A novel is fiction, no matter how much of the story is modeled on life. In the wide world of books, the binary model of fiction and nonfiction is surprisingly immutable. It’s low-stakes stuff, and the stakes get even lower a few paragraphs later when Heard phones Sedaris, who readily admits to the embellishments. Things Sedaris “lied” about include the architectural style of the building (Tuscan Revival, not Gothic), the name of the facility (a hospital, not a sanitarium), and his responsibilities (less dangerous than those he described). “He’s lying through his teeth!” the nurse says. By the time Heard has tracked down a nurse who worked at the facility at the same time that Sedaris did, it’s clear that he views his quest as deeply serious. Heard’s analysis begins with a close look at “Dix Hill,” Sedaris’ meditation on the summers he spent volunteering at a mental hospital. Whether or not you agree with it, it’s impossible to deny that it’s totally over the top. Take, for instance, “ This American Lie,” Alex Heard’s account of the weeks he spent fact-checking the humorist David Sedaris’ essays. At all.Ĭonversations about truth tend toward the melodramatic. They plainly indicate that I don’t know what truth is. I look down at my typed list of questions. I even know about that terrible time her mother found the “tee-tee place” drawing she made when she was seven years old. I was “with” Bechdel when she realized she was a lesbian and when she found out that her father died. Over the course of her two graphic memoirs, Fun Home and Are You My Mother?, she has been rigorously honest about her thoughts, words, and actions across a wide variety of intimate settings that include her therapist’s office, her dreams, and her bedroom. If anyone knows what telling the truth is, it is surely this woman in front of me. Tell the truth! Don’t we all know what telling the truth is?” “I’m getting increasingly moralistic about this. “If I’m reading something that is marketed to me as a memoir, it fucking well better be true,” she says. Two questions in, Bechdel gets down to brass tacks. It is late afternoon, and it has been raining all damn day. While I do not want to gush, or seem nervous, or stupid, it seems that I have just offered to make her tea, as though that were a normal way to respond to a host who has just offered to do the same. I am trying not to dwell on the regrettable fact that I arrived almost 15 minutes late for our interview, which perhaps has not set the right tone. I’m staring across the kitchen table at the cartoonist Alison Bechdel, filled with a vague sense of dread. From Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel

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