PanThe New York Times Book ReviewThere are two Maupins at work in these pages. One is charming, effervescent, lyrical, hilarious, a name-dropper. The other is insecure, withdrawn, and a mite tone-deaf to the world around him. That they both inhabit the book indicates the real complexity of the man himself, but the dichotomy remains unexamined … The memoir misses an opportunity to examine its most complicated material. Maupin’s inability or unwillingness to probe the contradictory nature of his early decades — working as a reporter at a television station run by Jesse Helms, walking out of a church with his family when the church threatened to integrate — leaves a gap that wants bridging … Instead, the easy, breezy quality of the book leaves us with the feeling that we’ve hardly seen a clear interior.
