SOURCE: "Mainstreaming a Cult Classic," in Newsweek, Vol. 114, No. 18, October 30, 1989, p. 77.

In the review below, Clifton describes Sure of You as a dark finale to the Tales series set "in a city now haunted by AIDS."

Armistead Maupin is a jovial fellow, a witty gay writer who can even make wry jokes about AIDS—which he does in his latest book, Sure of You…. There is only one subject that annoys him, irritates the hell out of him, enrages him, in fact. It is the subject of The Closet, and the cowards and traitors still cowering in its darkness.

Sure of You is the sixth—and Maupin says the last—novel in his famous series chronicling the lives of characters who, like Maupin himself, were drawn to San Francisco from all over America. The first five books, starting with the frothy Tales of the City in 1978, were based...