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I just spent three days on a mental vacation. Yes, that's what it was -- a getaway for my brain. In every moment I could wrest from the grips of the shoulds' in my life, I've been totally absorbed by The Indelible Alison Bechdel.
Author/subject Bechdel calls the book as a retrospective and it is that. Readers expecting Dykes to Watch Out For 101, will not be disappointed. She answers all the basic questions. Where did the name come from? Are the characters based on real people? Where do you get your ideas? Why didn't Toni and Clarice have a baby girl?
She also provides an intricate timeline of the characters' lives with entries marking major world events. For instance, we can now see at a glance that Mo began shopping for a therapist just after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. A coincidence? I think not.
The close look at the comic strip alone would have been enough to get most people to pick up a book. However, as the title indicates, the subject is Alison Bechdel; DTWOF is only a part of her story.
It stops short of being a autobiography. There is no "I was born a middle class Catholic straight child" chapter, but we do learn of her childhood, enlightenment, and coming out -- all illustrated. "Isn't cartooning an innate human behavior like eating, or whining? Doesn't everyone start drawing funny pictures as soon as they can clench a crayon?" she says in answer to another commonly asked question.
Bechdel illustrates her introspection with drawings she has produced over the years. She refers to them as characters from a kind of central casting and notes a metamorphosis in one of them just before she realized she was a lesbian. "The businessman . . . grew playful, exuberant, and eventually airborne . . . he began sprouting wings. It was clear to me that getting the wings was painful but ultimately a good thing."
I disappeared for one entire evening into the section of The Indelible Alison Bechdel that features reprints of her calendar art. This is a terrific boon to those whose collection might be incomplete. My favorite of these is a single panel depicting the cast of DTWOF in the green room.' Lois complains of gratuitous sex scenes as a very butch Toni offers her apartment as rehearsal space, Mo (sans striped shirt) paints her toe nails, and the ever talented Raffi picks his nose while he plays with a toy machine gun. The artist essentially created alter egos for her alter egos.
The marginal comments here and throughout the book give the feeling that Bechdel is sitting next to you alternately beaming with pride and explaining why something didn't work or how she should have done it differently. The experience is intimate and warm and pleasurable.
The final section of the book is a sampling of comments Bechdel has received over the years from her readers. These run the gamut from suggestions for story lines -- "More Jewish Dykes!! We're here, We're queer, We're not just eating Matzoh!'" -- to true confessions -- "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT IT'S LIKE TO HAVE CRUSH ON A CARTOON CHARACTER?!!?"
Like all good vacations, this cerebral holiday of mine was over all too soon.
Knowing that another trip is just around the corner -- Split Level Dykes To
Watch Out For will be released in October -- makes the return to the real world
a bit easier. But, after spending time inside the head of one of today's most
intelligent and talented wits, it was tremendously difficult to go back to work.
