This book was lent to me by a colleague who knows I love to read and knew I was trying to find more graphic novels to read. The only other one I had read was “Stitches.” I'm still looking for more.
The name “Fun Home” is short for funeral home. Alison Bechdel’s father was an English teacher by day and ran the family funeral home on the side. “Fun Home” is an ironic description of the Bechdel home. She and her brothers were the work force her father used as he restored their Gothic Revival home to its lumber-era glory. He supplemented the furnishing with items found in the attics of the homes of his funeral home clients. Bechdel likens the work on their house to that of the tumble-down home in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but says her father was more like Martha Stewart rather than Jimmy Stewart. In the first chapter we learn of this external relationship between Bechdel and her father, which includes very little physical or emotional attention and a lot of verbal abuse; we also question whether her father’s penchant for interior design is a stereotypical manifestation of his sexuality. Bechdel is planting the seeds of what is to come.
She reveals to us little by little her growth in understanding of her own sexuality and the connection of that growth with the incidents of her relationship with her father and revelations of his secret life. She surprises us with facts she learns about her father after his unexpected and questionable death as well as with her reflections on discussions she had with him earlier in life. There are tidbits thrown to us along the way that make us eager to hear more, but, as in our own lives, we never get the whole story.
I like to think of myself as relatively well read and educated, but must admit my reading tastes are scattered. This graphic novel left me feeling inadequate. She uses the works of Henry James, James Joyce and F. Scott Fitzgerald as ways to describe her father and their relationship, but of these writers I have only read “The Great Gatsby” and that was more than 30 years ago when I thought of it as a story and nothing more. I have an idea of who Zelda is and have seen some movies made from Henry James’ work. But that, and only a passing knowledge of “Ulysses,” was not really enough to understand the references. She compares her town and population to the town and characters of “Wind in the Willows,” and sadly I haven’t even read that.
As with most memoirs, I was drawn to the similarities between my life and the author’s despite the differences. Bechdel grew in self-understanding, sometimes slowly, rather than springing from the womb self-aware. In this way, she is more like Tennessee Williams (“Memoirs”) rather than Rita Mae Brown (“Rubyfruit Jungle”). I saw parallels in Bechdel’s life and my own in that respect, since my self-awareness has been more than a half century in the making and discoveries of secrets of my own family have helped along the way. She had a period of obsessive-compulsive behavior as an adolescent as a mechanism for controlling her life, much as I did when I was young. She used writing for expression with an ongoing journal, which I did to a much smaller extent.
I should comment on the graphic novel format. I find the rhythm of reading a comic-book format different than a book. I’m distracted by some elements on the page and miss others. I suspect a second reading would be useful, but I need some time in before the second reading or I will be very careless in the second reading, skipping sections I think I don’t need to reread. “Fun Home” had much more text than “Stitches,” but the graphics in the latter were much expressive than the former. I enjoyed the art of “Stitches” so much, I was disappointed when I started Bechdel’s book, but I grew to enjoy the wit and humor of Bechdel over time. That is not to say that Bechdel’s art is lacking but just that it is a different style and serves a different purpose.
I’m looking for other recommendations for graphic novels. Have any?
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