Tag: Favorite Literary Character

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Favorite Literary Character, by Phillip Hoyle

For me to choose my favorite literary character seems as impossible as to choose my favorite activity from a three-week road trip. I’ve never been able to select just one because I usually prize too many memories. So when I consider that in first grade I began reading about Dick and Jane, in the fifth grade was introduced to the novel when Mrs. Schaffer read to us of Jim Hawkins, Billy Bones, and Long John Silver in Treasure Island, in eighth grade read my first novel which I checked out from the school library, James Fennimore Cooper’s The Spy with its Betty Flanagan and Harvey Birch, and after that never quit reading book after book to the point that in my mid-thirties I was reading five books a week—most of them novels—I’m hard pressed to choose any single character as my favorite. There have been so many!

A few years ago when in my writing I realized I was working on a novel and not simply the collection of short stories I had imagined, I came to the awful realization that although I had read hundreds of novels and recalled from them plenty of characters, scenes, and situations, I had never seriously studied the novel as literature, had never read one under the tutelage of a professor, and had never analyzed the plot, character, or even writing style that makes some stories work so well. So with M.H. Abrams Glossary of Literary Terms in hand, I set out to learn about these things. I began analyzing short stories; then turned my attentions to the novel. I would read a novel and if I liked it enough select one

aspect of it to further study. For example, in one novel I compared and contrasted the opening sentences of each chapter. In another book I found and compared the contents of each place the author changed from present tense to past. In yet another novel I searched to find the dramatic turning points in the main character’s transformation. I went on to analyze how secondary or even one-dimensional characters entered and left novels. I was serious in my pursuit of this knowledge.


Then I turned to books I’d read in the past. I analyzed The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, House Made of Dawn by M. Scott Momaday. Somewhere along the way realized I had mostly read novels to enjoy exotic and unusual experiences and to find out what happened. This proclivity was bolstered by my habit of reading murder mysteries in which the big tasks is to figure out ‘who dun it’ as if that were the whole point of reading stories. That seemed my dominant approach. Finally I turned to Ethan Mordden and reread and analyzed several of his Buddies cycle that opened with what seemed to me appropriately titled I’ve a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore. I liked novels that told the stories of many different people. My novel search for understanding was moving me far away from how I had read them before and, like Mordden’s title far away from all my home state represented. And then there was the really big question: why was I trying to write a novel and how could I do it without making a big fool of myself?

I recall a voice teacher who seemed friends with a woman character Natasha Rostova in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace while I couldn’t even recall or pronounce the name of any character from my reading of that monstrously long novel. I recall in December my daughter-in-law reading Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre for the umpteenth time. She said “It’s like a new story,” and she just loves Jane Eyre, probably her favorite literary character. Now I read Bronte and enjoyed the characters but never developed such a relationship with any of them. I just don’t get into character friendships, at least not easily.

Still I really have like some characters. First, Natty Bumpo in James Fennimore Cooper’s “Leatherstocking Tales” although I don’t recall if I respected him; second, Johnny in The Light in the Forest by Conrad Richter although I may really have been more interested in his Shawnee Indian cousin; third, the first-person narrator in Ambidextrous: The Secret Lives of Children by Felice Picano although I didn’t really like him so much as I recognized in him a character who as a child was bisexual like I was; fourth, Bud in Ethan Mordden’s stories, again another first person narrator who as a writer seemed as much the author of the story as its protagonist; and finally, Will in City of Shy Hunters by Tom Spanbauer although very much like in the cases of Picano and Mordden I may have liked the author as much as the character. Still Will became my literary friend because he came from an uncertain past, made creative adaptations to his surroundings, felt enamored of Native Americans, accepted into his life persons whose values widely differed from his own, worked hard, and introduced me to more exotic worlds of gay America, meaning in many important ways, more realistic descriptions of gay life.

But since I ended my list with Will from the Spanbauer book, I’ll say a few things about him who certainly has become an important character in my life if not a favorite (and be warned I’m speaking as much or more about Spanbuaer as I am about his great character Will). Will trusts people. Will does not try to fool himself. Will reveals his faults as well as his ideals and dreams. Will eats with sinners. He survives in the city, thrives there, values important aspects of his life, idealizes some individuals and loves them when they are too real to be idealized. He ekes out a living, is taken advantage of, finds friendship, and in general, builds a meaningful life in a hard and rough city.

And I thrill when Will says:

“Only your body can know another body.

“Because you see it, you think you know it. Your eyes think they know. Seeing Fiona’s body for so long, I thought I knew her body.

“I’ll tell you something, so you’ll know: It’s not the truth. Only your body can know another body.

“My hand on her back, my hand in her hand, her toes up against my toes, Fiona’s body wasn’t sections of a body my eyes had pieced together. In my arms was one long uninterrupted muscle, a body breathing life, strong and real.” (In City of Shy Hunters, p. 184) Will is really real; his friends are real. I am his friend.

© Denver, 22 June 2014

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Favorite Literary Character by Phillip Hoyle

For me to choose my favorite literary character seems as impossible as to choose my favorite activity from a three-week road trip. I’ve never been able to select just one because I usually prize too many memories. So when I consider that in first grade I began reading about Dick and Jane, in the fifth grade was introduced to the novel when Mrs. Schaffer read us of Jim Hawkins, Billy Bones, and Long John Silver in Treasure Island, in eighth grade read my first novel which I checked out from the school library, James Fennimore Cooper’s The Spy with its Betty Flanagan and Harvey Birch, and after that never quit reading book after book to the point that in my mid-thirties I was reading five books a week—most of them novels—I’m hard pressed to choose any single character as my favorite. There have been so many!

A few years ago when in my writing I realized I was working on a novel and not simply the collection of short stories I had imagined, I came to the awful realization that although I had read hundreds of novels and recalled from them plenty of characters, scenes, and situations, I had never seriously studied the novel as literature, had never read one under the tutelage of a professor, and had never analyzed the plot, character, or even writing style that makes some stories work so well. So with M.H. Abrams Glossary of Literary Terms in hand, I set out to learn about these things. I began analyzing short stories; then turned my attentions to the novel. I would read a novel and if I liked it enough select one aspect of it to further study. For example, in one novel I compared and contrasted the opening sentences of each chapter. In another book I found and compared the contents of each place the author changed from present tense to past. In yet another novel I searched to find the dramatic turning points in the main character’s transformation. I went on to analyze how secondary or even one-dimensional characters entered and left novels. I was serious in my pursuit of this knowledge.

Then I turned to books I’d read in the past. I analyzed The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, House Made of Dawn by M. Scott Momaday. Somewhere along the way realized I had mostly read novels to enjoy exotic and unusual experiences and to find out what happened. This proclivity was bolstered by my habit of reading murder mysteries in which the big tasks is to figure out ‘who dun it’ as if that were the whole point of reading stories. That seemed my dominant approach. Finally I turned to Ethan Mordden and reread and analyzed several of his Buddies cycle that opened with what seemed to me appropriately titled I’ve a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore. I liked novels that told the stories of many different people. My novel search for understanding was moving me far away from how I had read them before and, like Mordden’s title far away from all my home state represented. And then there was the really big question: why was I trying to write a novel and how could I do it without making a big fool of myself?

I recall a voice teacher who seemed friends with a woman character Natasha Rostova in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace while I couldn’t even recall or pronounce the name of any character from my reading of that monstrously long novel. I recall in December my daughter-in-law reading Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre for the umpteenth time. She said “It’s like a new story,” and she just loves Jane Eyre, probably her favorite literary character. Now I read Bronte and enjoyed the characters but never developed such a relationship with any of them. I just don’t get into character friendships, at least not easily.

Still I really have like some characters. First, Natty Bumpo in James Fennimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales although I don’t recall if I respected him; second, Johnny in The Light in the Forest by Conrad Richter although I may really have been more interested in his Shawnee Indian cousin; third, the first-person narrator in Ambidextrous: The Secret Lives of Children by Felice Picano although I didn’t really like him so much as I recognized in him a character who as a child was bisexual like I was; fourth, Bud in Ethan Mordden’s stories, again another first person narrator who as a writer seemed as much the author of the story as its protagonist; and finally, Will in City of Shy Hunters by Tom Spanbauer although very much like in the cases of Picano and Mordden I may have liked the author as much as the character. Still Will became my literary friend because he came from an uncertain past, made creative adaptations to his surroundings, felt enamored of Native Americans, accepted into his life persons whose values widely differed from his own, worked hard, and introduced me to more exotic worlds of gay America, meaning in many important ways, more realistic descriptions of gay life.

But since I ended my list with Will from the Spanbauer book, I’ll say a few things about him who certainly has become an important character in my life if not a favorite (and be warned I’m speaking as much or more about Spanbuaer as I am about his great character Will). Will trusts people. Will does not try to fool himself. Will reveals his faults as well as his ideals and dreams. Will eats with sinners. He survives in the city, thrives there, values important aspects of his life, idealizes some individuals and loves them when they are too real to be idealized. He ekes out a living, is taken advantage of, finds friendship, and in general, builds a meaningful life in a hard and rough city.

And I thrill when Will says:

“Only your body can know another body.

“Because you see it, you think you know it. Your eyes think they know. Seeing Fiona’s body for so long, I thought I knew her body.

“I’ll tell you something, so you’ll know: It’s not the truth. Only your body can know another body.

“My hand on her back, my hand in her hand, her toes up against my toes, Fiona’s body wasn’t sections of a body my eyes had pieced together. In my arms was one long uninterrupted muscle, a body breathing life, strong and real.” (In the City of Shy Hunters, p. 184) Will is really real; his friends are real. I am his friend.

© Denver, 22 June 2014



About the Author  


Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Favorite Literary Character by Will Stanton

When I decided to join the Story-Time group in submitting stories and essays to the blog, I needed to decide whether to use my own name as author or to create a pen-name. I considered the fact that, in some of my stories, I use the names of real persons and real places, which may not always be advisable in a blog. Also, some of my essays speak of especially unusual experiences. As a consequence, I decided to use a pen-name.

Fellow Story-Time member John was showing me how to join the blog, and I had to choose a name and avatar right on the spot. Rather than taking a long time to ponder those decisions, I quickly went with my instincts for both. What immediately came to mind was the name “Will Stanton,” the main character in one of my favorite books. There are a number of Will or William Stantons in the real world; it’s a fairly common name. One even was an author of humorous fiction. Yet, the character I thought of is totally fictional, unless the author knows something that I don’t know.

The author, Susan Cooper, is a graduate of Oxford University and a brilliant British scholar and writer who has a very deep knowledge of ancient British mythology, Arthurian legends, Celtic and Norse mythology and their connection with each other. She won the Newbery Award and the Welsh Tir na n-Og Award for excellence. In 2012, she won the lifetime Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association. In many ways, I consider her books superior to those of J.K. Rowlings, but unfortunately they preceded by a generation the Potter genre and its highly successful marketing and, consequently, were over-shadowed.

The first time I that I read “The Dark is Rising,” the second volume of her series by the same name, I felt an immediate connection with Will. I saw in myself many of the same character traits as Will. I also was very moved by the humanity of some of the central characters.

I do not know why I am the way I am, why I have such discernible aspects to my personality, feelings, and values. Like most of us, I have tried throughout my life to understand myself, to try to figure out what experiences might have influenced who I am. I gradually have grown to understand that much of who I am is in-born as well as learned.

I have an ingrained sense of right and wrong, and I feel terribly uncomfortable with the idea of anyone, including myself, being tempted to do wrong. Even if there appeared to be great profit or benefit in doing wrong, I feel that I just could not bring myself to engage in it. I also care very much about the good people of the world and feel pain and sorrow if they are harmed or suffer loss. I would like to be able to assist them, to prevent their hurt, wish to undo any hurt, or to heal them if I can not.

There are, however, far too many evil-doers in the world. I am terribly dismayed by the dark side of human nature, the lack of empathy, falsehood, physical and verbal violence, the readiness to harm others. Such negativity seems to affect me more than many other people.

So apparently, I seem to have had throughout my life a powerful connection to Good (with a capital G), often referred to as “The Light.” The concept of “The Dark” that embodies all that is negative and destructive repels me. The two factions of Light and Dark repeatedly struggle to determine the destiny of mankind. The Light fights for the Good, for freedom and free will, whereas the Dark fights for chaos, confusion, subversion, and control of humankind. I actually recall vivid dreams where I joined The Light to battle black, shadowy entities of The Dark. Somehow, I knew that I had the capacity to do battle with Evil. It felt natural to me.

 

The character “Will Stanton” discovers his true role in life upon his eleventh birthday. I suppose that this is pure coincidence; however, I always have had an unexplained, deep connection with the number eleven, my favorite number. When I was very young, I looked forward to becoming eleven, just like Will.

I never have regarded myself as particularly special, no more or less than any other human being. The literary character “Will,” however, does turn out to be special. He is the last of the so-called “Old Ones,” those of the Light whose mission is to prevent the rise of the Dark. When I read that passage for the first time, a deep emotion welled up inside me. Being one of the “Old Ones,” Will does possess some remarkable abilities that are supernormal that help him defeat the Dark.

As for myself, I never have been presumptuous enough to claim special abilities, although I have had upon past occasions, especially when I was young, some rather exceptional experiences that are hard to explain. Occasionally, I have spoken of them, but I realize that some listeners may dismiss them as unreal or at least exaggerated, perhaps because they have had no similar experiences or, perhaps their minds just don’t work that way. I’m not aware of any such notable experiences in my later years. Perhaps that is because I became so focused upon trying to deal with the demands of daily life that my my mind was hindered in functioning in a natural manner and without stress.

I hesitate to mention one other comparison; but, to be sincere, I do need to mention it. Will bears the sign of the Celtic cross on his forearm where hot metal of that shape touched his arm. In my case, a professional palm-reader brought out a very large book showing lines found in people’s palms, telling me that I have crosses in the palms of my hands, signs that are extremely rare, signs supposedly that indicate, as the books stated, “divine power.” I am too much of a “Doubting Thomas” to be particularly impressed. I dismissed her revelation as unscientific and of no practical significance, whereupon she showed me the pages with the lines and description stating that such signs are, in fact, very rare. Still, it would have taken much more than that to convince me to go bounding off trying to do marvelous things. For the sake of the argument, if I was somehow granted a few special abilities, I can’t say that I have found a way of putting them to good use, at least not in any recognizable way.

One major difference between Will and myself is our families. Will is a part of a large, happy, close-knit family that is wonderfully loving and supportive of each other. As you have learned from some of my previous stories, my family was not. So, I was very attracted to the homelife enjoyed by Will and felt that I would have loved to have been part of Will’s family, too. As far as the image that I selected for my avatar, I now realize that it coincidentally matches the appearance of Will. That had not occured to me when I chose it. It just turned out that way.

So, although I would not be so presumptious as to claim that I am like Will, one of the “Old Ones,” at least I can identify with part of that term. I feel rather old.

© 8 November 2013

About the Author

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.

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Favorite Literary Character by Ricky

At my age it is not surprising that I have a lifetime of literary characters to choose from to become my favorite. I have never before thought of which character was my favorite so the mental process of searching memories and titles should have taken quite a while. Fortunately, it did not take too long at all.

In my writings for this our Telling Your Story (TYS) group and in conversations with group members, I have often mentioned that my personality, psychological makeup, and emotions, are those of a 12-year old but with an adult body. That is to say, I feel and act not like a grown up but a not matured adolescent. Those of you who know me well enough through personal interaction or through my writings posted on my blog or the TYS blog could be presuming that my favorite literary character is — Peter Pan. I most likely contributed to that impression by my behavior and speech. In that presumption or educated guess, you would be wrong.

While the fantasy fictional character in the Disney animated version of the story Peter Pan has truly influenced, and even impacted my life to a very large extent, Peter is not my favorite character. Yes, he does have adventures with pirates, has fun with other boys, sparked my imagination as well as millions of other children, but in the end he is pure fantasy—no boy can stop growing up or fly with pixie dust in our world. Besides, I like the original version of Peter as written by the author, James Barrie. The original Peter was more realistic; he had undesirable character traits, even a “dark” side. He was more like me than the angle face portrayed by the Disney animated feature. Believe it or not, I can tell the difference between fantasy and reality or more to the point, between fantasy and a character who actually could have or does exist in some form or another.

My favorite literary character is a free spirited, quick-thinking, rapscallion prone to adventures, loyal to his friends, struggling with the morality of laws that enslave people, and willing to risk everything to do what he believes is right. In many respects he and I are quite similar but unlike Peter Pan, he actually could have lived in the time period specified and done the things attributed to him. It is easy for me to identify with his personality and almost become him as the story progresses. His name? Huckleberry Finn.

© 16 March 2014

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com 

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Favorite Literary Character by Gillian

This one took up a chunk of thinking time. With little trouble I can come up with many literary characters I love for many different reasons: I empathize with them, they make me laugh, they express themselves brilliantly, they make me cry. So first of all it depends whether the actual topic is a favorite character, as in one of many, or my favorite, as in one and only. I decided on the latter, which of course makes it a much more challenging pick. I next tried to get a clearer vision than my own as to the exact meaning of “literature,” but found that most definitions seem as loose, fluid, and confused as mine and so concluded it means just about anything that anyone has written, ever, about anything.

My eventual choice I find to be more than a little embarrassing. In fact coming out with it is a bit like coming out of the closet; a bit scary, unsure of acceptance. Fears of rejection or ridicule abound. I fear you expect more of me. You perhaps are awaiting the introduction of some obscure character from some equally obscure piece of writing which has rarely crossed The Pond, and in those rare cases only to lodge itself in still more obscure ivory towers of Academe. Or maybe someone extremely funny, created by Kingsley Amis or Hilaire Belloc. Or some delightful female creation out of Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf. Or someone in one of those gritty novels by Ruark or Hemingway. Or a real person writing with true courage, such as Anne Frank and Paul Monette, or authors out to change the world like Rachel Carson or Mary Pipher, who wrote a book actually titled, Writing to Change the World.

The choices are endless, and all good. But I rejected them all.

One of the problems is that my very favorite changes all the time. I read a new book and one of the characters in it becomes my favorite, but pretty soon another from yet another new book replaces him or her. My one and only very favorite, then, has to be one who has stuck with me; every time I encounter that character, it is still my favorite. If I simply remember it, it is my favorite. And I could only, then, looking at it like that, think of one. I have loved this character since my childhood, and have never lost that love. Even movie and TV portrayals have not diminished it.

And, yes, dammit, it is like coming out. So I’m not ashamed, I’m not embarrassed, I can love whoever I want, and I will not apologize for my love, nor will I deny it. I shout it from the rooftops for all the world to hear —–

MY FAVORITE LITERARY CHARACTER IS ……. WINNIE the POOH!!!

OK, OK, I’m sure it’s really my inner child that loves him, and why not? One of the many Pooh books, and I don’t know which, is the first book I remember having read to me. I cuddled on my mother’s knee and jabbed a finger and squealed at the delightful illustrations and headed off with my buddy Pooh for adventures in Hundred Acre Wood, though I’m sure I had no idea what a hundred acres would be like. (Come to that, I still don’t!) That particular book was just wonderfully illustrated, and I’m sure that’s why my inner kid fell in love with Pooh Bear.

I mean, what’s not to love in an androgynous, vaguely ursine creature of indeterminate age, whose height of ambition is to suck down the very last drop of honey in the pot and then go to sleep, and whose closest approach to an expletive is, “Oh bother!”

Pooh portrays the the very height of non-ambition, and his tiny bear-brain is certainly not very active. He trails along with his wonderfully entertaining friends, seeking a spot to nap or consume more honey or both. And his friends are all such exquisite characters, each depicted so that the reader inevitably reacts with, oh I know someone just like that! Take Tigger, for instance. He bounds and bounces and is never still for a moment. He overflows with zest and zeal, bouncing off this way and that, never thinking first, and bouncing into endless troubles. He bounces right through the ice on the lake and Pooh et al have to go to the rescue; likewise when he bounces right up into a big tree or into a raging river. His friends are tired of always having to rescue him and wish he would occasionally take time out for a little thought before taking his next big bounce. But when, in one book, Tigger loses his bounce, he just isn’t the same old Tigger they know and love, and they are all delighted when his bounce eventually returns. Now don’t we all know someone like that?

There’s Mrs. Roo, mother of Kanga. She’s the quintessential mother everyone wants for their own. Soft-spoken, never issuing a reprimand stronger than, “Oh dear!” she is always on hand with milk and fresh-baked cookies, and of course toast and honey, or just honey, for Pooh.

Then there’s Eeyore, most definitely a glass-half-empty kinda donkey. He trails dejectedly at the back of the pack and rarely intones anything more significant then, “Oh well, it doesn’t matter anyway.”

In my childhood book, the wonderful illustrations brought these and many more characters to life in a time preceding mass animation. Pooh was illustrated dozing at the bottom of page four, waking up on page five, ambling along the bottom of pages six through ten, then, having caught up with the narrative, dozing at the bottom of page eleven. Later, on page fourteen, he was depicted climbing a ladder to the top of the page fifteen where he appeared again in the story, sucked another pot of honey dry, and promptly fell asleep on line two. Meanwhile, Tigger had bounced off to page twenty, way ahead of the story, and bounded up above the top line and back down below the bottom, up and down across the page while he impatiently waited for the others to catch up with him.

I don’t know how many 21st century children read Winnie the Pooh. Maybe they play computer games or enter chat rooms instead. If so, I think they miss out on something warm and wonderful. Winnie the Pooh and his assorted anthropomorphic friends make me smile even now, and provide me with that deep warm glow inside that isn’t always easy to acquire in adulthood. I still read the books, occasionally, and still delight in them, although I do try not to jab my finger at the illustrations and squeal with joy as I once did. I also watch the animated versions of Milne’s stories on TV, because by some miracle, to me at least, they have not ruined but rather enhanced my own version of the characters. Pooh Bear has filled me with warm fuzzies for seventy years. How can he not qualify as my favorite literary character?

April 19, 2014

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Favorite Literary Character by Pat Gourley

Anna Madrigal (a girl and a man)

My first trip to San Francisco was in 1979 with a friend named Phil. I met Phil I recall through the Gay Community Center on Lafayette Street a few years earlier. His story of coming to the Center was one of the classic coming out stories I remember from those years. He had recently been discharged from the Navy and had wound up in Denver. His home was rural Ohio and his Catholic family very conservative and probably not fond of queers but totally unaware that there own son was one of those people.

Phil related to me some years later that he had first actually seen me at a party and thought I was the butchest thing he had ever seen when I walked in wearing my winter leather jacket – that was, he said empathically, until I opened my mouth and the whole masculine illusion evaporated in a Nellie mist. I loved him despite of this tacky and very snarky story.

Phil had apparently walked around the block at the Center many times before getting up the nerve to come in. There he met several others and quickly became a fast friend and member of our budding community. We remained close until his death in August of 1994 from AIDS. He died at home in the arms of his true love. I had been summoned to get there quickly but walked in just minutes after Phil took his leave.

Our trip to San Francisco was magical in that I totally fell for that City and all its magic. Phil had been there before while in the Navy. I believe several times – Fleet Week perhaps – though that I don’t know that for sure. He showed me all the sights and sounds and we sampled many different tastes.

Marin Headlands (Titled “Oz”)  2012

This year of 1979 was momentous for me for many reasons but one little thing that happened was I was introduced to the work of Armistead Maupin. Tales of the City was published in 1978 and was essentially his columns on life in the City syndicated in the San Francisco Chronicle. The stories consisted of an eclectic cast of characters whose lives crisscrossed through that novel and eight more to follow culminating in the most recent release The Days of Anna Madrigal. Good friends of mine owned the local Gay Book store and I suspect that is how I got turned onto the book.

The novel’s stories and many adventures often revolved around a straight female character named Mary Ann Singleton. She, soon on arrival in San Francisco, was living at 28 Barbary Lane in a large multi-story dwelling on Russian Hill managed by one Anna Madrigal. My initial visit to the City and my budding connection with a few Radical Fairies from the Bay area provided a modicum of familiarity with the characters, adventures and environs described in Tales of the City.

So as it turns out Anna was a male to female transsexual, pot-growing/smoking landlady who was mentor to all who came through 28 Barbary Lane. Her early years were spent growing up in a house of ill repute in Winnemucca Nevada, in an establishment run by her mother.

I was certainly very familiar with and predisposed to like her character from the first book on but this was cemented when the first three books of the series were immortalized in a PBS (originating in the U.K.) and Showtime miniseries in which Anna was played by the flawlessly cast Olympia Dukakis. These are available on DVD and highly recommended if you haven’t seen them, but do read the books first.

I think it is safe to say that LGBT literature and literature in general is bereft of positive, powerful and dynamic Transsexual characters. Though I suppose one could argue that Maupin’s books don’t fall into the category of great literature, whatever the fuck that is, they are much loved, iconic tomes in the pantheon of queer literature documenting our generation. I certainly enjoyed reading them and this was magnified and has been enhanced with my growing knowledge over the decades of the City of San Francisco starting back in 1979 thanks to my friend Phil.

What I would have not given to have my shit together enough to have moved to San Francisco in the late seventies and to then have fallen under the spell of a powerful female mentor like Anna Madrigal. I downloaded the last in the series –The Days of Anna Madrigal – to my Kindle this week and ripped through it in a couple days. Lots of loose ends about Anna get tied up and the ending is really wonderful and plays out in the only place it could really, at Burning Man in the Nevada desert.

I think Phil liked and read Maupin’s books and I am sad that he can’t be around to read the final book in the series. Who knows it might have provided the impetus for a group of us to get our act together and attend Burning Man. We would fit right in and I am quite sure that the entire festival owes a significant debt of gratitude to the Radical Fairies whose influence seems stamped all over the event particularly as it is described in vivid detail by Maupin in his latest work.

Let me close by saying that I think the only real radical juice left in the LGBTQI movement is coming from the T’s. The word radical, as Harry Hay pointed out to me about 10,000 times, means, “to the root.” If the “gay agenda” ever had a truly revolutionary component to it, it was our willingness to turn gender on its head and shake it all up real good and see what would come out on top so to speak. These days many of us G’s, L’s and B’s seem quite caught up in imitating the dominant hetero-defined roles of male and female. Perhaps more Anna Madrigals will come along to finally lead us out of the hetero-dominated wilderness and our true agenda will come to pass.

March, 2014

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.