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Monday 13th February

Essential Dykes To Watch Out For By Alison Bechdel

Posted at 11:41AM Tuesday 30 Dec 2008

Essential Dykes to Watch Out for
ISBN: 9780224087063

As Bechdel observes in her introduction to this new anthology, The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For, it was not especially easy to be openly lesbian back in 1983 when she published her first cartoon. "We had no L Word," she writes. "We had no lesbian daytime TV hosts. We had no openly lesbian daughters of the creepy vice-president. We had Personal Best and we liked it."

Bechdel adores her characters and gently satirises them at the same time. They sometimes read books with absurd titles like The Wheat-Free Guide To Creative Visualization In Co-Dependent Past-Life Relationships. They develop crushes on women with names like Amethyst. Criticism, Bechdel understands, is a form of love.

The most important thing to know about The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For, however, is how deeply amusing it is. After seeing Brokeback Mountain, one character delivers this sardonic monologue: "Who wouldn't prefer a ruined life with a few pristine moments to a regular, banal, disappointing life? Imagine the cinematography if Ennis and Jack had been able to live together. Sweeping vistas of their couples therapist's office."

Tags: Dwight Garner | Fiction

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