Armistead Maupin, the famed author of “Tales of the City,” will discuss and sign copies of “Logical Family: A Memoir” on Tuesday at the West Hollywood City Council Chambers.
In “Logical Family” Maupin chronicles his odyssey from the old South to freewheeling San Francisco, and his evolution from a curious young man to a ground-breaking writer and gay rights pioneer.
Born in the mid-twentieth century and raised in the heart of conservative North Carolina, Armistead Maupin lost his virginity to another man “on the very spot where the first shots of the Civil War were fired.” Realizing that the South was too small for him, Maupin, son of a traditional lawyer, packed his belongings into his Opel GT (including a beloved portrait of a Confederate ancestor), and took to the road in search of adventure.
It was a journey that would lead him from a homoerotic Navy initiation ceremony in the jungles of Vietnam to that strangest of strange lands: San Francisco in the early 1970s. Reflecting on the profound impact those closest to him have had on his life, in his memoir Maupin shares his candid search for his “logical family,” the people he could call his own.
“Sooner or later, we have to venture beyond our biological family to find our logical one, the one that actually makes sense for us,” he writes. “We have to, if we are to live without squandering our lives.”
From his loving relationship with his palm-reading Grannie who insisted Maupin was the reincarnation of her artistic bachelor cousin, Curtis, to an awkward conversation about girls with President Richard Nixon in the Oval Office, Maupin tells of the extraordinary individuals and situations that shaped him into one of the most influential writers of the last century.
Tickets to the event are $25 ($29 including tax) and include a copy of the book. They can be purchased online. The event takes place at 7 p.m. at the City Council Chambers, which is at 625 N. San Vicente Blvd. in West Hollywood. Parking is available in the five-story structure behind the building.