In every book of fiction peopled with a large cast of characters spread out over very specific period of time, an element comes into play known as the zeitgeist. Although the definition is somewhat fluid, it basically refers to that certain special “feeling” that is absolutely specific to a particular and finite time. Although, as mentioned, the characteristics which define zeitgeist are interpretative rather than carved in stone, a certain aspect of its nature for some is that it cannot be applied retroactively. In other words, when writing a novel about the 1970’s from the perspective of the 21st century, the text does not so much recreate the zeitgeist of that era as it does produce the “vibe.”
Tales of the City is a perfect illumination of this particular concept which, admittedly, is not one universally shared. As a means of comparison, take the film Zodiac. Director David Fincher went to great lengths to recreate the 1970’s setting of the real-life unsolved murders that that came to be known as the work of a mysterious figure known only as the Zodiac Killer. The result is one of the most impressive recreations of the 1970’s to the point that it most assuredly is successful at creating a 70’s “vibe.” It doesn’t portray the zeitgeist of that time period, however, nor does it attempt to. Armistead Maupin also not set out with an attempt to reveal the zeitgeist of 1970’s San Francisco, but in producing his stories in serial form with a very quick turnaround time between completion of the manuscript and publication, that is exactly what he did by accident.
Capturing the zeitgeist of a certain period in a sense depends upon the requirement of not trying to do combined with actually being produced in a relatively real-time situation. That’s the thing about zeitgeist: while it is happening, it is usually invisible and once it becomes visible, it is no longer actually happening. For those reading Maupin’s stories in their original serial form, the “vibe” was what was recognizable. Those with real lives similar to the characters Maupin was writing about could relate to the sense of what was happening in their lives at the time, but it would not be until after the stories were collected into a published book form that that it became clear just what a brilliant accident it was. Reading Tales of the City today is like opening up a time capsule buried at the end of the 1970’s that offers an authentic glimpse into what life was like at the time unencumbered by historical revisionism, skewed nostalgia or, worst of all, the temptation to use the wide-eyed ignorance of the horrors that were to come as a morality tale on the subject of lifestyle.
The intermingled stories of the young and the old, the heterosexual and homosexual, male and female, San Francisco natives and newcomers, wealthy and Bohemian, uptight professionals and aging hippies and all the myriad differences in cultures and values and backgrounds of those character calling San Francisco home in the seventies have become something that the passage of time would make extremely difficult if not absolutely impossible to create today in retrospect: an absolutely sincere and irony-free exhibition (as opposed to examination, which is something completely different) of the zeitgeist of the city by the bay during the Me-Decade.
