User:Curly Turkey/Sandbox/Paying For It

Paying For It, "a comic strip memoir about being a john", is a graphic novel by award-winning Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown, published by Drawn and Quarterly on May 1, 2011.

The book is concerned with Brown's "two competing desires--the desire to have sex, versus the desire to NOT have a girlfriend." Brown's solution to the problem is to forgo traditional boyfriend/girlfriend relationships and marriage and to take up the life of a "john" by frequenting prostitutes.

The introduction was by cartoonist luminary Robert Crumb, and the book includes quotes from Brown's peers such as Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman..

Overview
After then-girlfriend Sook-Yin Lee broke up with him in 1996, Brown spent a celibate three years mulling over what he saw as the negative aspects of romantic love in the modern world. He works up the courage to see a prostitute, and therefore decides never to pursue a relationship with any one woman again--that is, until he ends up with one particular prostitute, albeit still in a strictly financial way.

In an interview with The Pulse in 2004, he says he explores some of René Girard's theories of the origin of desire in Paying For It. The book comes complete with "[a] lengthy appendix arguing that a system where paying for sex is preferable to romance-based methods."

Politics
Brown, a libertarian, takes the position that prostitution should be decriminalized, and presents this view throughout the comic, as well as in a lengthy appendix. In his view...

Style
Brown employs a "rigid eight-panel grid structure" which "he never veers from" (somewhat like the six-panel pages he used in Louis Riel), "using frail, tiny figures, preventing our involvement with the bodies depicted on the page. Word balloons obscure the women’s faces, while Brown himself appears behind blank and affectless glasses."

This is Brown's first major work to break from the traditional all-caps style of lettering in English-language comic books and strips.

History
Brown has previously detailed his problems with relating to women in his works, most notably in his highly-acclaimed graphic novels The Playboy and I Never Liked You, the subject playing a central role in both stories.

Brown's history of visiting prostitutes had been made public long before the appearance of Paying For It, as in his interview with Dave Sim in Cerebus #295-297, and that he had been working on a graphic novel on the subject had been known at least since 2004. Its subject matter was known in comics circles long before its publication, and its appearance was much anticipated.

Brown's aversion to relationships with women drew tentative comparisons to friend and fellow cartoonist Dave Sim, known for his controversial views on women. Brown responded to this by saying, "...I don't think women are intellectually inferior to men. But I like being alone." Brown also publicly debated the subject with Sim in the Getting Riel interview, while acknowledging that "Cerebus #186 [the issue in which Sim first laid out his controversial views] did push me in the direction of questioning the whole romantic relationship thing".

The book was the first of Brown's graphic novels not to be serialized first. Brown originally intended Louis Riel to be published this way, but was convinced by Drawn and Quarterly editor-in-chief Chris Oliveros to publish it as a series. Following poor sales of the pamphlet form, Oliveiros relented and gave Brown the go-ahead to publish Paying For It directly in book form.

Reception
While it was not surprising that a cartoonist of Brown's standing would receive accolades from his peers and critics, neither was it surprising that the book would be the focus of controversy. The subject matter and Brown's didactic approach to it were expected from the outset to draw fire, but some found Brown's approach to have more aesthetic repercussions:

""Out of consideration for the women, Brown doesn’t provide any background detail on the prostitutes he visits, although he does note that he spent a lot of time talking to them and learned much about their lives. He also says he dallied with a variety of ethnic types and hair styles, but — for fear perhaps that they may be recognized by family or friends — their faces are all obscured, and all are portrayed as white-skinned brunettes, (though it’s worth noting he does take care to denote individual body types, especially in regards to breast size). That doesn’t derail the book too badly but there is a palpable sense of something missing, an experience or emotional hole that needs to be filled. I can well understand and respect Brown’s desire to show as much consideration to these women as possible, but not having more female perspective in the book, particularly in a book about such a taboo and divisive subject, hurts the book both aesthetically and in terms of his larger points.""

- Chris Mautner

The advocacy displayed in the voluminous pages of the appendix "may have been done to the work's overall detriment", according to Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter; "Give me scenes like the one where Brown argues with Seth over the issues, seething and impatient with Seth's answers and his own, desperate and human in wanting to make and win such discussions, over any number of facile dissections of each argument's actual merits."