More Dykes to Watch Out For

1988, possible first edition, although bought "new" about a decade later, published by Firebrand Books
Alison Bechdel
More Dykes to Watch Out For
Original/purchase price $9.95
Slightly worn paperback
B

When Lewis's downbeat Sunday's Women: Lesbian Life Today came out about a decade earlier, I think a comic like this was not yet imaginable.  Not only Bechdel's main characters, but seemingly all the supporting and one-time characters are lesbians.  Her universe would become more diverse, and perverse, as time went on, but it would remain dyke-centric.  Even the use of the word "dyke" is telling, the term not only reclaimed but normalized.  As the title suggests, this is the second collection, although if I remember correctly from reading (but never owning) the 1986 collection, the Dykes were then more generic, rather than the regular cast that Bechdel introduces thirty pages in and would stay with for two decades.  (The strip went on hiatus in '08.)

Reading this collection this time (and as the condition suggests, I don't read DTWOF all that often), I was pleasantly surprised by how good the artwork is.  In fact, the writing has probably evolved more than the art, although some characters have changed their looks over the years (notably Lois).  There's a certain self-consciousness about Bechdel's writing, not the lesbian aspects so much as the narrative aspects, like she wasn't sure how readers would take to what she later described as "half op-ed column and half endless, serialized Victorian novel."  It's hard to imagine the older, more confident Bechdel as apologizing for Mo's whining, or the cliffhangers.  But she was only 26 when she did the earliest comics here, maybe 27 when she introduced "Mo & Lo."  And it's interesting to see how her same-age protagonists deal with the mid- to late-'80s, including Iran-Contra.  Although this isn't the first of my books to mention AIDS (that would be Call Me Anna, since that was one of the social/political issues that Patty Duke was an activist about), it's definitely the first of my books to show the disease's impact on dating, ironic since (as some of the characters point out), lesbians were (and are) relatively low-risk.  Even celibate Mo worries about it, although carefree Lois doesn't much.

The other two main characters are Latina Toni and black Clarice (Mo's ex).  They've been a couple for awhile (and will remain together, through ups and downs), and this adds relationship diversity as well as ethnic diversity.  Mo loses her celibacy to sensible, overweight Harriet, and there's no doubt that Bechdel offers body-image diversity as well.  Mo and Lois work in a bookstore owned by Jezanna, who's overweight and black.  There's also a minor character, Naomi, who's Jewish and overweight.  My favorite character, Sparrow (Asian bisexual) doesn't show up till later. 

I found myself more inclined to keep reading when I finished this collection than I ever did with Pogo or Doonesbury, although they're each in different ways "half op-ed column and half endless, serialized Victorian novel."  (Maybe it's that I relate somewhat more to dykes than to swamp animals or perpetual college students.)  But I am trying to stay chronological here.  So we'll wait till 1990 for New, Improved! Dykes to Watch Out For....

John Lennon: My Brother

1988, 1989 Jove Books edition
Julia Baird and Geoffrey Giuliano
John Lennon: My Brother
Bought new for $3.95
Worn paperback
B-

John Lennon's half-sister (named after their mother) recalls "memories of growing up together," although there was a seven year age difference and he mostly grew up at Aunt Mimi's.  I enjoyed seeing the way he came across to his two adoring little sisters (Jacqui was born in '49), as well as the memories of their mum.  But I felt like there ironically wasn't enough of John or young Julia.  They fell out of touch a few times (partly due to Yoko, who comes across as just as jealous and possessive as she was in the Pete Shotton book), but Julia doesn't say all that much about what she was up to in the meantime, other than getting a job as a teacher, marrying, and having kids.  I did like the part where Julia visits Paul in London in the late '80s, to get his recollections, but it's not as if there's a shortage of books with Paul quotes.  It's appears that Julia's shyness and lack of assertiveness couldn't even be overcome in the book she was writing, a problem Cynthia Lennon didn't have.

Baird and co-author Giuliano had a falling out over her 2007 book Imagine This, which I haven't read and which he claimed was based on this book.  I'm not sure what he contributed to this book, other than "A Lennon Chronology," which has information that, again, could easily be found elsewhere.  He's written several controversial books about the Beatles as solo artists-- I think I read part of a McCartney one once-- and I'd just as soon she'd written this on her own.  Or if she had to have a co-author, why not older cousin Leila, who seems to have no problems in voicing her opinions?

At the time this book came out, Julia had not yet met Yoko, Sean, or her own half-sister "Victoria," although she found out about the girl's existence in the mid-'80s.  The elder Julia had an affair with a soldier during the war, and gave the resulting baby away.  At the time this book was published, little was known of the girl, except that she was thought to have been adopted by a Norwegian couple.  "Victoria" grew up as "Ingrid Marie Pedersen," and Julia and Jacqui didn't meet her till 2005.  So in a way I'd like to read Imagine This, even if it is just an updated version of this book.

Cat's Eye

1988, 1989 Bantam edition
Margaret Atwood
Cat's Eye
Original price $5.95, purchase price 49 cents
Very worn paperback with splitting spine
B

There's an incident in Lady Oracle where Joan's "friends" put her in danger by a ravine.  It's played for dark humor, even though the girls aren't really her friends.  Or maybe because they aren't her friends, it's less painful.  Here the incident at the ravine is just one of many painful scenes young Elaine Risley's frenemies put her through.  The book is a difficult read for that reason, but it also adds realism, not unlike the believable pain of Her Mother's Daughter.  I think that is a much better novel, much more fully developed (not just because it's longer, since this is no slender book), particularly in the sections on the heroine's adulthood. (Atwood rushes through Elaine's life after the first year or so of college,)  I will say that I loved the Risley family, sane eccentrics in the sense that they've all got their unusual interests and (except for Elaine) don't care about conformity, which oddly makes them more normal (balanced) than the dysfunctional families of Elaine's "friends."  I also enjoyed reading about Elaine's paintings, in much the same way I enjoyed Anastasia's photography in the Marilyn French novel.

Atwood surprised me (yes, even on this rereading) by having Elaine not just finally stand up for herself, but also find compassion for her tormentors.  As a child, I was hassled and criticized by people who seldom pretended they were doing it for my own good, so I was able to distance myself somewhat.  Carol, Grace, and ringleader Cordelia actually seem to think they're trying to improve Elaine, although I wouldn't say they're without malice.  Atwood writes, "Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another, they are not cute. They are life sized."  That reminded me of Margaret Kirkham:  "...Everyone who has much to do with them knows that girls are not really much like angels anyway."

I'm not saying girls are worse than boys.  (The verbally cruelest kids at my elementary school were boys.)  But sometimes it's easier to forgive boys and men.  As Elaine suggests, we sometimes hold them to a different (often lower) standard.  She forgives her ex-husband and sees the two of them as something like war survivors, even if they were on opposite sides.  The problem with Cordelia is that Elaine isn't sure who's on which side, and who won, if anyone did.

Female friendship will get even more complicated in the next Atwood novel, The Robber Bride (1993)....

The Skeptical Feminist

1987, 1988 Harper & Row edition
Barbara G. Walker
The Skeptical Feminist: Discovering the Virgin, Mother & Crone
Bought newish for $9.95
Worn paperback
C+

I never took to this book like I did to Walker's Encyclopedia, and rereading it I can see why.  The first third, "The Virgin: Intimations," is easily the best, as Walker tells of her childhood and youth, although she's awfully vague about the details (years, names, towns, etc.).  After that, she drops any pretense of autobiography and for the "matron" and "crone" sections offers her opinions on men, women, and religion.  She again seems to see men as very inferior to women; it's not just a matter of preferring "men's religion" to women's.  I also didn't like the couple chapters with her "sounding board" friend who in their dialogue always gets the worst of the argument.

She does have a point that any "new" religion should avoid the errors of the past, like silly superstitions, but I'm afraid she herself slips into some errors that I've seen others (mostly but not only Christians) make in their proselytizing.

This is my last and twenty-fifth book for 1987, breaking 1978's record of 21 books.  This record will probably but not necessarily stand.

Empire: A Novel

1987, 1988 Ballantine edition
Gore Vidal
Empire: A Novel
Bought newish for $4.95
Very worn paperback
B-

This, what would turn out to be the middle novel in the Narratives of Empire series, is about as good as Vidal's other 1980s contribution, Lincoln.  We're back with the Sanfords, half-siblings Blaise and Caroline, who are the grandchildren of Charlie Schuyler.  John Hay is the other main character, Lincoln's youthful secretary now a frail but imperialistic Secretary of State for Presidents McKinley and T. Roosevelt.  There are some inconsistencies of age-- not just in comparison to Washington, D.C.-- but within the novel itself, which spans 1898 to 1907.  James Burden Day, the father-in-law of Blaise's son Peter about forty years later, is here the lover of both Caroline and briefly (at Caroline's urging) Blaise, although there's no sense of this in WDC, but then Vidal may not have imagined that twist the 20 years before he wrote this entry.  More than in the other novels of the series so far (although definitely less than in Julian and some of Vidal's other works), homo- and bisexuality are at least considered. 

However, as with Lincoln, even the sexual subplots didn't draw me in, beyond what they mean for the overall genealogy of the series.  (Caroline has daughter Emma by Jim Day, who stupidly thinks it's her husband's.  And sophisticated if somewhat inexperienced Caroline seems a bit stupid to not do anything about her pregnancy until the fifth month.)  Most of the characters seem very dry, not just arch, but disembodied, despite physical descriptions.  When Caroline towards the end reads her grandfather's journals (in essence, Burr and 1876), it only reminded me of how much better those novels were.  Perhaps Vidal would've been better off sticking to one perspective, and a first person at that.  He seems too removed, and so do the characters-- many events are mentioned weeks or months after the fact-- so that even when they feel emotion, it came across as flat.  (At one point, Caroline weeps and doesn't realize it till her soon-to-be-ex-husband hands her a handkerchief.)  Still, there are moments I really liked, mostly to do with Teddy and/or his daughter Alice.

John Hay-- who came across a lot worse in Rogin's book on demonology-- died in 1905, so he of course won't be back in the later novels, but we'll return to Blaise, Caroline, Jim, and luckily Teddy in Hollywood (1990).

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

1987, undated later edition, from Simon & Schuster
Derek Taylor
It Was Twenty Years Ago Today
Original price $9.95, purchase price $2.00
Worn paperback
B

Long-time Beatles associate Taylor, who died of cancer a decade after this book was published, looks back at not just Sgt. Pepper and the Summer of Love, but the whole kaleidoscopic year of 1967.  This book was sort of a spin-off of a twentieth-anniversary television documentary he worked on, so there are lots of quotes from Paul, George, and others who were there (most but not all of them recognisable names).  The book is very rambling, going back and forth across time, but the charm, humour, and optimism of both Taylor and those times come through.  The photos, some in color, add much to the book, and I like that they're not all the usual pictures.  (The shot of Janis Joplin and Grace Slick singing together is great, and balances out a bit the mostly male focus.)

Reading the book right after Great Cosmic Mother, I can definitely see "pagan" strands in the 1960s, from bright colors to catchy music to free love to pacifism.  I also found this book made the '60s and the participants (even Norman Mailer!) more appealing than my other "looking back" books, especially Generation in Motion (1979).  Not that Taylor ignores what was bad about the decade, but he has a point that '67 was the high (yes, in every sense).  One thing that surprised me was how inclusive Taylor was, not sneering at the Monkees, and even giving Bob "Gilligan" Denver a moment to shine.  (Denver and other celebrities supported the "kids" in '66's Sunset Strip riots.) 

Taylor has some deservedly harsh things to say about the 1980s, from cocaine (as in the SNL book, a drug that brought out much worse qualities in people than marijuana) to money-grubbing.  So the book is a product of its time as much as it is a nostalgia trip.

The Great Cosmic Mother

1987, 1991 HarperCollins edition
Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor
The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth
Bought new for $17.95
Worn paperback
B

This was always my favorite "Goddess book."  The authors are intelligent and funny, tough and kind.  This is one of the books where some of the best stuff is in the Notes (like Adamson's Marx Bros book).  One of the points of the book is that sexuality, spirituality, and politics need to support each other.  So they criticize not only "radical feminists" who don't believe in ancient Goddess cultures, and Marxists who think all spirituality is oppressive, but also apolitical Wiccans.  (Sjöö would go on to write New Age & Armageddon, which we'll look at in 1992.)  This book went through several revisions, from when it began in the mid-1970s as a pamphlet.  This edition has new introductions-- including Mor's experience as a bag lady when she went off welfare but had not yet been paid by the publisher-- and some lovely color versions of Sjöö's paintings.  I think it's more of a book of the 1980s than the '90s or the '70s, remarks about the Reagan administration and all, although the couple references to polyester were already dated by '87.

The book does have flaws, if fewer than those of Walker's Encyclopedia or Davis's First Sex, and some of the other books that it builds on.  Sometimes they'll admit "we just don't know," but that doesn't stop them from speculating and jumping to conclusions.  Is it true, for instance, that myth is based on truth?  What about myths that serve propaganda purposes?  (As in the demonology Rogin examines.)  And while I can understand why they feel that the destruction of a sacred tree deserves the punishment of your intestines wrapped around the tree, at least as preferable to unpunished enviromental ravages, it's a bit like when they (and Walker) argue that occasional human sacrifice is preferable to large-scale war.  Yes, but not good enough.

It is interesting that they see some of the excesses of paganism-- like castration of priests-- as the products of the transitional time, when both sides (matriarchy and patriarchy) were going to extremes.  And I do appreciate that they're much more sympathetic to men than Davis and Walker were.  They see men as also having a stake in Goddess-cultures, past, present, and future.  This was one of the first books I read that gave me hope that men (other than my then-husband) could rebel against the sometimes virulent machismo of this culture.

Reading the book this time, my favorite chapter was "The Machine," as they talk about different aspects of modern culture.  Not that the early chapters weren't good, but I'm less interested in what hypothetically happened millennia ago than it what this all means today.  You'd think that that aspect would be more dated, but (polyester aside) things haven't changed all that much in the last quarter-century or so.  (The fact that they reference Transformers is of course amusing.)  For one thing, we're more addicted to technology than we were then.  And, yes, I'm as guilty as anyone.  One of the things about this book I've always appreciated is they don't let anyone off the hook, but they also understand how hard it is.  Even though I'm less into politics and spirituality (though not sex) than I was in my 20s (and much of that has to do with middle-age, post-9/11 burnout), I think they're much more on the right track, or spiral, than most of their peers.