Monica Szabo is in her 50s, divorced, with grown children, and responsible only to herself. For years she's taught art and taken care of a family rather than full-time creating art. What would it take to truly throw herself into the artist's life?
A sugar daddy.
It's a great premise, and Gordon explores it thoughtfully. At the start of the book Monica gives a talk at a friend's gallery. Mid-talk, she takes an unplanned detour. This quote gives a sense of her ironic voice:
Sometimes, when I'm in the middle of going for the big laugh, or the next big laugh, the wave crashes and I look around me and see only flotsam and jetsam: old condoms, Tampax holders, empty bags saying Cheetos or Made in Taiwan. But that wasn't happening. The wave wasn't even beginning to crash. So I said, "You know, folks, there's a tradition that male painters get to take advantage of: the woman who's a combination model, housekeeper, cook, secretary. And of course she earns money. And provides inspiration. All over the world, girls are growing up dreaming of being the Muse for some kind of artist. Looking at their bodies in mirrors thinking, 'Maybe some man would like to paint that.' Reading French cookbooks that tell them how to make really succulent little dishes out of horsemeat with a lot of bay leaves and wine. Preparing physically and spiritually to carry his canvases to a hard-hearted gallery owner, their muscles straining, their eyes brimming with shed or unshed tears. Now I ask you, mothers and fathers of America, are your boys dreaming of these things? Where, I ask you, lovers of the arts, where are the male Muses?"The man who volunteers is a cipher known only as "B". His life apart from Monica is vague. His explicit purpose is to be her foil, her support, her lover, her inspiration, her concierge; he's extraordinarily perfect in the role. (Remember, this is Utopia.)
And he stood up, just there, in front of everyone, and said, "Right here."
So the story is all Monica: how she takes advantage of B's offer, her guilt over "taking advantage", her sense of obligation to achieve great art now she's thrown down the gauntlet, her qualms over accepting money and pleasure from B. (On that front, Monica's daughter suggests she stop angsting and think of herself as a sex worker.)
The sex is explicit, but not at all gratuitous. Monica's physical relationship with B is inspiring, quite literally: her artistic flowering is strongly shaped by their shared pleasure.
The pace flags in the middle, but by the end, Monica has struck out in a new artistic direction and reaped some professional acclaim. To do so, she's taken advantage of money on a scale she never expected to have. Did she sell out? I would say no, but I'm sure some readers feel differently. And that is in some ways the crux of the book. When there's a clear choice, as Gordon draws it, whether to reject "the system" (the money, the patronage, the affirmative action, the favors from friends) or take advantage of it, which path is going along with the status quo, and which is subverting it? It's a timely question with resonance beyond the art world.
Spending is a departure for Gordon. In a 1998 interview, she discusses the book's place in fiction:
While many reviewers have noted this book about sex and pleasure is a departure from the dark themes of her former bestsellers... the work does reflect Gordon’s commitments to feminism and risk-taking....Grade: A-
"I think I’m doing something quite radical, but people won’t get it. My radical act is that a woman has good sex and nobody dies. And that, in fact, is something you don’t see much in fiction. Nobody dies. Nobody’s punished. Good sex for a woman without punishment is rare. So that’s my radical act, but nobody’s going to get much up in arms about it. I don’t think people care that much about fiction about women unless it involves mutilation of the body."
