The Night Listener

I finished reading The Night Listener, by Armistead Maupin, at work today. I had read the book previously and remembered the outline of the story, but I was glad that I had forgotten the twists and turns that it took on the way and so was pleasantly surprised while reading it again.
I had also forgotten that it is linked with the Tales of the City books, the main character in this story had a bookkeeper, Anna, who was a child in the Tales of the City stories and her twin brother and lesbian parents are also mentioned in the book. This endeared the story to me even more, as I had either forgotten this element or not made the connection previously.

Maupin writes in such an engaging way and had a special gift of making you a part of the story but placing it in a certain time frame. He does this in almost all his books by mentioning an event that you can actually place in "reality" and which you can almost always think, "I was in such-and-such a place when that happened" In this book it was the mention of The Real World, an MTV series in which a group of strangers were housed in the same massive apartment and the cameras taped how they got on. Sort of a Big Brother, but with the "stars" not being confined to a building. The series mentioned was the one set in San Francisco, aptly enough as that is where the book is based. I remember watching the original series of The Real World (in New York) and the third series in San Francisco. And, even if the events mentioned are before your time, or just hot ones you were aware of, with a little research you can place your own (or your parents' etc) location at the time, making it easier to identify with the time. I guess a lot of books, TV series' and movies do this but I have noticed it more with Maupin than any other medium.

In The Night Listener I also empathised with the main character, Gabriel Noone. Don't I always? I guess this is for a few reasons but the main one being that Noone is, in his own way, a very introverted character who likes to play the put-upon role a bit too much, wants the focus to be on him only to realise that the world goes on without him, that he isn't the only focus of his friends' and family's lives. He even has the same sexual peccadillos as me:
"... I had accepted my disinterest in fucking, though I had always felt something less than a true fag for my failure to achieve either top- or bottom-hood."
That sounds just like me. I've been told that I just need a good teacher, and I guess I agree (applications in writing please!!).

Another thing that Noone communicates while he narates his story is something that many gay men and women would probably identify with, when he talked about:
"...getting as close to the truth as I could without tipping my hand. "You learn to camouflage when you are a baby homo. You learn to tip-toe around things.""
This describes exactly how I felt when I was a child (and a teenager and a young adult). As soon as I realised I wasn't "the norm" like every one else, (at around the age of 7 for those of you interested, though I still didn't really know "what" I was), I felt that I had to be guarded with everything I said and did just in case I gave something away, just in case someone else figured out that I was different. That is when I closetted myself, and not just from letting the world know that I was gay, but from letting the world know ANYTHING about me, just in case. It wasn't until I was 18 that I trusted anyone with the information that I was gay, only to be let down by that person eventually. Eleven years of acting a certain way are bound to affect the way you act later in life and I guess I haven't changed all that much. I still find it difficult to let people see my true emotions, and when I do I just get let down again and again.
Late in the book there is a scene where Noone is remembering when he visited his mother in hospital just before she died and they talked and shared information that they had never shared before. When I read this all I could think of was the time I had visited my mother in hospital before she had died, by this time she had been too ill to realise truly that the family was there and so unable to communicate effectively, she barely registered my presence. I had received no "secret information" from her and no last words of wisdom, just an image burned into my memory of a sick woman slipping slowly away with nothing that could be done by anyone, not that anyone seemed to be trying. This was one of many moments in the book when I struggled to hold back the tears ( which wouldn't have been good, considering I read most of the book at the reception desk at work!). If I had been at home I would not have held them back, I would have let them flow readily.

Also late on in the book is a section where Noone talks about his father's refusal to discuss Noone's grandfather's death. Something which I also identified with. My father died when I was 7, and so I have very few memories of him, just bits and pieces. I was always brought to believe that you do not talk about the dead, and so I was unable to ask questions about him, about his personality, his likes and dislikes, his feelings for me. When my mum died, I felt that I lost the chance to really find out about the parent I had lost so early. I have my sisters and my brother I could ask, but they will only have limited information and I still have that nagging feeling that I shouldn't ask, and even stupidly, that I don't have the right to ask, to drag these feelings up in people who were so much closer to him than I. I know this is wrong, but, not being emotionally communicative with my family as it is, this is a step to far for me at the moment. Maybe I should make this another of my New Year Resolutions.

One thing I did find annoying about the book was the sharing of a memory by two separate characters in two separate books. In The Night Listener, Noone talks about when he was a child and on a camping trip with the Scouts. He recounts that:
"The only break in my misery came after a huge thunderstrom.... that drenched us to the bone. We were rescued by some Yankees at a neighbouring campsite... who shared their food and dry clothes with us.... That night, as the rain poured down, we joined them around the campfire. One of them put his arm across my shoulders...., and urged me to lean against him for warmth. The comfort I felt was a revalation."
This story is almost identitcal to one told by Michael Tolliver (I think) in a previous Tales of the City book, the passage of which I cannot find at the moment [damn]. This kind of spoiled the imagery for me as I had already placed Mouse's face in this story and could still see it there while Noone was recounting his memory. Maupin also made this mistake in a brief description early in the book, though I cannot for the life of me find this either to quote it now.

Overall though, I really enjoyed reading the book again, and I highly recommend it especially if you have enjoyed the Tales books. I have made a promise to myself to purchase Maybe The Moon and Michael Tolliver Lives, the only two Maupin books that I know of that I have yet to read. I have also just been checking on Wikipedia and it states that Maupin is writing another book with the Tales characters in, so I hope that this is a truth and not just a Wikipedism.