Paying for It

by Chester Brown

Overview

The critically lauded memoir about being a john. Now in paperback! Paying for It was easily the most talked-about and controversial graphic novel of 2011, a critical success so innovative and complex that it received two rave reviews in the New York Times, and sold out of its first print run in just six months. Chester Brown’s eloquent, spare artwork stands out in this paperback edition. Paying for It combines the personal and sexual aspects of Brown’s autobiographical work (I Never Liked You, The Playboy) with the polemical drive of Louis Riel. Brown calmly lays out the facts of how he became not only a willing participant in, but a vocal proponent of one of the world’s most hot-button topics—prostitution. While this may appear overly sensational and just plain implausible to some, Brown’s story stands for itself. Paying for It offers an entirely contemporary exploration of sex work—from the timid john who rides his bike to his escorts, wonders how to tip so as not to offend, and reads Dan Savage for advice, to the modern-day transactions complete with online reviews, seemingly willing participants, and clean apartments devoid of clichéd street corners, drugs, or pimps. Complete with a surprise ending, Paying for It continues to provide endless debate and conversation about sex work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770460843
Publisher:	Drawn & Quarterly
Publication date:	04/22/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	298
Sales rank:	572,536
File size:	88 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	15 - 18 Years

About the Author

Chester Brown was born in Montreal in 1960. He is the author of seven books and is best known for the non-fiction graphic novels Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography (2003) and Paying for It: A Comic-Strip Memoir About Being a John (2011). In 2024, Brown created a Louis Riel stamp for Canada Post as part of a set honouring Canadian cartoonists. He lives in Toronto.

Editorial Reviews

Like some Mars-bound rockets, Paying for It burns in three stages: It's a factual and often graphic recounting of the author's many erotic sessions with sex workers; it's a bitter critique of the inanities of romantic love; and it's a sustained argument in favor of decriminalizing prostitution. This is not a feel-good comic book. It's sober and intense…it delivers a series of moral and cerebral and horndog thwacks. It will stick in your mind and perhaps in your craw. It's a real if squeamish-making work of art.
—The New York Times

Dwight Garner

A compelling look into one man's history of employing prostitutes as a replacement for romantic love, this graphic novel is sure to create controversy. Brown has produced acclaimed but brutally honest autobiographical works before, but here he adds a new didactic element. In June 1996 Brown's then girlfriend broke up with him. After three years of celibacy and his growing conviction that romantic love is destructively possessive, Brown works up the courage to see a legal prostitute and finds the "burden" of anxiety over whether to pursue a relationship with any particular woman forever removed. The next 200 pages are an explicit—but far from erotic—dossier of the various women he did business with, until he meets one that he ends up with in a monogamous—but still financial—relationship. Although Brown intends the work to be a compassionate look at a profession that helps people, he unfortunately goes out of his way to anonymize the sex workers—never showing their faces and telling the story in tiny, cramped panels, giving the whole thing a voyeuristic feel. A lengthy appendix arguing that a system where paying for sex is preferable to romance-based methods is unlikely to persuade many readers. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Truly groundbreaking… As convincing a case for the decriminalization and destigmatization of prostitution as anyone I’ve ever come across in the prostitutes’ rights movement.”—Annie Sprinkle, The New York Times

“A sustained argument in favor of decriminalizing prostitution [that] will stick in your mind and perhaps in your craw. It’s a real if squeamish-making work of art.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“Brown’s astonishingly frank account of using the services of prostitutes in Toronto is a thoroughly engrossing look at a world most people would otherwise never know existed.”—The Toronto Star

“As a demonstration of the limitless narrative potential of the comics medium, its ability to tackle some of the most difficult and loaded questions of our time, Paying For It delivers.”—NPR Books

From the Publisher