《欢乐之家》作者艾莉森·贝克德尔谈她的新图像小说

美丽与赢得网球大满贯、赋能社区或在南美洲的荒野中追踪美洲豹有什么关系呢？大家好，我是伊莎贝拉·罗西里尼，欢迎回到《这不是一个关于美的播客》第二季。在这里，我将揭示那些展现美如何贯穿我们生活方方面面的故事。请通过您喜爱的播客平台收听由欧莱雅集团出品的《这不是一个关于美的播客》。

What does beauty have to do with winning a tennis grand slam or empowering communities or tracking jaguars through the wild heart of South America? Hi there. I'm Isabella Rossellini, and I'm back with season two of this is not a beauty podcast where I uncover stories that get to the heart of how beauty is woven through every facet of our lives. Listen to this is not a beauty podcast from L'Oreal Group on your favorite podcast platform.

我是吉尔伯特·克鲁兹，《纽约时报书评》的编辑，这里是《书评播客》。本周节目中，我邀请到了我们这个时代最受赞誉的回忆录作家之一，同时她恰好也是最著名的漫画家之一。将这两者结合起来，就有了像《欢乐之家》这样的作品——被《纽约时报》评为21世纪百佳图书之一，或是其续作《你是我的母亲吗？》。这两本书的作者艾莉森·贝克德尔，她在上世纪八十年代初以漫画《留心那些女同》开始了职业生涯。

I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and this is the book review podcast. On this week's show, I'm joined by one of the most lauded memorists of our time. She also just happens to be one of the most notable cartoonists of our time. Put those two things together, and you get a book like Fun Home, one of the New York Times' 100 best books of the twenty first century, or a book like its follow-up, Are You My Mother? Both were written by Alison Bechtel, who started her career in the early nineteen eighties with the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For.

艾莉森有一本新书《耗尽》，这是一部漫画小说，其中出现了那部长篇漫画中的几个角色。艾莉森，欢迎来到《书评播客》。

Alison has a new book, Spent, a comic novel, which features several characters from that long running comic. Alison, welcome to the book review podcast.

谢谢你，吉尔伯特。很高兴来到这里。

Thank you, Gilbert. Very happy to be here.

那么我得从一个奇怪的问题开始。我收到一封邮件，说在我们春季预告集中提到你的书时，我把你的姓氏发音读错了，可能一直以来其他人也都读错了。这是真的吗？

So I need to start with an odd first question. I got an email telling me that when we mentioned your book in our spring preview episode that I had pronounced your last name wrong and that by extension, everyone else forever maybe has been pronouncing your last name wrong. Is this true?

可能是真的，因为我很久以前就不再纠正别人了，而且我真的不在意别人说‘贝克德尔’还是‘贝克德尔’，老实说，我不在乎。

It might be true because I've just I stopped correcting people a long time ago, and I really don't notice when people say Bechdel as opposed to Bechdel, and honestly, I don't care.

好的，好的。艾莉森·贝克德尔。很高兴我现在能读对了。读者们也会读对的。

Okay. Okay. Alison Bechdel. I'm glad that I'm now gonna get it right. There are readers who are gonna it right.

听众们即将理解其中的真谛。艾莉森·贝克德尔，你创作了两部图文回忆录，《欢乐之家》和《你是我的母亲吗？》。第一部自然聚焦于你的父亲，第二部则探讨了你的母亲。通过审视他们，我们看到了你，看到了你的成长轨迹与自我形成的过程。

Are listeners who are gonna get it right. Alison Bechdel, you've written two graphic memoirs, Fun Home and Are You My Mother? The first, of course, looked at your father. The second looked at your mother. And by looking at them, we're seeing you and we're seeing how you grew up and how you came to be.

而这本书则有些不同。主角名叫艾莉森，与你同名，她的女友叫霍莉，恰如你的伴侣，她们生活在佛蒙特州，正如你本人。爱丽丝通过一部关于父亲的回忆录取得了商业成功，你也如此。但你的新书并非关于真实生活，对吗？请为我们讲讲。

This one, of course, is a little different. The main character is named Alison, like you, and her girlfriend is named Holly, as is yours, and they live in Vermont, as you do. And Alice has achieved commercial success off a memoir about her father, as you have. But spent, your new book is not about your real life, is it? Tell me tell me about it.

是的，并非如此。原本确实打算写回忆录，我设想这会延续之前关于父母回忆录的传统。但当我真正动笔时，原本计划写一部关于金钱的回忆录——探讨金钱在我们生活中的角色，在这个金钱主宰世界的时代。

No. It is not. It was originally going to be. I thought this was gonna be a conventional memoir in the tradition of those ones about my parents. But when I sat down to write it, it was specifically going to be a memoir money and like just the role of money in our lives now that money has taken over the planet.

但当我

But when I

想到实际需要为此展开研究，可能还得研读马克思著作时，我实在提不起劲。就在意识到刚签约的书稿构思行不通的瞬间，我突然灵光一现：何不虚构一个故事？

thought about actually researching that and doing the work which would probably entail reading Marx, I couldn't face it. And somehow in this moment, realizing that the book idea I had just sold was in fact not gonna work, I got a whole new idea, which was make something up.

写成小说。讲述一个试图撰写金钱回忆录的人。不知为何，这个构思对我更具吸引力。于是最终形成了这部半自传体虚构的混合体作品。

Make it fiction. Write about someone who's trying to write this memoir about money. And somehow that was a much more captivating concept to me. So that's turned into this semi auto fictional whatever melange.

我预感读者——尤其是采访者——习惯了你写回忆录的风格，你会面临大量关于虚实界限的提问。虽然我不打算追问这些，但很好奇：多年前你在参与我们的'书边闲话'栏目时，曾提到珍妮特·温特森的回忆录《正常就好，何必快乐？》让你着迷于虚构与回忆录的分界线。我很好奇这部新作如何让你探索或戏耍这条分界线。

I feel like as a result, because readers and certainly interviewers are used to you writing memoir, you're gonna get a lot of questions about what is real, what is not. And I'm not gonna ask those questions. But I am curious because when you did our by the book feature many moons ago, you said in reference to Jeanette Winterson's memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, that you were fascinated by the dividing line between fiction and memoir. And I'm curious how this new work has allowed you to explore that dividing line or play around with it.

这些年来，我从一个连环漫画作家转型为回忆录作者，对回忆录这一体裁变得有些自以为是。我总想，何必费心编造故事呢？生活本身就足够精彩。它每天都在你面前，像盛在盘子里的佳肴。

Over the years that I turned myself from being a comic strip writer into a memoirist, I got very sort of self righteous about memoir as a genre. I just thought, why would you bother making anything up? Life is incredible. It's all right there. It's served up on a platter every day.

写真实就够了。我那些写小说的朋友会说，虚构能揭示更深层的真相，你不觉得吗？我表面赞同，心里却想：不，只有真实才能做到。但坚持绝对真实确实会让人精疲力竭。

Write about that. My friends who are fiction writers would say, you're able to tell a deeper kind of truth with fiction, don't you think? And I would agree with them, but secretly I would think, no, you can't. You've gotta tell the actual truth. But that does get really tiresome.

久而久之确实会厌倦。后来我也逐渐理解了虚构的妙处——有些表达只有脱离绝对事实的束缚才能实现。所以这次创作就像是...

It gets tiring anyway after a while. And I did yeah. I started to see the merits of fiction. There's stuff you can do that you can't when you're trying to stick to absolute fact. So this was just a

非常

very

愉快又解放的尝试。说实话，连我自己也开始混淆书中哪些是真哪些是假，记忆都纠缠在一起了。

fun, liberatory exercise. Honestly, I feel a little confused myself about what's true and what's not true in the book, and I'm starting to get it all mixed up.

天啊，这可不妙。书中有段描写艾莉森——书里那个角色——她总觉得自己的人生严重偏离了轨道。她年轻时的理想主义去哪儿了？

Oh, boy. That's troubling. There's a part in the book spent when you write of Allison, the character in the book. Allison can't help feeling that she has somehow gotten seriously off course. Where had her youthful idealism gone?

道德滑坡究竟始于何时？这个问题的产生是因为艾莉森和你一样，靠写关于父亲的回忆录获得了成功。书中那本回忆录被改编成了荒诞的电视剧（而非音乐剧），但两者轨迹惊人相似。书中的艾莉森在困惑：我赚了这么多钱，还是当年那个理想主义者吗？

Precisely when had her moral erosion begun? This question is raised because Alison, as is the case with you, has become successful off a memoir about her father. In the book, that memoir is turned into a crazy TV show as opposed to a musical, but the parallels are very similar. And the Allison of the book is wondering, I've made all this money. Am I still the idealist that I was when I was young?

这就像《大寒》里的困境吗？这是不是每个怀揣道德理想、青春热忱的人都会遭遇的处境？当我们不得不面对身处美国、生活在资本主义社会的现实时，这些理想与现实往往背道而驰。

Is this just like the big chill dilemma? Is this just the thing that happens to people who want to live ethically, have a youthful idealism, and then have to grapple with the fact that we live in America, that we live in capitalist society, and those two things are often at odds.

是的。我认为这就是2025版的《大寒》。但与电影不同的是，这本书还展现了艾莉森所处的活动家社群，她开始意识到生活还有其他可能性。

Yeah. I think it is the big chill. 2025 version. But as opposed to the big chill, there's something else going on in this book too, which is this community of activists who Allison lives in the midst of. And she starts to see that there are other possibilities for how to live.

她自己也正慢慢向那个方向转变，只是需要经历一个过程。

And she starts to slowly get there herself, but it's takes a bit of a process.

说来奇怪——用'剧透'这个词来讨论这本书有点怪——但你能聊聊书中的艾莉森如何开始这段旅程吗？她逐渐更清晰地理解到佛蒙特州这个社群的价值（她滑稽地住在侏儒山羊农场里）。

What without it's it's weird to use the word spoiler in reference to this book, but I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how the Allison of the book starts to sort of go along in that journey and starts to understand more explicitly the value of this community that she has around her in Vermont where she lives hilariously on a pygmy goat farm.

是的。她首先意识到自己在财务舒适区里变得多么孤立——每天门廊堆满亚马逊快递，过着'礼宾式'生活，沉迷电子屏幕。这些正是我们越来越意识到会隔绝生活美好事物的事情。嗯。

Yes. She's she starts to acknowledge I think the first step is acknowledging how isolated she's gotten in her financial comfort, in her conciergeification of her life with getting these piles of Amazon packages dumped on her porch every day. The way she spends so much time on screens and online. The things that we're all starting to realize increasingly have cut us off from all the good things about life. Mhmm.

她正在把这些联系起来。更重要的是，她开始花时间与朋友相处，正是这种现实世界的模拟连接逐渐触动了她。

She's putting that together. But increasingly, she's spending time with her friends. And there's just something about that real world analog connection that starts to get through to her.

当然，这种孤立和堆积如山的快递包裹（不是唯一原因，但部分原因）在于：《耗尽》开篇时，艾莉森和霍莉正走出疫情阴影。我们看到她们...

And, of course, part of the reason for the isolation and all the Amazon packages, not the other reason, but part of the reason is because at the beginning of Spent, Alison and Holly are coming out of the pandemic. We see them

是啊，是啊。这还是新冠疫情最严重的时候。

Yeah. Yeah. This is still in the thick of COVID.

没错。我们看到他们去朋友家，会聊很多关于朋友家那些对你读者来说耳熟能详的名字。但他们一开始去朋友家是为了看一集根据艾莉森回忆录改编的剧。他们得摘掉口罩，进屋前还得做新冠检测。

Yeah. We see them going over to their friend's house, and we'll talk a bunch about their friend's familiar names to your readers. But they go over to their friend's house at the beginning to watch an episode of the show that is based on Allison's memoir. And they have to take their masks off. They have to do a COVID test before they go inside.

你选择从这个时间点切入是出于什么考虑？当我回溯你的漫画系列《要注意的女同性恋》时，看到了你在9/11事件后画的那期。我还发现了那些角色们应对布什时代、表达感受的同期漫画。你在这里对新冠疫情的处理思路是怎样的？

What was your thinking about starting at that point? When I was going back through the collection of your comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, I came across the comic you did after 09/11. I came across all the sort of like contemporaneous strips in which characters were dealing with the Bush era and how that made them feel. What was your COVID thinking here?

有趣的是，我们刚度过疫情最严峻阶段，大家就突然不再提这事了。确实。我一直好奇1918年西班牙流感后也是这样，听说当时家家户户都对失去亲人的事闭口不谈。整个国家就像陷入某种...我不知道，羞耻反应或是悲痛中，只想继续前行。

It was funny because as soon as we were through the worst of COVID, everyone, like, stopped talking about it. Sure. And I was always curious about the way that had happened with the Spanish flu, like the flu of nineteen eighteen. I remember hearing people talk about how families just refused to talk about losing family members. Like, the whole country was just having this, I don't know, shame reaction or grief just trying to move on.

而我觉得记住事件细节非常重要。所以尽管那些新冠检测的桥段可能显得琐碎或显而易见，但我认为人们终将遗忘这些，有必要把这些记录下来。我总觉得自己在某种程度上试图为当下时刻存档。

And I feel like it's so important to remember the details of things. So while that whole, like, business with the COVID test might seem tedious or obvious. I feel like people aren't gonna remember that, and it's important to get those things down. I always feel like I'm trying to archive the present moment in some way.

我不觉得这显得愚蠢，因为我们其实根本还没真正消化那个时期。艺术领域虽有些零散作品，但总听到有人说'不想看疫情题材电影'、'不想读疫情相关书籍'这种刻板论调。

I don't know that it seems silly because I feel like we actually haven't really grappled with that period at all. In most arts, there have been things here and there. But of course, you hear the the stereotype people saying, oh, I don't wanna watch a movie with COVID in it. I don't wanna read a book with COVID in it.

确实。

Right.

有人，或许是我，会说这可能是我生命中最有意义或关键的时刻之一。我亲历了一场全球性的大流行病。我们被长时间封锁在室内，却几乎不愿多谈。我们就这么算了？就这样遗忘。

One, maybe me, says it's possibly one of the most meaningful or momentous moments in my life. I was part of an entire worldwide global pandemic. We were locked inside for long time periods, and we're just not gonna talk about it much. We're just not gonna that's it? We forget.

这让我感到非常奇怪。

It's very odd to me.

是啊。正因为我们拒绝探索可能性，这个促进成长与进步的绝佳机会就如此被白白浪费了。

Yeah. And that's how this wonderful opportunity for growth and progress got largely lost because we just refused to explore the possibilities.

你在回忆录中非常巧妙地写过这种家庭动态——全家共同经历某些事，却对某些话题绝口不提。就像我们都知道发生了什么，但就是不谈论。而现在看来，这种动态被放大了无数倍。

You have written in your memoirs, I think, very subtly about this dynamic in families, which is a family goes through a shared experience, and there are things we just don't talk about. Like, we all know it happened, but we don't talk about it. And it seems like, you know, this is that dynamic, but on a much larger scale.

没错。我人生最重要的教训之一，就是揭开我们家族的核心秘密。不仅与家人公开讨论，还出版了关于父亲同性恋身份及自杀的书。这彻底打破了上流社会的礼仪准则和家庭责任的界限。

Yeah. Exactly. And that's one of the biggest lessons of my life was taking my own family's central secret and blowing it wide open. Like, not just talking about it with my family, but publishing a book about my father's homosexuality and suicide. Like, that just broke all the rules of polite society and familial duty.

嗯。

Mhmm.

但...我不确定。最终这对我而言是件积极的事。虽然不确定家人的感受，但我想对他们最终也是有益的。

But it I don't know. It was ultimately a very positive thing for me to have done. I'm not quite sure about my family, but I think in the end for them as well.

《欢乐之家》回忆录出版后带来的影响之一，就是你的知名度较之前大幅提升。而你在新书《耗尽》中探讨的艾莉森角色，正面临着这种成功带来的困扰。成功在艺术和经济层面产生了哪些后续效应？读者可以通过书中艾莉森的挣扎看到这些。我很好奇这在你现实生活中的具体体现。

One of the things that happened as a result of the publication of that memoir Fun Home is that you became much more well known than you were previous to it. And one of the things that the Allison of your new book Spent finds yourself grappling with is that success. What are the after effects of success both artistically and financially? And readers can come to the book and see how the Allison in there grapples with it. I'm curious how that has played out in your own life.

我的职业生涯轨迹非常奇特。最初我完全处于边缘地带——不仅是作为女同性恋者，更是作为漫画家的局外人。可以说再低调不过了。但不知怎的，酷儿生活的叙事和整个漫画媒介都迎来了上升期。我恰好处在这两股潮流的交汇点，正是这种时机让我的回忆录《欢乐之家》突破小众圈层，获得了更广泛的读者。

I've had such a strange arc to my career. Like, I I started out very much on the margins as this not just a lesbian, outsider as a lesbian, but an outsider as a cartoonist. Like, you couldn't get much more under the radar. But somehow, both of those trajectories, stories about queer lives and the whole medium of comic books just had this ascendancy. And I was at the juncture of those things at just the right moment, and I think that's what enabled my memoir Fun Home to cross over to this larger audience and get me out of just that subcultural niche.

但这也令人困扰，因为我的自我认同始终是那个没打算赚钱的局外人。突然之间，我却获得了这种物质成功的奇怪尺度。这有点创伤性——我知道这听起来像是第一世界的问题——但这些年来我一直在努力应对和消化这种转变。

But it's weird too because that's where I formed my identity as an outsider, as someone who had no plan of making any money. And then all of a sudden I I achieved this strange measure of material success. It's a little traumatic. I know that's a not a that's a very first world problem to have, but it's something I've been grappling with and trying to figure out for all this all these years.

对你来说最困扰的部分是什么？

What has been the most troubling part of it for you?

我想是发现曾经的自我认知被颠覆了。我不再是过去那种意义上的局外人——尽管随着右翼浪潮持续，可能很快又会是了。书中艾莉森也在面对这个问题，比如她有个妹妹...

I guess just the fact that the self I thought I was is now something else. I'm not an outsider in the way I once was. Although, I may soon be as as the right word crush continues. This is something Allison in the book is grappling with. Like, she has a sister.

现实中我并没有亲姐妹，所以能通过虚构有趣地探索她们之间的对立关系。但她妹妹是个保守派，极端保守的那种。

I don't actually have a real sister, so that enabled me to explore this antipathy between them in a fun way. But her sister is a conservative. She's a like a mega conservative

嗯。

Mhmm.

实际上，有人试图让艾莉森的回忆录在她所在学区被禁。但她和艾莉森非常相似。两人简直如出一辙。她姐姐是位种子艺术家，艾莉森则是漫画家，但她们都从事着某种略带自闭特质的创造性工作。

Who's actually trying to get Allison's memoir band in her school district. But she's very like Allison. The two of them are very similar. The sister is a seed artist. Alison is a cartoonist, but they both have these kind of somewhat on the spectrum kinds of creative pursuits.

她们的心理特征极为相似，却处于政治光谱的两端。艾莉森总觉得一切都是自己的错，甚至怀疑是否自己的成功间接导致了特朗普的崛起。如果一位反主流文化的女同漫画家能功成名就，而她遵纪守法的姐姐却只能勉强靠小学美术教师的微薄薪水度日，这究竟意味着什么？

They're very similar in all their mental traits, but they're on opposite ends of the political spectrum. And Allison feels some she always feels like everything is her fault, so she wonders if maybe her own success has somehow caused the rise of Trump. If a countercultural cartoonist if this lesbian cartoonist can make it big while her very law abiding sister is struggling to eke out a living as a elementary school art teacher, what does that mean?

或许我们可以先谈谈书中的艾莉森及其感受。书中前段有个场景，她和朋友们围坐在餐桌旁——那些朋友过着令人着迷的群居生活，这个我们稍后可以详谈——当时朋友们拿她的收入开玩笑。比如'哎哟，大富豪要不要用私人飞机载我们一程'之类的话，我可能记错具体措辞了。

Maybe it's easier to talk about the Allison in the book and how she feels. There's a moment earlier in the book when she sits down at the table with her friends who live in this fascinating living situation that we can get into, and they're making jokes about her money. You're like, oh, yeah. Maybe you could fly us on your private plane or something. I may be completely misquoting that.

但她依然表现出不适感。她说'我知道他们只是想逗乐，这些都是我相识多年的好友，但我不确定是否喜欢他们一直拿我比他们富裕这件事开玩笑'。

And she's still she expresses still this discomfort. This I know they're just trying to be funny, and they're my friends, and I've known them forever, but I don't know that I like that we're still making fun of the fact that I have a little bit more money than they do.

这种不适感确实存在。事实上，这也正是本书最终没有写成纯粹回忆录的原因——那种情绪或许太过沉重，难以深入剖析。所以我通过虚构叙事的方式迂回地处理了这个话题。

She's uncomfortable. And in fact, that's another reason why this ended up not being a straight memoir because that feeling was perhaps a little too much to really dive deeply into. So that I took this sort of circumvention around it by creating this whole fictional version.

谈论家庭、生活和情感是否比谈论金钱更容易？我感觉无论是在恋爱关系中...

Is it easier to talk about our families and our lives and our feelings than it is to talk about money? I feel like whether it's in romantic relationships

确实如此。

It is.

在朋友关系中，金钱是人们不愿谈及的话题。

Or friend relationships, money is something people do not want to talk about.

在这个项目初期，我真的以为自己能做到。我要打破这个禁忌，直接触碰这个话题。但刚开始尝试，我就意识到——不行，这样行不通。

I really thought in the early days of this project that I was gonna do it. I was gonna break the taboo. I was just gonna go there. But as soon as I started, it was like, no. That's not gonna go well.

所以我放弃了。我不知道...或许未来某天我能重新尝试，但现阶段确实做不到。

And I abandoned it. I I don't know. Maybe that's something in the future I will be able to pursue, but I just couldn't do it at this point.

将来某天你会写本回忆录，那将是部关于你从抗拒到接纳'必须书写金钱'这个命题的元回忆录——讲述你如何创作这本关于'一个叫艾莉森的人撰写金钱之书'的书。

At some point in the future, you're gonna write a memoir, and it's gonna be a meta memoir about your discomforts and then acceptance about how one needs to write about money, and it's gonna be about you writing this book, which is about an a person named Allison writing a book about money.

没错。

That's right.

对，我们已经埋下种子。你在这本书里——如果我记错了请纠正——章节标题引自卡尔·马克思的《资本论》。《欢乐之家》贯穿了《尤利西斯》的线索，《你是我妈妈吗？》中则融入了弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫等作家的文本脉络。

Yeah. We've planted the seed. You, in this book, take your chapter titles, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, from Karl Marx, his book Das Kapital. Ulysses is threaded throughout Fun Home. There there are many books threaded throughout Are You My Mother, Virginia Woolf, and some other authors.

你是如何决定何时将文学影响（无论是显性还是隐性）融入作品的？这个度如何把握——什么时候算过量，什么时候恰到好处？你如何做这种判断？

How do you decide when to incorporate certain literary influences, whether obviously or subtly, into your books? And is it a balance where it's this is too much. This is the right. This is enough. How do you make that decision?

我必须承认，这本书里涉及的马克思理论只是非常浅显的提及。它并没有深入探讨任何内容。但最初，当我将这本书视为回忆录构思时，那本应是我的研究文本——我本打算尝试阅读《资本论》。老实说，当我拿起那部巨著开始翻阅时，反应就是：不行。

I have to confess that the marks in this book spent is very a very light gloss. It's it doesn't really get into anything. But, originally, when I was thinking of this book as a memoir, that was gonna be my text. I was gonna try to read Kapital. And, honestly, picking up that tome and starting to flip through, it was like, no.

我根本做不到。我没有时间。不过在其他项目中，我确实投入了大量时间做这类研究。比如关于我母亲的回忆录，我花了差不多两年时间自学精神分析理论，研读弗洛伊德和温尼科特。而写父亲的那本书时，我通读了他最爱的所有作家作品，试图通过理解他为何热爱这些文字来讲述他的故事。

There's no way I can do this. I don't have time. But I have spent lots of time doing that kind of research in my other projects. Like for the memoir about my mother, I spent basically two years giving myself a tutorial on psychoanalysis and reading Freud and Winnicott. And with the book about my father, it was reading all of my dad's favorite authors and starting to discover what it was he loved about them as a way into telling his story.

我特别喜欢借助这些文本外的素材进行创作和学习。阅读和吸收新知本身就让我乐在其中。然后尝试将这些元素融入我个人生活的叙事中，始终像在解有趣的拼图。所以我原计划对马克思也这么做，但很快就放弃了。不过在书籍定稿的最后阶段，我还是强行将其融入——给每个章节都冠上了《资本论》里某章的标题。

I love having those extra textual sources to play around with and just to learn. I just love reading and learning stuff. And then trying to fit it into my own narrative of my own life was always such a fun puzzle. So I thought I was gonna be doing that with Marks and quickly gave up. But in in the very final phase of writing the book, I I jammed it back in by giving each of the chapters of the book a title from a chapter in Kapital.

而且这些标题甚至与章节内容毫无关联。某种程度上它们都只是占位符而已。

And and not one that even has any bearing on what happens in that chapter. It's all just placeholders in a way.

这种手法在书末某个章节达到了喜剧巅峰——那个标题长得离谱，大概有60个单词左右。真希望我现在能准确引用

It reaches sort of its comic peak with a chapter titled late in the book that that the title has, like, 60 words in it or something. I wish I could quote it right

出来，

now,

不过还是留给读者自己去发现吧。

but I'll let people discover that one on their own.

吉尔伯特，我必须念出这个标题，因为当我担任旁白时，这会成为一本有声书。

I had to read that title, Gilbert, because there's gonna be an audiobook of this when I play the narrator.

等等，这个问题可能很蠢，请原谅我这么问。但图像小说的有声书到底是什么形式？

Okay. Wait. This is a very dumb question, so forgive me for asking it. But what is an audiobook of a graphic novel?

哦，这问题问得好。其实我也不清楚，之前从未见过类似作品。最初的计划大概只是提取书中文字让演员朗读，但显然行不通——因为绘图中有大量视觉信息需要通过音频版本传达。所以我不得不

Oh, that is a really good question. And I didn't know. I haven't really seen anything like that. And the original plan was, I think, just to lift the text out of the book and have some actors read it, but that obviously did not work because there's so much going on in the drawings that's just visual information that needed to somehow be conveyed in this audio version. So I had

去

to

彻底重写。我编写了将所有笑话转化为音效、额外对话或补充叙述的剧本，这是个庞大而有趣的工程。

basically rewrite it. I had to write a script that turned all the jokes into sound effects or extra dialogue and or extra narration. It was a big interesting project.

确认一下，这是你第一次做这种改编吗？

So this just to be clear, this is the first time you've done this?

是的。我与杰出的剧作家玛德琳·乔治合作过，她改编了《Dykes to Watch Out For》的有声书，我是从她那里学会这种改编手法的。

Yes. Yeah. I worked with the wonderful playwright Madeleine George who did an audiobook adaptation of Dykes to Watch Out For, so I learned how one does this from her.

我们马上回来。

We'll be right back.

嘿，等等。这是属于你的时刻。这是你生命中今天的这一分钟。这是你玩耍、创造、行动、穿越、探索的日子。

Hey. Hold up. This is your minute. It's your minute in this life on this day. It's your day to play, to play, to make, to move, to move through, to explore.

这是你分享的清晨，你塑造的周末，烹饪、沉浸、倾听、等待的时光。这是你休憩、滋养、成长的身体。这是你的思想。明白吗？这是你的位置，你的国家，你热爱、崛起、梦想、改变的生活。

It's your morning to share, your weekend to shape, to cook, to soak, to listen to, to wait. It's your body to rest, to nourish, to grow. It's your mind. You know? It's your place, your country, your life to love, to rise, to dream, to change.

这个世界和你一样属于任何人。这是你需要理解的世界。《纽约时报》。更多信息请访问nytimes.com/yourworld。

It's your world as much as anyone's. It's your world to understand. The New York Times. Find out more at nytimes.com/yourworld.

欢迎回来。这里是书评播客，我是吉尔伯特·克鲁兹。本周与我一起的是艾莉森·贝克特尔，新图像小说《耗尽》的作者。说到你长期连载的漫画中需要留意的堤坝角色，我们将看到几位读者在年轻时熟知的角色——麻雀、斯图尔特、洛伊丝。

Welcome back. This is the book review podcast, and I'm Gilbert Cruz. I'm joined this week by Alison Bechtel, author of the new graphic novel, Spent. Speaking of dikes to watch out for your long running comic strip, we are getting to see several characters that readers of that comic got to know in their youth. Sparrow, Stewart, Lois.

有个叫JR的角色，我们初次见面时他们还很小，而在这里已是大学生。再次相见，这些角色已步入中老年。他们依然对自己的理想充满热情，依然——或者说努力保持——对世界的高度参与。

There's a character, JR, that we meet when they are very young, and then see here as a college student. And again, these are characters. They're in their late middle age. They are still passionate about their ideals. They're still incredibly or they try to be incredibly involved in the world.

写信运动，参加会议为他们关心的话题发声。但当然，他们必须平衡这些与年龄带来的责任和妥协。你说过不创作时不会想起这些角色，但如今他们五六十岁了，重新进入他们的生活是什么感觉？

Letter writing campaigns, going to meetings in order to speak out on topics that they care about. But of course, they're having to balance all that with the responsibilities and compromises of age. And you've said that you don't think about these characters when you're not writing these characters, but what is it like to sort of ramp back up for getting back into their lives now that they're in their late fifties, early sixties?

他们已年过六旬。嗯，这真是个有趣的过程。我在2008年2月停止了漫画创作，那是十六年前的事了。说实话，我后来很少想起这些角色。我转向了其他事业，但现在突然发现，我此刻正需要他们的陪伴。

Well into their sixties as Uh-huh. I It was an interesting process. I stopped writing the comic strip in 02/2008, so sixteen years ago. And, yeah, I had not really thought much about them. I was I moved on to other things, but I just found that I needed their companionship right now.

将这本书从回忆录转型为自传体小说的灵感迸发时刻，是当我意识到——天啊，我可以把所有角色都融入这个新版本。

Part of the brainstorm of turning the book from a memoir into auto fiction was realizing that, oh my god. I can bring all my characters into this version. And

嗯。

Mhmm.

霍莉和我在伯灵顿山下的朋友们组成了这个集体家庭。要知道，二十多岁开始画漫画时，我自己就住在类似的集体宿舍里。但在我创作漫画的二十五年间，这些角色始终保持着群居状态——我舍不得拆散他们。如今他们六十多岁了仍住在一起，为此我编了个设定：他们都在参与佛蒙特大学社会学系关于集体生活的纵向研究。虽然我可能无法忍受群居生活，但这些角色构建的社区氛围确实有种非凡的吸引力。

So Holly's and my friends who live down the hill in Burlington, Vermont are this group household who you know, when I started writing the comic strip when I was in my twenties, I actually lived in a group household like these people. But over the twenty five years that I wrote my comic strip, they stayed living in it. I couldn't bear to break them up. And now here they still are in their sixties, and I've I've rationalized that by having them all be taking part in a University of Vermont sociology department longitudinal study on collective living. I don't think I could bear living in a collective house, but there's something also tremendously appealing about the community that these people have.

嗯。他们不像郊区居民那样生活在与世隔绝的浪漫二人世界里，而是始终保持着集体生活形态，这种设定非常引人入胜。

Mhmm. And the way that they don't live in a cut off hermetically sealed suburban house in their romantic dyads. They're just they're in a group. They're in a collective, which is very compelling.

作为住在郊区独栋住宅的人，我很好奇这种集体生活的吸引力究竟在哪里？

What is appealing I ask this as someone who lives in a suburban house. What is appealing about the collective?

你能更鲜活地感知生命脉动。我没有孩子，想来养育子女也能带来类似体验。但仅仅是看着其他人的故事不断上演，不同人生轨迹交织穿梭——这种动态本身就充满令人振奋的活力。整本书的核心脉络，正是艾莉森逐渐意识到自己并非孤悬于世的觉醒过程。

You're tied to life more vividly. I I don't have children, so I guess children would tie you to life quite vividly. But just having other lives, other people's business coming and going constantly. There's just something very energizing and exciting about that. And the whole sort of arc of this book is Allison's realization that she is not out there on her own.

她正在和这些人一起工作。她只需要和他们协作即可，不必独自解决所有问题——尽管她总觉得必须如此。但显然她无法真正做到，因此陷入这种无能为力的痛苦状态。

She's working with these other people. That's all she has to do is to pitch in with them. She doesn't have to fix everything herself, which is how she feels. But of course, she can't actually do that, so that's why she's so paralyzed and unhappy.

你漫画中的角色莫伊是你的化身。艾莉森是老年版的莫伊，还是本质上完全不同的角色？

The character in your strip, Moe, was an avatar for you. Is Alison older Moe, or is she a different character essentially?

这本书里没有莫伊，因为不需要——毕竟我自己就在故事里。莫伊最初是我创造的自我投射。但在连载漫画的二十五年间，我逐渐从莫伊这个角色转变为她的女友雪梨——那位校园里新来的女性研究教授，一个尖酸刻薄又玩世不恭的聪明人。随着时间推移，我感觉自己确实变成了这个更消极、不再那么单纯的版本。而现在，我觉得自己是她们两者的融合体。

There is no Moe in this book because we I didn't need her because, yes, I myself am there. Moe, I created her as a version of myself. But over the run of that comic strip, over those twenty five years that I was doing it, I turned from the character Moe into Moe's girlfriend, Sydney, who was a new women's studies professor on campus, this sort of jaded, cynical, smart ass. I feel like I turned into that somewhat more negative, less earnest character with time. And now I'm I feel like I'm a fusion of both of them.

所以书中的艾莉森同时具备这两种特质。

And so Allison in the book is both of those things.

你曾在《纽约客》专访中说过，这些角色本质上都是你自己。你说《女同》里所有角色或多或少都是我——这个说法确实很合理，也确实成立。

You also said once in a New Yorker profile that all these characters are you, essentially. You said all the characters in Dykes are more or less me, which maybe makes sense, which does make sense.

没错。要描写非我族类的人物，我必须先找到与他们的共通点。我想这就是作家的创作方式。

Yeah. I mean, in order to write about anyone who wasn't me, I had to just find some point of commonality with them. So I think that's just what writers do.

对于金杰、斯帕罗这些角色，你是否能重新进入当年的创作思维？比如明确他们在2008年2月的状态，回忆八十年代初期我们如何塑造他们，并推演出他们在2020年代中期会成为怎样的人？

Did you feel with each of these characters, again, Ginger, Sparrow, all of them, that you were able to get back into your mind and say, this is where I left them in 02/2008. This is where we started with them in the early eighties, and this is the type of person that they would be now in the mid twenty twenties.

我并没有做太多角色研究。他们基本上还是原来的那些人，做着和我离开时相同的工作。麻雀在计划生育协会工作。斯图尔特在组织乌克兰救援行动。洛伊丝成为了当地酷儿青年组织的执行董事。

I didn't do a lot of character study. They basically are the same people they always were, and they're doing the same kind of work they were doing back then when I left off. Sparrow works for Planned Parenthood. Stuart's organizing Ukrainian relief efforts. Lois has become the the ED of the local queer youth organization.

金杰在大学里埋头苦干。他们都还在做着自己一直在做的事。

Ginger's in the trenches at the university. They're all still doing what they were doing.

另一个我们逐渐了解的角色是JR，斯图尔特和麻雀的孩子。他们上了大学，但不久后退学，然后不出所料地带着你听过的最具年轻人进步色彩的语言闯入了艾莉森的生活。艾莉森和JR曾一度同居，这既很有趣，我认为也反映了当下年轻人看待世界的方式。你有一群年长的角色，然后又有这个精彩的年轻角色和他们类似浪漫伴侣的关系。

So one of the other characters that we get to know is JR, child of Stuart and Sparrow. They go off to college. They leave college after a while, and they arrive in the life of Allison, not surprisingly, with the most young person progressive language that you've ever heard. Alison and JR lived together at one point, and it's very funny, but also, I think, very reflective of the way young people see the world now. Do you have all these older characters and then you have this wonderful younger character and their sort of quasi romantic partner.

写这些角色是什么感觉。

What it was like to write those characters.

天啊，太有趣了。我爱这些孩子。某种程度上，我在弥补自己没有孩子的遗憾，就像允许这些虚拟的孩子搬进我在农场的蒙古包一样。

Oh, man. It was so fun. I love those kids. In a way, I was indulging my own regrets at not having had children. Like, I was allowing myself to have these these kind of vicarious children move into my yurt at the farm.

但没错，JR和他们多元伴侣关系中的獾都刚从欧柏林学院退学。部分原因是对大学失望，也因为他们的多元关系破裂了，这对他们打击很大。所以他们退学了，现在在做他们的播客《多元危机》。他们是唯一真正视野开阔的人。大人们都埋头于各自的事务，而这些年轻人确实对事物有些见解，我认为我们都能从中受益。

But, yeah, JR and their polycule partner, Badger, have both just dropped out of Oberlin. They're just partly they're disillusioned with college, but also their their polycule kind of broke up, and that was devastating to them. So they're they've dropped out, and they're working on their podcast Poly Crisis. I mean, they're like the only people really with a big view. The adults are all funneled into their various activities, but the young people really have some perspective on things that I think we could all benefit from.

如果我们讨论艾莉森或莫、金杰、麻雀、斯图尔特这些老一辈年轻时对进步主义的理解和改变世界的参与方式，与JR和獾这代人的方式之间的代际差异，你认为主要区别在哪里？

What do you think the if we're talking about the generational difference between Allison or Moe and Ginger and Sparrow and Stewart and how they thought about being progressive and thought about engaging with the world that they wanted to change when they were young and JR and Badger, way they do it. What do you see as the difference there?

我们看到的一个事实是JR的童年。JR是个非常任性、某种程度上被斯图尔特过度溺爱宠坏的小孩。这种动态关系在此延续——JR是活动家的孩子，从小耳濡目染这些理念，如今以更激进的方式践行着。斯图尔特组织的是选民动员书信活动，而JR却在搞堕胎药分包派对，做更具风险、实际违法的事，参与公民抗命和气候抗议。

One thing is we saw JR's childhood. JR was a, like, a very willful little kid and somewhat spoiled by Stuart's overindulgence. So that dynamic continues to play out here. JR is a child of activists and learned all of this stuff at their parents' feet and is now carrying on, but in a a more radical way. Like, Stewart is organizing these get out the vote letter writing campaigns, but JR is doing abortion pill packing parties, like something more risky, something actually illegal, doing civil disobedience and doing a a climate protest.

所以我认为年轻人感受到的紧迫感

So there's a a little more urgency, I think, that the young people

嗯。

Mhmm.

比我们这代人更强烈。

Are feeling than my generation did.

你之前提到艾莉森的姐姐希拉。希拉深爱她的女同性恋妹妹，但同时也是福克斯新闻的忠实观众，加入过'自由妈妈'这类组织，反对堕胎。尽管她的信仰与艾莉森及佛蒙特州那些酷儿自由派朋友相悖——考虑到你其他作品这并不意外——你在书中后期赋予了她丰富的人性光辉和内心世界。

You mentioned earlier Allison's sister, Sheila. Sheila loves her lesbian sister, but she also watches Fox News all the time. She's part of a moms for liberty type group. She's anti abortion. And even though her beliefs run counter to Allison's and those of her queer liberal friends in Vermont, not surprisingly, given your other work, you give her just a huge amount of humanity and certainly in the latter part of the book and inner life.

我很好奇你希望这两个角色如何相互映衬。

And I was curious how you wanted the two of those characters to to play off of each other.

很高兴你能感受到这点，这正是我的创作意图。我认为当下最紧要的事就是弥合两极分化鸿沟，哪怕只是通过虚构作品。是的，艾莉森最终真正理解希拉是个有独立人生和视角的个体，而她并没有试图改变希拉。

I'm glad that's what came through because that's what I wanted to do. I feel like one one of the most critical things we can do right now is to bridge that polarization gap. And if I'm only doing it fictionally, at least that's something. But, yeah, Allison comes to really understand Sheila is her own person with her own life and her own perspective. And she doesn't change Sheila.

她尝试或幻想改变希拉的政治立场，但最终他们只能求同存异，同时保持一定程度的亲密关系，我认为这是我们所有人都必须做到的。而我们的许多家庭正是被这种荒谬之事所割裂。

She tries or fantasizes about changing Sheila's politics, but they just eventually have to agree to disagree but maintain their some measure of intimacy, which is I think what we all have to do. And there's so many of our families that are riven by this bull

你曾在一篇访谈中谈及这本书——当时尚未出版——你说感觉要创作一部给成年人看的丁丁式冒险故事。你特别提到了色彩的运用，在这部作品中色彩的表现力确实前所未有地突出，我认为这在你之前的作品中未曾出现。能否谈谈你是如何决定在职业生涯中逐步融入并运用色彩的？你最初以黑白作品起步，后来创作《欢乐之家》《你是我妈妈吗？》时——

There was an interview where you were talking about this book. It hadn't come out yet, and you said, I felt like I'm gonna do a tinted adventure but for adults. You were talking about color specifically, which really pops here in a way that it hasn't, I don't think, in your previous work. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you have decided to incorporate color, use color over the course of your career. You started in black and white, and then now when you did Fun Home, Are You My Mother?

再到《超人之力的秘密》，色彩运用开始转变。如今这部新书呈现出如此明快悦目的视觉效果。

And then The Secret to Superhuman Strength, that started to change. And we've arrived at the book now where it's just it's so bright and fun to look at.

最初我觉得自己成为漫画家就是为了避开色彩。在我开始漫画创作的前数字时代，基本上只能做黑白作品，而我很喜欢黑白风格。我父亲在我童年时通过给填色书上色给我留下了心理阴影——他会示范如何填色，展示那些精美技巧。我当时就想：天啊老爸，至于吗？

Initially, I feel like I became a cartoonist in order to avoid color. Like, back in the pre digital era when I started cartooning, pretty much all you could do was black and white, and I loved black and white. My father had traumatized me about color as a child by coloring in my coloring books, like showing me how to do it and doing these beautiful techniques. It was like, oh my god, dad. Really?

所以我一度排斥色彩。但随着时间推移，特别是进入数字时代后，色彩运用变得更经济便捷，我开始被推动着进一步探索这个领域。这是项浩大工程，在很多方面会使绘图工作量翻倍。

So I was like out on color. Forget it. But over time, and and also as we entered the digital era and color became cheaper and easier to use, I got pushed and got interested in in exploring it further. It's a huge amount of work. That's a whole like, it doubles the work of the drawing in many ways.

嗯。

Mhmm.

但我很幸运，我的搭档霍莉负责这部分。她用水彩为《超人之力》上色，现在又用Photoshop处理这本书——效果截然不同，更接近传统漫画风格，像《丁丁历险记》。我年轻时喜爱丁丁系列不仅因其精美色彩，更因那些令人沉浸的故事。那些60到80页的冒险故事能让人完全沉醉其中，无论叙事还是绘画都无比精妙。

But I've been really lucky because my partner, Holly, has been doing that. She colored Superhuman Strength with watercolor, and now she colored this book with Photoshop, which is a really different look, much more conventional comic book look, like like the Tintin comics. And what I loved about Tintins when I was younger was not just the beautiful color, but just how immersive these stories were. They would be these, like, I don't know, 60 to 80 page adventures that you could just get lost in. And they were so beautifully written and drawn.

它们比我平时读的普通漫画书要引人入胜得多。我不清楚，比如《小富豪》之类的。所以，是的，我一直觉得自己也想那样做，创造一个既引人入胜又充满诱惑的世界。

They were just much more absorbing than the regular comic books I was reading. I don't know. Richie Rich or something. So, yeah, I wanted I always felt like I wanted to do that, make a world compelling and seductive.

我想请教你一个关于绘画姿势的问题。我不知道你坐着的方式，是必须弓着背还是怎样，这可能和作家不同。比如，你会不会感到酸痛？这对你的身体有什么影响？你在创作这些书时通常会保持什么姿势？

I would love to ask you a question about the physicality of drawing. I don't know the way you sit, the way you have to sit or hunch, or that's maybe different than it would be for a writer. Like, what what is that do you have aches and pains? Has it done something to your body? What positions do you find yourself in when you're working on these books?

我的创作过程特别有趣。我会注意人体工学，但同时也经常自然地变换动作。比如画画时，前一秒我还弓着背伏在画板上，下一秒就可能跳起来给自己拍参考照片，因为角色需要某个姿势。所以这非常耗费体力，有时候简直像在做有氧运动，跑来跑去的。

I have a really really funny process. I'm careful ergonomically, but also I I'm just I naturally mix up what I'm doing all the time. Like when I'm drawing, yeah, I'm hunched over my drawing board one second, but the next moment, I'm leaping up to take a reference shot of myself doing some pose that my character needs to be in. So it's very physical. It's very almost aerobic sometimes, all this running around.

这种方式很好地避免了重复性劳损。不过确实，漫画是一种极具身体参与感的写作形式，产生的作品也充满实体感。你能看到角色生活的物质细节和感官现实，这是纯文字无法呈现的。

And it prevents repetitive stress injuries in a great way. But, yeah, comics is a really physical way of writing, and it results in a very embodied kind of writing. Like, where you're just seeing people's, the physical material details of their lives and their sensual reality in a way that you don't when it's just words on the page.

我想问你个问题，因为今年早些时候我们做过一期关于爱德华·戈里百年诞辰的播客，他是我最爱的艺术家之一。我看过你谈论他，能否说说你喜爱他和他的作品的哪些方面？

I want to ask you a question just because we did a podcast earlier this year about the one hundredth anniversary of Edward Gorey, who's just one of my favorites of all time. Yeah. And and I've seen you talk about him, and I'm just wondering if you could just tell me what you love about him and his work.

这本《耗尽》其实是对戈里首部插画小说《未调音的竖琴》的延伸演绎。你还记得那本关于厄布拉斯先生的书吗？我当然记得。天啊。

This book, Spent, is an extended riff on Gorey's first illustrated novel, The Unstrung Harp. Do you remember that one about mister Earbrass? I certainly do. Yeah. God.

我太爱那本书了。

Love that book so much.

这是关于一位写作遇到困难的作家的故事。

This is about a writer who who is having trouble writing.

是的。这是我见过对创作过程最深刻的描绘。最让我觉得奇妙的是，那种号称全知的叙述方式总是以滑稽的方式滑入埃尔布拉斯先生的意识里。我的书里也有类似情况，爱丽丝、角色和这本书的叙述者之间的界限有些模糊。但戈里·戈里完全是我的偶像。

Yes. This the most insightful portrait of the creative process I've ever seen. That what's funny funniest about it to me somehow is this the way that purportedly omniscient narration keeps veering into mister Ehrbrass's own consciousness in this just hilarious way. That kind of happens in my book too, where Alice and the character and the narrator of this book are a little unclear where one stops and the other starts. But Gory Gory is just my hero.

抛开《未调音的竖琴》不谈，是他的作品基调吸引你吗？是绘画本身？还是说这些元素共同作用？对你来说最核心的魅力究竟是什么？

The unstrung harp aside, is it the tone of his stuff? Is it the drawing itself? Is it what maybe it all works in concert, but what what has always been the appeal for you?

对。我认为部分魅力在于他的画风，那些人物脸上古怪又隐晦的表情，与文字内容形成微妙反差。这种错位产生的化学反应非常强烈。嗯。而且令人着迷。

Yeah. I think that the tone part of the tone is his drawings and these weird oblique expressions people are making that don't quite connect with what the words say. There's something that goes on in that space that is just so potent Mhmm. And transfixing.

最后我想简单聊聊《欢乐之家》。去年我们试图联系你，当时书评专栏策划了一个项目，邀请500位作家和文学界杰出人士评选21世纪迄今最佳书籍——与往常仅由评论家组成的评审团不同，这次都是你的同行。《欢乐之家》入选了，我并不意外。我好奇的是，在这本书出版多年后，在百老汇音乐剧上演之后，你至今仍能听到哪些关于它的反馈？

I wanna end by talking briefly about Fun Home. We tried to get in touch, you and I, last year when Fun Home ended up on a project that the book review did looking at what a panel of 500 writers and and literary luminaries had picked as the best books of the twenty first century so far. So these are peers of yours as opposed to a panel of just critics, which is normally what we would have done in the past. And Fun Home was on there, and it was not surprising to me. I'm wondering what you continue to hear about this book long after you first published it, long after the Broadway musical came out.

在你看来，它为何能持续引发共鸣？

How does it continue to resonate as you understand it in the world?

这本书后来的发展让我觉得超现实。最近我开始教书，遇到那些年轻大学生说这本书塑造了他们的人生观，这种体验太奇妙了。我总不知该如何回应。但确实...（停顿）

It's so wild to me what has happened with that book. I actually have started teaching recently, and it's so funny to meet students, these young college kids who tell me that this book was formative for them. That is just a remarkable thing to experience. I never know quite what to do with it. But I don't know.

看吧，我都说不出话来了。这特别有趣，因为《欢乐之家》讲述的是我自己寻找酷儿历史和酷儿文学的过程，就像发现了《寂寞之井》这本超级压抑的书。我想我很高兴能为年轻人创作了一本更欢乐、更激动人心的书。但最主要的是，我真的感到非常幸运，这本书能在世界上流传开来。

Look, I'm rendered speechless. It's especially funny because Fun Home is about my own, like, search for queer history and queer literature and finding the well of loneliness, this super depressing book. And I guess I feel happy that I've made a a more fun, exciting book for young people to land on. But mostly, I'm just really I just feel very fortunate that that book made its way in the world.

艾莉森·贝克德尔，《欢乐之家》及新书《花光了》的作者，这是一部漫画小说。非常感谢您加入书评播客。

Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home and the new book, Spent, a comic novel. Thank you so much for joining the book review podcast.

谢谢你，吉尔伯特。

Thank you, Gilbert.

这是我与艾莉森·贝克德尔关于她的新书《花光了》的对话，这是一部漫画小说。我是《纽约时报》书评编辑吉尔伯特·克鲁兹。感谢收听。

That was my conversation with Alison Bechtel about her new book, Spent, a comic novel. I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times book review. Thanks for listening.