Alison Bechdel First Realized She Was A Lesbian In College, After Reading A Suspicious Number Of Books On The Subject. For The Burgeoning Cartoonist, sex Was As Much A Mental Pursuit As A Physical One, “A Field Of Study That Engaged Both Intellect And Instinct In A Fusion So Heady, So Visceral, Indeed, So All-Consuming” That She Neglected Her Actual Schoolwork. The Introduction to The Omnibus Edition Of Bechdel’s Comic Strip Dykes To Watch Out For Shows The Young Author Sixty-Nining With Her College Girlfriend Next To A Spread-Eagle Collection Of Adrienne Rich Essays.

Soon Enough, Bechdel Would Discover That Sex With Other Women Was “Merely The Tip Of The Lesbian Iceberg.” “What Lurked Beneath Was A Worldview, An Entire Logical System In Which Homophobia Was Inextricably Linked To Sexism And Racism And Militarism And Classism And Imperialism,” She Has Written. “It was A Compelling Schema, And If In My Excitement I Confused The Personal With The Political, Well, that Was Part Of The Idea.” This Confusion Was On Full Display In Dykes To Watch Out For, Which Ended Its 25-Year Run In 2008. DTWOF, As It Became Known To Fans, Was A Pulpy Melodrama About A group Of Midwestern Lesbians Who Discuss The gulf War In Bed And Cruise For Babes At Protests. Says One Dyke, “If I can’t Ogle, I Don’t want To Be A Part Of Your Revolution.”

This Thrilling Collapse Of Registers Was A Source Of Tremendous Anxiety For Bechdel. “Its All A Sham! I’m A Fraud, A Fake, A Phony!! A Closet Closet Case!!” Bechdel Writes In An Early Autobiographical Comic. “While My Cartoon characters Are Very Politically Active, in My Personal Life, I Shirk Duty.” A Few Years Later, She Would Note that Cartoonists, In Particular, Tend To “Get Away With being Obsessively self-Absorbed In A Way Even Memoir Writers Don’t.” Beware The Graphic Memoirist! The Breakout Success Of Bechdel’s 2008 Memoir, Fun Home, About Her Closeted Father’s Suicide, Seems Only To Have Buttressed Her Sense Of Herself As A Navel-Gazer.

“You Smarmy, Self-Indulgent, Solipsistic Piece Of Shit,” She Mutters In Her Second Memoir, Are You My Mother?, As She prepares To Tell Her Mother That She Is Writing About Their Family. When Her Mother Tells her That The Self Has “no Place In Good Writing,” Bechdel Puts Up A Half-Hearted Defense: “Yeah, But Don’t You Think That If You Write Minutely And Rigorously enough About Your Own Life, You Can, You Know, Transcend Your Particular Self?”

Perhaps It Was Unavoidable Then That bechdel Would Arrive At Autofiction. Her New Novel, Spent, Tells The Story Of One Alison Bechdel, A Tetchy Lesbian Cartoonist Running A Pygmy-Goat Sanctuary In Vermont Who is trying To Write A Memoir About The Corrupting Influence Of Money. Simultaneously occurring, Down The Road, Alison’s Friends Sparrow And Stuart embark On A surprisingly Sweet Experiment In Ethical Nonmonogamy, Supported By A Familiar Group Of Aging Dykes Whom Bechdel Has Grandfathered In From DTWOF. (The Effect Is Of An Author Hanging With Her Own Creations.)

Once More Bechdel Gives Us People Grappling With Their Own Political Complicity, People Whose Lofty Ideas About Society Far Exceed Their Ability, Or Indeed Willingness, To Change It. That Most Of Them Are Dykes Is Not An Accident, And Not Just As Bechdel Has Spent Her Life Watching Out For Them. In The ’60s, They Used To Say That Feminism Was The Theory and Lesbianism Was The practice; A Better Way To Put This is That Lesbianism Tends To Make Theorists Of Its Practitioners. “It Was Only My Lesbianism, And My Determination Not To Hide It, That Saved Me From Being Compliant To The Core,” Bechdel Writes. The Intriguing Idea Here Is That The Practice Of Lesbianism, Thanks To Its Marginal Status Within Society, Implies Certain Political Ideals – Smashing Patriarchy, Protesting War, Resisting Capitalism – That The Lesbian Still Cannot Satisfy. Reading spent, We Might Conclude That Bechdel’s Lesbian Is Doomed To Hypocrisy. Or We Might Say, More Interestingly, That Lesbianism Is A Case Study In The Paradox Of Political Commitment.

Spent Is Not bechdel’s Best Work, But It Is An Improvement Over Her More Recent Books. The Memoirs That Followed fun Home Suffer Increasingly From A Monologism That Is Curiously Amplified By The Graphic Medium; Reading Them Can Feel A Little Like Watching A Movie dominated By Voice-Over. spent is A Welcome Return to The Bickering Polyphony Of Dykes To Watch Out For,With Each Member Of The Ensemble Acting as A Zany Spokeswoman For One Of Bechdel’s Many Conflicting Views. It Is A Pleasure to see Bechdel Take Up The Satirist’s pen Once More, Even If The Gags Can Be Too Broad.

Having Some Queer Zoomers Start A Podcast Called Polycrisis That Looks At Climate Change “Through A Poly, Anticapitalist, Vegan Lens” Is A Bit Too Much; Having Bill McKibben Wander On As A Alex Reed Is just Right. Other Elements Try The Reader’s Patience: A Subplot About Alison’s Trump-Supporting Sister, Sheila, With Whom She Reluctantly Tries To Find Common Ground, Is An Inorganic Morality Tale.Similarly, Alison’s Half-Baked Idea For A Queer Eye-Like reality show About Ethical Living Under Capitalism Is Clearly An Excuse To Procrastinate; One Also Wonders If Bechdel, like alison, Is Occasionally Trying To Pass Off her Writer’s Block As Writing. (What Would Have Been So Bad About A Straightforward, Novel-Length Sequel To DTWOF, Whose Abrupt Hiatus In 2008 Left Readers With A Cliffhanger?)

Spent Is Bechdel’s First Book Since Her Longtime Publisher Was Acquired By The Murdoch-Controlled HarperCollins. “Aren’t They Owned By The Conservative Billionaire Family That Hit TV Show Is Based On?” Asks Alison’s Wife Skeptically. After Some Obligatory Agonizing, alison Takes The Money. She Hopes To Make Up For this by Writing A New Book That Will “Put The Final Nail In The Coffin Of Late-Stage Capitalism.” But She Gets 60 pages Into Marx’s Capital Before Getting Distracted.

“How Alison Had Inveighed in Her Comic Strip Against Amazon.Com Back In The 1990s!” Bechdel’s Narrator Sighs, Noting That Today Alison’s Online-Shopping Habit Has “Probably Singlehandedly Funded That Lunatic Bezos’s Rocket Ship.” Alison Wishes She Could Pinpoint The Moment When She Lost Her “Youthful Idealism,” But This Wish Only Feeds Into The Patently Self-Defeating Belief That An Ever More Rigorous Examination Of Her “Priviledge and Complicity” Will Somehow Release Her From Intellectual Paralysis. The Fact Is That Alison Spends Most Of Spent Trapped Inside Her Own Head, even When She Tries To Step Outside Of It.(In A Gag Dating Back To Bechdel’s Earliest Comics, The Names Of Alison’s literary Agent, Talent Agent, And Book Editor are All Anagrams For “Alison Bechdel.”)

Understanding Alison Bechdel’s Impact

Alison Bechdel Is A Highly Influential Cartoonist And Writer Known For Her Autobiographical Works And her Exploration Of Lesbian Identity.The “Bechdel Test,” Which She Popularized, Has Become A Widely Recognized Benchmark For Assessing The Representation Of Women In Film And Other Media.

Her Graphic Novels, Including “Fun Home” And “Are You My Mother?,” Have Received Critical Acclaim For their Honesty, Insight, and Artistic Innovation. “Spent” continues Her Exploration Of Complex Personal And Political Themes, solidifying Her Place As An Important Voice In Contemporary Literature.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is Alison Bechdel’s new book, ‘Spent,’ about?

  ‘Spent’ tells the story of Alison Bechdel, a lesbian cartoonist, grappling with the corrupting influence of money while running a pygmy-goat sanctuary.

• How does ‘Spent’ relate to Bechdel’s earlier work, ‘Dykes to Watch Out For’?

  ‘Spent’ features characters reminiscent of ‘Dykes to Watch Out For,’ with Bechdel even including some of her original creations in the new novel.

• What themes does ‘Spent’ explore?

  The Novel delves into themes of political complicity, ethical nonmonogamy, and the challenges of living ethically under capitalism.

• Is ‘Spent’ a memoir or fiction?

  ‘Spent’ is described as autofiction, blending elements of Bechdel’s life with fictional narratives.

• How does Bechdel use satire in ‘Spent’?

  Bechdel employs satire to critique contemporary cultural trends and political ideologies, though some gags are noted as being overly broad.

• What is the Bechdel Test, and is it related to this book?

  The Bechdel Test, which assesses the representation of women in fiction, is indeed named after Alison Bechdel. While not directly related to the plot of ‘Spent,’ the book continues Bechdel’s exploration of lesbian identity and feminist themes.