Night Listener, The tie-in: A Novel (P.S.)
by Armistead Maupin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Armistead MaupinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-07-25
ISBN: 0061120200
Number of pages: 342
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of Night Listener, The tie-in: A Novel (P.S.)
Book Review: Skip the Film and Read the Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
First, a disclaimer. This review covers the original publication of the novel. The movie varies substantially (and is really rather dreadful) from the original novel and it is unknown if the tie-in version of the novel was rewritten to incorporate new information and/or details found in the movie.
The novel The Night Listener is Maupin's fictional take on his interaction with Anthony Godby Johnson, a "young boy" who was presented as having been brutally abused as a child. Johnson wrote a book that was sent out in galley form to many celebrities, and like J.T. Leroy who would claim the same thing many years later (and subsequently be proven a massive hoax), the celebrities took to this boy, many becoming friends with him over the phone. You can read more about the cases in the links above, if you've the desire to know more.
I have to admit upfront that I am an unabashed fan of Maupin's work. There is a simplicity to his prose that belies the emotional complexity of the characters he creates, and whether it be his series Tales from the City or his departures from that series like Maybe the Moon, it is rare for me to find fault in his work. There is also an almost Hitchcockian feel to the plots of his novels which, while never detracting from the almost whimsical tone of his stories, always creates a nice blend of genres. The Night Listener, however, is perhaps his greatest departure from this style: a dark and brooding look at loss and betrayal and the need for human contact. It can be a brutal read (a friend to whom I lent the book called it "one of the most depressing novels" she'd ever read). But what it also is is a novel which really explores the range that Maupin has as a storyteller, and makes him, in my mind, one of the best novelists out there, gay or straight.
Maupin is in thin disguise as Gabriel Noone, an author of radio stories who is at a turning point in his life when he makes contact with Pete Lomax, the stricken boy. Noone's longtime lover-who never expected to survive the AIDS epidemic-has moved out, and while the romantic relationship has ended, the connection between Noone and his ex will be a lifelong one. Jess simply needs to find a life beyond waiting to die. But what it does for Noone is leave a huge hole in his life, an emotional and intellectual void that needs to be filled. So, when Noone connects by telephone with Pete and finds him to be a witty, well-spoken young man, a friendship begins to develop. Noone needs someone who adores him and Pete desperately needs a father figure.
Maupin brilliantly captures both Noone and Pete. The malaise Noone has found himself in is palpable, a man who suddenly finds himself feeling a no one (Noone) because he has lost the one person who has helped to define him for decades. Likewise, Maupin's depiction of Pete is heartbreaking but utterly realistic. He is smart and funny, his humor as dark as his own past, and Maupin gets the pattern of speech of a teen boy exactly right. Though essentially a minor character, Noone's ex Jess is also excellently drawn. Jess isn't reduced to a cardboard cut-out. While was a saddened that he has decided to leave Noone, we completely understand his desire to get out there and see what life-a real life-holds for him. Pete's adoptive mother-though a very minor character through the first half of the novel-is also flesh and blood. We feel the compassion that led her to adopt Peter. We understand her ferocious protectiveness of him. We even understand why she won't let anyone meet him. And then, Maupin does something brilliant. He turns all that has come before on its head. Why hasn't Donna let anyone meet him? Does Pete's voice really sound all that similar to Donna's? Surely, the editor of Pete's book has checked out his story. Suddently, we begin to suspect Pete. We begin to distrust Donna. Everything we have learned before we begin to question, and we feel deep down inside the conflict Noone feels.
What Maupin does so well in this book is make you care about this Pete (as, interestingly enough, had happened to Maupin and the other celebs Johnson had been in contact with), so that when doubt is cast upon his existence, you are as devastated as Noone. The result is a literary gut-punch. And Maupin expertly takes us from needing to believe Pete and Donna, to suspecting them. To wanting them to be real-for their own sakes as well as Noone's-to needing them to be proven a hoax because the evidence of such a hoax is so remarkably overwhelming. It is a brilliant feat of writing...to make three characters (Noone, Pete and Donna) that you, as the reader, desperately want to believe. The result is a deeply psychological game of suspense that moves at a brisk pace, one that would make Hitchcock proud.
The Night Listener is not an easy read at all from an emotional standpoint. As a reader, a lot is demanded of you and you likely will feel worn out after reading it, but the ride is so worth it.
Originally reviewed for Uniquely Pleasureable.
Summary of Night Listener, The tie-in: A Novel (P.S.)
"I'm a fabulist by trade," warns Gabriel Noone, a late-night radio storyteller, as he begins to untangle the skeins of his tumultuous life: his crumbling ten-year love affair, his disaffection from his Southern father, his longtime weakness for ignoring reality. Gabriel's most sympathetic listener is Pete Lomax, a thirteen-year-old fan in Wisconsin whose own horrific past has left him wise and generous beyond his years. But when this virtual father-son relationship is rocked by doubt, a desperate search for the truth ensues. Welcome to the complex, vertiginous world of The Night Listener.
Many years ago, when the first volume of Tales of the City was going to press, Christopher Isherwood compared its author's narrative gifts to those of Charles Dickens. This has proven to be the blurb of a lifetime, an ever-renewable currency appearing on almost all of Armistead Maupin's subsequent books. Yet it has held up well--Dickens's gentle satire and broad good humor live on in Maupin more than in any other English-speaking writer. The Night Listener is his most ambitious work to date. While not strictly autobiographical, the story does teasingly suggest correspondences to the author's own life in a way that will delight and frustrate his many fans. The main character, Gabriel Noone, is a professional storyteller who broadcasts roughly autobiographical sketches for a long-running PBS series, "Noone at Night," stories about people "caught in the supreme joke of modern life who were forced to survive by making families of their friends." When the novel opens, Gabriel is still reeling from the announcement that his much younger, longtime partner Jess (a.k.a. Jamie in the "Noone at Night" stories, and a.k.a. Terry Anderson, Maupin's real-life, much-younger partner, for those who like to track associations) wants to move into his own apartment and start dating other men. With the success of his HIV cocktail, Jess has exceeded his own life expectancy. Having prepared himself so well to die, he now needs to learn how to live again. To Gabriel's distress, Jess's new life involves leather, multiple piercings, and books on men's drumming circles.
When an editor sends Gabriel yet another book to blurb, he reluctantly opens the package to find a long, rending memoir by Pete Lomax, an HIV-positive 13-year-old survivor of incest, rape, and sexual slavery. The book is called The Blacking Factory, after the miserable London bottling factory where Dickens spent part of his poverty-stricken childhood. As Gabriel reflects:
Pete thinks we all have a blacking factory, some awful moment, early on, when we surrender our childish hearts as surely as we lose our baby teeth. And the outcome can't be called. Some of us end up like Dickens; others like Jeffrey Dahmer. It's not a question of good or evil, Pete believes. Just the random brutality of the universe and our native ability to withstand it.After Pete escaped from his parents and was adopted by a therapist named Donna Lomax, his slow recovery was helped along by his memoir-writing and by frequent doses of "Noone at Night."
Touched by Pete's devotion to his stories, as well as the boy's obvious need for a father figure, Gabriel finds himself drawn into an intense relationship with his young fan, involving long, late-night phone calls that begin to worry Gabriel's friends. And, other than their mutual need, how much does he really know about Pete, anyway? As Gabriel begins to question his own motives, as well as those of the boy, The Night Listener transforms itself from an absorbing but quotidian story of loss and midlife angst into a dark and suspenseful page-turner with a playful metaphysical aspect and an un-Dickensian sexual candor. --Regina Marler
Gay Books
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