the people I love; my little circle of friends. That's the real thing for
me. When this sort of madness of publicity tours descends upon me and I
feel
really alienated from myself because I feel that I'm a commodity on some
level, I retreat to the sort of bedrock knowledge of that; that I'm loved by
people who actually know me; who know who I am, because I'm never fully
convinced that my readers completely understand who I am, warts and all. I
probably have a way of glamorizing myself to such a degree that I don't feel
that they totally know who I am. So, yeah, there was some of that
insecurity.

I have heightened all of Gabriel's insecurities. I mean, I took mine and
went
even deeper. There's a place in there where Gabriel says he feels his--that
he might have broken into the temple of literature through an unlocked
basement window. Well, that's a little bit the way I feel about having
become
a novelist by way of a daily newspaper serial. But it's--would be a little
disingenuous to say that that's completely how I feel. I know that I'm
good.
I mean, I know I've worked very hard to become a writer over the last 25
years. And I know what I know how to do. So I'm not that insecure. But,
you
know, your lead guy needs to be neurotic. It's more interesting. I mean,
that's what Jimmy Stewart tells us about "Vertigo." That film is so
interesting to me today, still, because I'm the age that Jimmy Stewart was
then, and I get it. I see what's going on and I realize how complicated
this
mystery story becomes because of his neurosis.

GROSS: You know, one of the things I love about "Vertigo" is that it's
about
finding what you think is your ideal in another person, realizing that that
person doesn't quite exist, but forcing them to become that ideal that
you've
constructed.

Mr. MAUPIN: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

GROSS: You know, forcing somebody to be the person who you've imagined them
to be...

Mr. MAUPIN: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...or you've been misled into thinking that they are.

Mr. MAUPIN: And there's, of course, a parallel for that in "The Night
Listener."

GROSS: Right.

Mr. MAUPIN: And--where Gabriel has to ask himself, `Does it matter? Does
it
really matter who I'm talking to, in the end, if I've connected in some
way?'

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. MAUPIN: And I think the nature of love--I mean, what I've come
through--I
mean, what I've really learned out of the experience of losing someone that
I
lived with for 10 years--or least thinking I was losing him was that when
all
else was stripped away; when the coziness of our domestic life was gone;
when
we weren't sleeping in the same bed; when I couldn't count on him being
there
every day, I was left with the love that we had for each other. And it was
still there. It was in the room with me. And so we found a way to work
through this. There was an account in the San Francisco Chronicle--a very
crude account trying to link "The Night Listener" with my own life and ended
up making it sounding like an `airing of dirty laundry,' I think was the
term
they used--almost as--like a vindictive act. Well, anyone who's read the
novel realizes that it's really about how two people make it through to the
other side; how love becomes permanent.

GROSS: What's it been like for you to be single again?

Mr. MAUPIN: Freeing, in many ways, especially since I still feel the
connection of family to Terry and the people I love. I don't feel alone in
that regard. But there's suddenly the opportunity to look at people on the
street and think, hmm, you know, or talk to somebody at a book signing and
ask
him out for a drink afterwards. And, you know, it's a second childhood, of
sorts. I'm rather enjoying it. And I--the pressure's off somehow. I've
had
my great love. I did it. It's still here. I know what that domestic thing
felt like and it was great most of the time. Don't get me wrong. I loved
it.
But at the same time, it's kind of nice to have the house to myself at
times;
to know that I don't have to, you know, discuss with another person what
we're
going to eat that--for dinner or where we're going the next day or how we're
going to spend the weekend. There's a certain amount of freedom to be found
in that.

GROSS: You know, Armistead, I know that as we're talking that Terry
Anderson,
who is the inspiration for the Jess character in your novel--he's your
former
lover and still business partner. He's been in the control room the whole
time listening to the interview.

Mr. MAUPIN: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: So I was wondering if would be OK if we, maybe, invited him to the
studio so I could ask him a few things about what it's like to be the
inspiration for a character in your novel.

Mr. MAUPIN: Sure, it's OK with me. Well, it looks like--yeah, he's
signaling
that he'd be glad to, so...

GROSS: Well, why don't we take a break here while Terry comes in? And
we'll
be back with Armistead Maupin and Terry Anderson after a break. This is
FRESH
AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Armistead Maupin, and he's the author of "Tales of the
City." His new novel is called "The Night Listener." And one of the
characters in the novel, the character of Jess, is inspired by Armistead's
former lover and still-business partner, Terry Anderson, to whom the book is
dedicated. So we've invited Terry in to the studio.

Terry, welcome back to FRESH AIR.

Mr. TERRY ANDERSON: Well, thank you, Terry. It's good to hear you again.

GROSS: Terry, I'm wondering what it's like for you to have--to be the
inspiration for this character who's the cause of a lot of pain in the novel
because this character has walked out on the main character. There--he no
longer wants to be lovers. He wants to kind of explore a little more
independently his own life now that he knows he's gonna live longer than he
expected as a result of the new AIDS drugs. So what's it like to have
inspired this character and to read it in the novel?

Mr. ANDERSON: I think inspired is the operative word because there's...

GROSS: It's not you.

Mr. ANDERSON: It's not me. It's not me. Rumors of my piercings are
greatly
exaggerated. There's some similarities, you know. Yes, I have gone through
a
life-altering experience of thinking I was going to die and then giving it a
reprieve, which is a--profoundly changed the way I view the world. So
it's--I
was glad to have Armistead have an outlet for it creatively. I think I
revere
writers and I revere the creative process, so I never wanted to interfere
with
it.

Unlike his other novels where he's read them to me as he's written them, I
asked that he not let me read this until he finished it because I did not
want
to get in the way. If I saw something that really made me cringe, I didn't
want to be responsible for ruining his process. So I sort of said, you
know,
`Finish the book. Let me read it. And then I'll take what I don't like
out.'
So there's things that are very different about the two of us, but there's
some very--I think an emotional truth that's present in both of us. I mean,
we have this profound experience of saying, `Hey, I'm not going to die. And
what do I do with my life now.'

Mr. MAUPIN: And I could have never have written the novel if he had not
given
me that permission; if he could--if he had not said, you know--given me the
freedom to work all the way through it. And it was very strange because I
didn't know what the end of it was. I was in the middle of the--of my
feelings when I was first trying to write it. And I thought--and much as
Gabriel is, he keeps--throughout the novel; throughout "The Night Listener"
he
says, `How could I live this story if I don't know what the ending is?'
He's
so used to constructing things for himself. And for once, he doesn't have
an
ending.

Mr. ANDERSON: I think it's a risk that you take when anytime you get
involved
with a creative person--anybody who gets involved with a creative person
runs
the risk of having their life looted. And I--by the time this book was
written I knew full well that that was possible. It's always been the way
it's been. I mean, we've been lesbians in one book and, you know, gay
couple
in other books. And, you know, if he writes a book about dogs, next, I'm
sure
we'll be puppies or something. But it's what you do as part of the process.
You know that he has to have some of his source material. And if I can be
that, then I'm flattered.

GROSS: Did you ever feel while you were reading the book the first time
like
saying to Armistead, `Oh, sure. That's your interpretation of it. But
that's not the way I saw it. Here's the way I saw it.'

Mr. ANDERSON: Well, you know, the whole book is one side of a story. I
mean,
it has to be the way it works--is that a fiction writer writes about his
experience. It's not my experience. So I know that that's always going to
be
his side of a story, and a good side. It's a love letter to me. I mean, I
feel very flattered that he has written such a sweet book that's a fun read.
It's not--you know, I don't take it--how do I say this? Without sounding
like, you know--a bitchy quality to it. It's not. It's a very loving
portrait. It's still one side of a story.

GROSS: Has it been at all difficult for you both to remain professional
partners and good friends and not be lovers? I mean there's a lot of former
lovers who--you know, it's kind of all or nothing at all.

Mr. MAUPIN: It's not that way with us. In the beginning it was tough to
sort
of sever that part of it; to sort of say, `OK,' you know, `the romantic part
of it will not be there.' But the reality was that we were always linking
up
and crying all over each other or holding hands or hugging or--we still do
that. We still connect in those ways. We are still two deeply loving
people.
And it's--I treasure that we've come through to the other side.

Mr. ANDERSON: Armistead and I are and remain soul mates. We have always
been. I think we were before we even met, frankly. We know what each
other's
thinking. We know each other better than anybody. I'm involved with
someone
else that I'm very much in love with now. And I sometimes worry about how
he
will fit--feel like he fits into us because we are such a couple. Armistead
and I will always be a couple.

I think the funny thing about breaking up was our friends' reactions to it,
saying, `Oh, you can't possibly break up. You're the best couple we know.'
And then the sort of, frankly, asinine kind of assumptions they'd make about
how you're supposed to break up. `You can't talk to him. You can't
possibly
have any connection with him 'cause you have to have time to grieve it, you
know. Don't even talk to him. Cut off all relations.' We didn't do it
that
way because we know each other. We know--there's a core at which--there's a
core level of love that is important to us. And we--that's something we
believed in even when the romantic part or before my own needs changed or
whatever--for whatever reasons I left, which are numerous and far too
personal
to go into, we didn't do it by the book. And that was part of the thing
that
sort of threw our friends.

Mr. MAUPIN: Well, not our close friends. Some of them. There was a
difficult time, I think, for a while. But I think most people understand it
now. It's--the opportunity to be able to love the people that Terry loves
is
something that I've discovered. I mean, we were--Terry and I were in London
on a book tour. And it was late and night and we were sort of
trying--feeling
slightly insane in the way you do when you're on book tours. And Terry got
on
the phone to his boyfriend and started talking to him. And I suddenly
wanted
very much to get on the phone and tell the boyfriend that Terry had been
talking about him to other people and that he missed him. And I knew that
it
was important for him to get back to him. And I--there was a time when that
would have been unimaginable to me that I could pull that off. And it
wasn't
an effort this time. It was something that I truly wanted because it just
meant that the love was going off in that many more directions.

Mr. ANDERSON: I think people paint themselves into a box a lot around
relationships about how they're supposed to be. And to stop doing that and
look at how you want to live your life free of all the societal expectations
is a great freedom. And I feel very lucky that--I think that's part of
being
gay is that view of being an outsider--is that it allows you to not view
things within the box and sort of notice the paradox of life, you know--how
you can still love somebody but not want to live with them, you know. It's
about expanding your notions of what relationships are. That's been the
best
part of this whole thing with Armistead is we've been able to maintain a
very, very solid relationship even though it's changed forms.

GROSS: Was separating made any more difficult by the fact that you are a
pretty well-known couple? You know, because you were together; because
you've
done a lot of book tours together--you know, you're--you know, you're a
pretty
well-known couple...

Mr. MAUPIN: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...and so you have this, like, image to live up to.

Mr. ANDERSON: Yeah.

GROSS: And then if you decide to separate, it's like, well, you know,
doesn't
the public have a vote?

Mr. MAUPIN: No, they don't. That's the great thing about our lives. I
mean,
what's going on between us is the strongest thing in my life. It's stronger
than my career.

Mr. ANDERSON: There was a pressure on me, to be honest with you when I
started thinking `I need to stretch my wings. I need to have some time to
myself.' I was thinking of the number of people I would disappoint. We
have
a friend who's an actor--Broadway actor who, when I called him to say that I
was doing this, he's like, `You're my heroEs. You can't be breaking up.'
It
was a very odd position to be in to sort of have to make that consideration.
You know, when Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche--I just read that they were,
you
know, breaking up. I thought, `I understand the pressure they must--they
both
must have felt about being a symbol. Not simply being a couple. I'm not
allowed the freedom of just being a couple in a relationship, but also to be
a
symbol of something larger. And we were that for some people. And as
flattering as it is, there was a pressure on my part to sort of say, `Stay
with it longer,' to not hurt Armistead and also not hurt a larger public.

GROSS: Terry, when you read a novel like "The Night Listener" by, you know,
a person who you're so close to, do you read it differently than you read
another novel? I mean, are you...

Mr. ANDERSON: Yes, with one eye closed.

Mr. MAUPIN: That's sort of the way I read it, by the way. In the past I've
always had great luxury in sort of flipping through my novels and enjoying a
paragraph that I'm especially proud of or something. And with "The Night
Listener" it's a little bit harder because there was stuff that gets so
close
to times when I was hurting that I just don't--it's hard to do. The first
read of this novel was that way. I really had to sort of like put it down
and
come back to it a few times. It gets easier after you sort of get some
distance on it because I realize that no one has the personal investment in
the material than I do because there are some very autobiographical parts of
this book. So it is bound to strike me--I can rake over it with a
fine-tooth comb much better than anyone else can, so I have to remember than
when I read it.

But upon the third reading of the book when we were sitting down to do the
audio version of it and deciding what was going to stay in and, you know,
what
was going to go and how are we going to produce it, I though, you know, it's
a
good book. It's a good yarn. I'm glad to be a part of it and it doesn't
seem
as--I don't flinch quite as much on the second reading.

Mr. ANDERSON: And I told him that Russell Crowe could play him in the
movie,
so he's...

GROSS: When you and Armistead--Terry, when you and Armistead broke off and
you decided, you know, you needed more freedom and some independence and
probably also to figure out who you were outside of that orbit, did you want
to leave the business, too, temporarily and just have a business that was
separate from that relationship?

Mr. ANDERSON: No, I think I've had--I felt invested in our relationship and
the business as well. We've been so linked in that way for so long. I know
it. I've been doing--I've been working in this field--"The Maupin
Fields"(ph) for a lot of years now, you know. So it would be like starting
over. My mid-life crisis did not involve a career change.

GROSS: Armistead, given how complicated semi-autobiographical fiction is,
do
you think you'd ever write a memoir?

Mr. MAUPIN: No, ma'am.

Mr. ANDERSON: I hope not.

Mr. MAUPIN: Please, no. Well, you know, there's the--that's why I like
fiction. A memoir really does require the truth in a major way. And what
is
the truth when it comes down to your memories? It's a completely subjective
thing. At least I have a certain remove in "The Night Listener." I can say
these are fictional characters. This is about two people that I've
invented.
Terry and I have even, actually, come to see them that way. You can get
some
distance on it. But when you're writing an autobiography, you've really got
to get every single thing right. And the hardest thing about writing this
book, for me was I was desperately afraid that I would hurt someone that I
loved, and that includes just about everybody in the book. I'd--I really--I
wanted to tap the truth of those emotions, but I did not want to hurt a
single
soul in the process of doing it.

GROSS: Well, I thank you both very much.

Mr. MAUPIN: Thank you.

Mr. ANDERSON: Thank you, Terry.

GROSS: Armistead Maupin is the author of the new novel "The Night
Listener."
The novel is dedicated to Terry Anderson.

Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews a new novel by the author of "The
Remains
of the Day." This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel "When We Were Orphans"
TERRY GROSS, host:

Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro has said that he thinks nostalgia is an underrated
emotion. In his novels, including the best-seller "The Remains of the Day,"
Ishiguro explores the rewards as well as the destructive powers of
nostalgia.
Book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review of his latest meditation on
nostalgia, a novel called "When We Were Orphans."

MAUREEN CORRIGAN:

For the first 200 pages or so of Kazuo Ishiguro's "When We Were Orphans," I
felt like I was in the presence of greatness. Then the novel wobbled.
Lurid
surrealism replaced elegant ingeniousness and I had my doubts. Then the
story
righted itself. And, honestly, I delayed reading the final three pages for
an
entire day because I was so reluctant to leave the world Ishiguro had
created.

If "When We Were Orphans" is, as I think, a lightly flawed masterpiece, even
its imperfections are interesting because they're the consequence not of
laziness or lack of skill on Ishiguro's part, but of the kind of high-stakes
gambling with literary form that only restless, serious writers are willing
to dare.

As he proved in "The Remains of the Day," Ishiguro has nailed the voice of
the
self-deluding, first-person narrator. Our specimen here is named
Christopher
Banks, and when the novel begins in 1930, he's established himself as one of
England's great detectives. Ishiguro is paying homage to Agatha Christie,
Dorothy Sayers and other golden-age mystery writers. It's evident from the
way his own novel unfolds that he recognizes the classic detective novels
written between the wars were not mere puzzle stories, but in a fumbling
way,
idealistic, fictional attempts to set the world right. And that's what
Christopher attempts to do on a personal and global scale.

Generous chunks of Christopher's erratic narrative are devoted to his
strange
childhood in Shanghai during the early years of the 20th century. His
father
was employed by a British import-export firm that made a dirty fortune in
opium. And probably, his beautiful mother became a zealous campaigner
against the opium trade. The foreign colony in Shanghai where Christopher
grew up was a contained paradise. And Ishiguro devotes enchanting passages
to the games of make believe that Christopher indulged in with his best
friend, a Japanese boy.

Christopher's quaint life abruptly turned horrific, however, when first his
father and then his mother disappeared. He was shipped back to England by
the firm and raised in boarding schools. As a grown man and professional
detective, he vows to return to China during the Sino-Japanese war to tackle
his greatest, unsolved case, the mystery of the missing parents.

As I said, Ishiguro has nailed the voice of the self-deluding, first-person
narrator. And it's that voice of Christopher's, stiff, wistful, deferential
and defensive that makes this novel so effecting. It's also a voice that's
hard to capture in a quote because Ishiguro's genius lies in modulation; the
way over several pages he'll emotionally shade Christopher's monologue
from, say, a tone of vivid excitement to gray restraint. Here are some
snippets from the long section of the novel where Christopher recalls the
moment he discovered his mother was missing. The woman May Lee(ph) he
refers
to was his nanny.

`The house appeared to be empty. Then, as I was standing bewildered in the
entrance hall, I heard a giggling sound. As I peered in the doorway, May
Lee
looked at me and made another giggling sound. It dawned on me then that May
Lee was weeping, and I knew, as I had known throughout that punishing run
home, that my mother was gone. And a cold fury rose within me toward May
Lee,
who for all the fear and respect she had commanded from me over the years, I
now realized was an imposter; someone not in the least capable of
controlling
this bewildering world that was unfolding all around me. I stood in the
doorway and stared at her with the utmost contempt.'

If nothing else, that passage perhaps gives you a sense of the nightmarish
aspect of "When We Were Orphans." Throughout the novel, Ishiguro
relentlessly
makes the familiar strange. When Christopher returns to Shanghai as an
adult,
his childhood home has been remodeled. Whole floors and stairways moved. A
slum section known as `the Warren' transforms into a mythical underworld for
Christopher; a Homeric hell he fights through to find his parents.

Even the genre of this faux detective novel mutates into other period forms
such as the cliff-hanger serial, the Eric Ambler-type spy thriller, the
society romance. Not all these mutations make sense, and yet even when this
story occasionally became too weird for my tastes, it remained absolutely
emotionally absorbing. The most absurd scene of all, where Christopher
wades
through bombed-out building after bombed-out building in Shanghai to reach
the
house where, he's convinced, his parents are still being held captive after
30
years, well, that's the scene I can't stop thinking about. When somebody we
love dies, we often say `we lost that person.' In "When We Were Orphans,"
Ishiguro, a master at mimicking and probing polite speech, uncovers the
terror
of grief and the raw yearning glossed over in that polite metaphor.

GROSS: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University.

(Credits given)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.