Måndagsmöte: Alison Bechdel

Mycket glad att detta sista Måndagsmöte för årtiondet kunna presentera ett måndagsmöte med en av författarna till en av böckerna på min (och väldigt många andras) topplista för 00-talet: nämligen Alison Bechdel, författarinnan till ”Husfrid” (”Fun Home”).

What are you reading at the moment?

Edmund White’s memoir CITY BOY, about becoming a writer in New York City in the seventies. Also, Martin Duberman’s memoir about his political work in New York from the AIDS years to the present. Two New York memoirs by gay men, but so different they seem to have been written by creatures from two separate galaxies.

Could you ever have imagined that your book Fun Home would be on so many ”best of the decade”-lists? (It’s on mine aswell.) How does it feel?

No. It feels mostly lovely, but this is interrupted with periodic pangs of anxiety that I’ve been seriously overrated.

Are there any books that you read as a guilty pleasure?

Robert B. Parker’s SPENSER books, about macho-but-literate private eye.

How important is reading and books in your life? Has it changed over the years?

To be honest, I spend a lot less time reading as an adult than I did as a child. There’s just so much to do, especially when I need to spend many long hours drawing, that it’s hard to fit reading in. I often listen to audiobooks when I draw, but that really doesn’t feed me the way running my own eyes across the page does. I wish I had about four extra hours a day to just read.

Could you list your five best reads of the decade?

”The Night Watch” –  Sarah Waters

”Jimmy Corrigan, Smartest Kid on Earth” – Chris Ware

”Runaway” –  Alice Munro

”The Accidental” –  Ali Smith

”Reading Lolita in Tehran” – Azar Nafisi

Can we expect a follow-up to Fun Home sometimes in the future?

Yes, I’m hard at work right now on a second memoir about my twenties. That’s the surface story anyway, relationships I had in my twenties. But it’s really about my mother. And the nature of the self. If I can figure out how to do all that.