"Spent"
Alison Bechdel
Mariner Books
The cover of Alison Bechdel’s new comic novel, “Spent,” wryly riffs on the iconic painting “American Gothic” – with cartoon versions of Bechdel and her wife, Holly Rae Taylor, assuming the famously stoic, agrarian roles while taking a selfie – thus sending a clear message before you even open the book: This time, Bechdel has come to play.
I should note for context that Bechdel, who catapulted from counterculture cartoonist (via the strip “Dykes to Watch Out For”) to mainstream literary graphic memoir star (“Fun Home”) in 2006, has some unique feats on her resumé. In the 1980s, she jokingly coined, in her feminist strip, what became known as the Bechdel Test, which requires a movie or novel to feature a women’s conversation about something other than a man. In 2015, a Broadway musical inspired by “Fun Home” – which tells the tragic story of her closeted, mortician father’s suicide alongside that of Bechdel’s own sexual awakening – won big at the Tony Awards.
Bechdel followed up the success of “Fun Home” with another graphic memoir, “Are You My Mother?” (2012), wherein Bechdel reflected on becoming the artist her mother had always wanted to be, and “The Secret to Superhuman Strength” (2021), a meditation on Bechdel’s lifelong forays into exercise and self-improvement fads. “Spent” has the feel of a lighter, goofier, more scattershot departure.
That’s not to say there isn’t substance. “Spent” is full-to-bursting with conflicts and debates, even among its crunchy, uber-liberal community of characters. But an overarching playfulness presides, with Bechdel winking at us while coyly straddling the line between reality and fiction.
The main character of “Spent,” a famous cartoonist named Alison Bechdel, lives in Vermont with her wife, a sculptor named Holly (true) on a pygmy goat farm (not true). The couple have friends who live together in a nearby commune (not true - these are characters from DTWOF, so in “Spent," the author lives among her creations). And Alison questions her own possible status as a “sell-out” when the major publisher interested in acquiring her next book is owned by the wealthy, politically conservative family that inspired “Succession.” (True - “Spent” is a product of HarperCollins, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.)
When Alison’s not spinning her wheels creatively in "Spent," she’s chastening herself for relying on exorbitantly priced organic groceries and “Shmamazon” for farm supplies. She regularly attends the commune’s watch parties of a TV show inspired by her hit graphic memoir, “Death and Taxidermy.” The fictional series, in its third season, is spiraling further and further away from its source material. But it’s not the absurd introduction of dragons that rattles Alison; it’s that the main character decides to start eating meat.
Out of frustration and creative constipation, Alison decides to pitch her own reality show about helping people live more ethical lives. (It goes nowhere.)
There’s also a throuple (and a good bit of talk about polyamory) forming at the commune; intergenerational tensions between old and young liberals; Alison’s MAGA sister revealing secrets via her own bloated, in-progress manuscript (which she asks Alison to read); and Holly flirting with brief online fame via tool videos.
Sound like a lot of moving parts? Yes – and I haven’t even mentioned Alison’s stated goal to write her next book about late stage capitalism (a plan that's quickly derailed by the sheer drudgery of reading "Das Kapital").
So while money and its moral baggage come up regularly in “Spent” – including chapters titles drawn directly from Marx – it’s hardly the center that holds. Indeed, it feels like there is no center, but rather a comic strip-like series of scenes and mini-plots. The book’s final arrival point instead hints that the struggle most on Bechdel’s mind is that of somehow sustaining hope in a mean, relentlessly bleak era.
This spoke to me, but the moment also felt like a reward for following Bechdel’s many diverting tangents along the way. Perhaps that’s the point: Bechdel may feel the only way to survive in this terrifying moment of democratic precarity is to loosen the grip of our self-seriousness and focus on the myriad absurdities (and yes, joys) of our lives, friendships, and relationships.
But as a reader who counts Bechdel’s gutsy, bracingly candid graphic memoirs to be among her all-time favorite books, I have to admit: "Spent," while enjoyable and sometimes surprising, mostly made me miss the fierce intellectual rigor that Bechdel applies when she's obsessively working to solve the mystery of herself.
